Is Mortal Kombat 11 a good jumping on point for the series???

[AgentOtaku]

Inspired by the recent art direction/model thread, I really wanna check the series out after having not touched it since waaaaay back with MK3.... yes, I'm serious.

My questions

- How lost will I be story-wise?

- how much can the gruesomeness be avoided? (It's never been appealing to me. Even more now with the increase of Fidelity)

- how's the community on Xbox?

- as primarily as Street Fighter/SNK fan, how approachable is it?

Thanks guys!

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

How lost will I be story-wise?

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Oh boy.

how much can the gruesomeness be avoided?

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Ohhhhhhhhh boy.

It's a good game OP but I'm not sure it's for you unless you can go strictly MP and get over the violence.

 

[SnatcherHunter]

1. You will def be very lost.

2. If you play offline, you can avoid fatalities etc.

3. The community is Great. Many Play Online.

4.It is friendly if you are playing against the AI through Towers or Story Mode.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Mortal Kombat 11 is the finale to the entire Mortal Kombat story. the modern MK games are very story driven, so you'll be very lost. The new MK games form a trilogy, you need to play or at least watch the story modes from MK9 and MK X to understand what's going on. Most of the story beats in MK11 are about resolving long -- in some cases decades-long -- story plots.

MK9 is easiest to get into because it's a soft reboot, it begins at the old ending to MK, but goes back to the first game to change history. As such, it's basically a retelling of MK1-2-3. MKX takes place over the span of 25 years, in the new timeline. Both, cutting out all fighting, have feature length movie plots. You should also at least watch the intro to Mortal Kombat Armageddon, as the beginning of MK9 picks up directly after the intro:

 

[Ravelle]

Yes totally.

You can just watch all the cutscenes from 9 and X on Youtube and you'll be fine. I started with X and knew nothing about the rest of the games and was totally fine.

The gruesomeness is mostly way too comical to be off-putting.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

There are bits of MK11's story that, without lie, resolve things from Mortal Kombat 3. The story has been on-going that long. All the games are connected.

 

[Gutsfree]

The story is dumb and cheesy....just accept what you see as the current truth and enjoy the time travel bs? Or as others have mentioned, watch the cutscenes for previous games online.

The violence can't be ignore really. Fatalities aren't done in the story and don't happen every match online but Fatal Blows are almost more brutal in some ways since they can sometimes be less outlandish and you'll probably see at least one a set.

 

[J_ToSaveTheDay]

You'll be lost story-wise but I think there's enough character texture to make up for it for a newcomer. You'll absolutely understand who these characters are and what they stand for through the course of the story mode, even if you don't know the weird history that's led to this point, and I think it's robust enough in that regard to be recommendable to a newcomer. While there's a lot of fun to be had in understanding how these characters got to this point, there's enough of their essential characteristics to understand why they're presently motivated to do what they do, and you can latch onto the plot just fine by that proxy, I feel.

The gruesomeness is just kinda core to the presentation. You'll be able to mostly avoid fatalities offline but you will still have to stick it out with X-Ray attacks (they go by a different name than this but you can't avoid them). Fatalities won't be constant online either — most experienced players seem to get a bit sick of sitting through them after a while. You also need to perform them a LOT to complete some of the game's content grinds depending on how deeply you want to invest into that.

Xbox community is generally great for a fighting game and the game is crossplay with PS4 (and only PS4 to my knowledge) so you're technically going to be exposed to both the PS4 and Xbox combined community. There's still some jerks but IMO that's completely unavoidable in anything online these days.

If you're familiar with SNK and Street Fighter fundamentals this is probably going to seem very very simplistic generally speaking, as I feel inputs are way more lenient in both timing and complexity. Get used to having a button dedicated to blocking, though.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Yes totally.

You can just watch all the cutscenes from 9 and X on Youtube and you'll be fine. I started with X and knew nothing about the rest of the games and was totally fine.

The gruesomeness is mostly way too comical to be off-putting.

