Is NetherRealm giving in to the SJW's?

A fighting game is whatever you want it to be. Making Mortal Kombat a bloody horror/fighting game was something never seen before, that much like the political climate now, people rallied against demanding censorship.

Ironic, isn't it. That we should accept mutilation as normality but reject enjoying the human form. How fickle society can be, how devoid of introspect. Time, meaningless, an endless purgatory of outrage.

@Pedro: No different than the people they claim to be against.

@Baconstrip78: I want to live in that timeline

There are several ways I want to respond to this and I'm not sure which to go with. Just gonna have to post the whole dialogue tree:

Understanding - They probably should have stayed with the old style. I don't really care either way, but this seems important to you and many others. Maybe they will release some classic skins as DLC.

Diplomatic - I'm sorry that a series you love is changing in ways you don't. Hopefully you will be able to enjoy the gameplay despite the change in art direction.

Defensive - I appreciate the female form, even when it's wearing pants.

Combative - Why would I care about cartoon boobs when there is a whole internet full of real live human women showing their goods? Look up Jade cos-players if it matters that much.

I had to look up images of Scarlet in MK9 because I didn't remember......She looked ridiculous as all the lady Ninjas did. This is what's always annoyed me about the character design in this game, how is she supposed to fight against fully armored dudes wielding blades and flames in a freaking thong and loin cloth? The same thought I had watching my cousin play Tomb Raider back in the day, makes no sense that she's in the jungle wearing booty shorts and exposed legs.

The reason is that the development teams of your favorite games had no females and very few minorities on the team to speak up and say this or that is stupid or doesn't make sense. Times have changed and many of these teams or more representative of the audience so maybe throw some cool cloths on our characters so they don't look so oddly bare? New scarlet looks like an actual ninja now as opposed to some stripper ninja like before, I can believe she came to fight. Her face looks brutal as well, there's no reason we can't have some rough faces in there as well.

By being in a fantasy game that isn't a fighting simulator.

That doesn't explain it away by yelling it's a fantasy game, even in a fantasy property the designer needs to have a reason for the character's appearance. If she's a ninja, why the hell is she only wearing a mask and stripper boots with a bikini? Can you explain that? If not, the art director would need to address that.

I didn't yell, I explained a simple fact to you. Next you'll be complaining Mario can shoot turtle shells from his kart.

This is a game where you could turn people into babies and shoot lizard acid.

And apparently having titty armor is too far "out there"?

What a load of rubbish.

Get woke is all I can say.

Boobs bad, ripping out spines good.

I'm 46 years old and fully acknowledge the original design is just as pandering as what the OP is accusing this new design of being.

How about let the consumer choose the outfit. Maybe they could have a SJW mode to make them all flat chested burka wearing NPCs.

for a ninja? Yes. Why aren't Sub Zero or Scorpion running around in banana hammocks?

I literally just said, "if you make the woman sexy, sex the men up".

0 problems with this, SFV started doing it. Everyone loves Cody, fact.

Honestly man its crazy to me seeing so many men complain about half naked women and then getting happy when developers cover them up (aka censor them).

Video games are fiction. They're made for entertainment. Yet everyone wants to get offended over virtual boobies.

While I agree with you in theory, in non of those skins is Cody wearing nothing but a thong and combat boots.

maybe do a clothing/equiment discard element like Soul Calibur 6 came up with where it actually made sense

for the charters male and female to be practically nude at some point in the bout. My issue is doing it from

the get go for no reason but to please male prepubescent gamers.

I guess I'm an anomaly then because women look just as fine to me clothed or bare, I can see the curves regardless. Scarlett Johanson is fine as hell and the only

flesh she shows is her face when her battle leather is on. Put her in a thong in that skrull battle and you'll have MK9 Black Widow I suppose.

I didn't say they can't be. But NetherRealm has gone out of their way to make them unattractive in addition to making them fully clothed. As someone said earlier Jade looks like a zombie now. Skarlet looks like Marcy Darcy. Its bad character design all around.

The exact same point works either way. This whole forum was started by someone who got all upset that Jade's virtual boobies are too covered up.

I like the new costume, and honestly I liked the old ones too. But to say one is pandering and the other isn't is just absurd. They're both pandering, just to different demographics.

The developers clearly liked the older character designs or they wouldn't have stuck with them for so many iterations. I don't think its a coincidence they changed them in today's PC culture.

Jade is a zombie because in MK9 she was killed by Sindel. But there are some human alternate skins, though she's still pretty covered up. Sorry.

@ten_pints: Her boobs are still pretty big, they just don't look like fake silicone ones anymore.

And all those skins look awesome, fits with the MCU direction they seem to be going on a whole. I'm sure there will be classic throwback skins because NR rolls like that.

I'm really not getting the hate, dead Jade looks cool

I won't argue with that, but let's not forget that tradition came from many of the original digitized actors being people in gym clothes. They were working on a small budget, and just hired some people at a gym near their office.

I'm with you here. I liked the old designs, and I like these new