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Even if you just play MK9 and X, you'll still miss some of the resolutions in MK11, although they're not a huge deal if you don't notice them. Some of the things they resolve are dangling plot lines from the old timeline, like when

Spoiler

Sub-Zero and frost fight in MK11, it was set up and foretold back in MK: Deception. Frost betrayed Sub Zero in the old timeline, and he froze her in ice vowing to resolve their conflict. Hence, her betrayal in MK11 was always expected, and their ultimate showdown is the resolution to their destined conflict

Also, some of the more dramatic story beats of MK9 reverberate harder if you know the story from the original timeline and thus see how the timeline has changed, especially with regards to the Lin Kuei.

 

[AgentOtaku]

Mortal Kombat 11 is the finale to the entire Mortal Kombat story. the modern MK games are very story driven, so you'll be very lost. The new MK games form a trilogy, you need to play or at least watch the story modes from MK9 and MK X to understand what's going on. Most of the story beats in MK11 are about resolving long -- in some cases decades-long -- story plots.

MK9 is easiest to get into because it's a soft reboot, it begins at the old ending to MK, but goes back to the first game to change history. As such, it's basically a retelling of MK1-2-3. MKX takes place over the span of 25 years, in the new timeline. Both, cutting out all fighting, have feature length movie plots. You should also at least watch the intro to Mortal Kombat Armageddon, as the beginning of MK9 picks up directly after the intro:

Click to shrink...

THANKS!

 

[SweetBellic]

I'd at least play the story modes from Mortal Kombat (2011) and Mortal Kombat X first, especially coming off of the original trilogy. I'd argue those games have better rosters too, though MK11 is great too fwiw (I'm definitely considering picking up that Aftermath/Kombat Pack bundle at some point down the line).

 

[DrFunk]

There are bits of MK11's story that, without lie, resolve things from Mortal Kombat 3. The story has been on-going that long. All the games are connected.

Click to shrink...

Spoiler

Scorpion and Sub-Zero finally squashing their beef was so good

 

[RM8]

It's the best game in the series IMHO, but it's the bloodiest too.

 

[Shopolic]

It's an amazing game, but you won't get lots of things in story and it's really bloody with lots of severed heads, arms and worse than that.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

I'll say this about the new trilogy of games and their respective moods: MK9 is pretty much good old fun, lots of twists and turns, a good mix of sci fi and mysticism. It can be taken as a self contained story, mainly, except for a stinger at the end that pushes the story forward.

MKX's story is really, really dour. It's the "empire strikes back" in terms of story progression, it ends with a lot of shit in flux, necessitating MK11.

MK11's main theme is heroism. IMO it has a satisfying ending to the entire arc.

Just my broad views on the new trilogy if you find yourself wondering if it's worth pushing through basically 7+ hours of story.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Spoiler

Scorpion and Sub-Zero finally squashing their beef was so good

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It is without hyperbole my absolute favorite moment in the entire series. I had been waiting for it for sooooo long. And it lived up to the hype.

Also

Spoiler

The return of Liu Kang as The Chosen One after being absent from the central hero role since MKV was also damn good

 

[Deleted member 12790]

It's an amazing game, but you won't get lots of things in story and it's really bloody with lots of severed heads, arms and worse than that.

Click to shrink...

when they show how people in the lin kuei are cyberized...

 

[AgentOtaku]

Thanks for the responses guys

 

[stn]

The story will be lost on you BUT the gameplay is good and you can transition well from an SF/SNK background. Its a good fighter and definitely worth playing.

 

[Tyaren]

I was in similar shoes as OP. I never cared for MK untill its aesthetics received a huge improvement in MK11. The game went from one of, if not THE ugliest fighting game, to the most beautiful fighting game just like that. Alone that was imo worth the purchase for me. Especially since there are many options letting you just look at the game. for example in its long and cutscene-heavy story mode or in AI battles..

I also am not a fan at all of the gruesome violence in MK. It always disgusted me before. As sad as it maybe sounds: After seeing the same fatalities over and over again I did get used to them. It's similar in horror films where I try to look at gruesome mutilations as :"Hey, I wonder how they did that? With lots of prosthetic work or CGI...?" I train my brain to see it as something fake. It helps a lot.
Unfortunately you can not just turn off the fatalities. It would be cool if there was the option, but at least when you play alone and when you win you can completely avoid them and I was thankful that the story mode wasn't nearly as gruesome.

As someone who never played an MK before I had not much of a clue of the story and characters, so I am sure I missed tons of stuff a fan would notice and would be excited about. I still thought the story was interesting and fun. It's easily best story mode in any fighting game I played.

I can't talk much about how approachable this game is coming from SF and SNK, because I play none of those, but as a 3D fighting game fan I thought it was not that big of a change actually.
Also, if you really suck at the came you can customize your own AI fighters to earn and unlock stuff for you in the towers. That is a huge plus and something every fighter should have.

 

[AgentOtaku]

I was in similar shoes as OP. I never cared for MK untill its aesthetics received a huge improvement in MK11. The game went from one of, if not THE ugliest fighting game, to the most beautiful fighting game just like that. Alone that was imo worth the purchase for me. Especially since there are many options letting you just look at the game. for example in its long and cutscene-heavy story mode or in AI battles..

I also am not a fan at all of the gruesome violence in MK. It always disgusted me before. As sad as it maybe sounds: After seeing the same fatalities over and over again I did get used to them. It's similar in horror films where I try to look at gruesome mutilations as :"Hey, I wonder how they did that? With lots of prosthetic work or CGI...?" I train my brain to see it as something fake. It helps a lot.
Unfortunately you can not just turn off the fatalities. It would be cool if there was the option, but at least when you play alone and when you win you can completely avoid them and I was thankful that the story mode wasn't nearly as gruesome.

As someone who never played an MK before I had not much of a clue of the story and characters, so I am sure I missed tons of stuff a fan would notice and would be excited about. I still thought the story was interesting and fun. It's easily best story mode in any fighting game I played.

I can't talk much about how approachable this game is coming from SF and SNK, because I play none of those, but as a 3D fighting game fan I thought it was not that big of a change actually.
Also, if you really suck at the came you can customize your own AI fighters to earn and unlock stuff for you in the towers. That is a huge plus and something every fighter should have.

Click to shrink...

Awesome post man (especially that first sentence, it's exactly where I'm at with the series), thanks for sharing! :)

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Anybody who isn't sure that they'd like the mortal kombat storyline can just watch the first movie if they want a taste. Unlike virtually every other video game movie out there, the MK movie is actually very faithful to the games and comics. MK's story is really multiple plot lines that are interwined throughout the series, so the MK movie omits all but the most central one (the titular mortal kombat). That means it also sadly misses out on the Sub-Zero/Scorpion plot line aside from one single throw away line ("they're the deadliest of enemies"), but beyond that, it's pretty much a 1:1 retelling of the first MK game. The story gets way, way more complex as the series goes on, but if you liked MK the movie, you'd probably like all the other games for their stories.

MK the movie is so well done in terms of the story of the MK series, that it actually influenced the games. To this day, they still reference MK the movie in the games, like the pre-fight dialog between Johnny Cage and Goro in MKX:





The MK movie was so well done that it actually changed the character of Kano in the games because of how they portrayed him in the movie. Kano used to be of Turkish descent and asian-american, but after MK the movie, he became Australian. Additionally, the current model and voice actor for Shang Tsung is even the same person from the movie:

 

[AgentOtaku]

Anybody who isn't sure that they'd like the mortal kombat storyline can just watch the first movie if they want a taste. Unlike virtually every other video game movie out there, the MK movie is actually very faithful to the games and comics. MK's story is really multiple plot lines that are interwined throughout the series, so the MK movie omits all but the most central one (the titular mortal kombat). That means it also sadly misses out on the Sub-Zero/Scorpion plot line aside from one single throw away line ("they're the deadliest of enemies"), but beyond that, it's pretty much a 1:1 retelling of the first MK game. The story gets way, way more complex as the series goes on, but if you liked MK the movie, you'd probably like all the other games for their stories.

MK the movie is so well done in terms of the story of the MK series, that it actually influenced the games. To this day, they still reference MK the movie in the games, like the pre-fight dialog between Johnny Cage and Goro in MKX:





The MK movie was so well done that it actually changed the character of Kano in the games because of how they portrayed him in the movie. Kano used to be of Turkish descent and asian-american, but after MK the movie, he became Australian. Additionally, the current model and voice actor for Shang Tsung is even the same person from the movie:

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I need to legit and go back and rewatch for posterity with my teenager.
I utterly detest the director now tho, lol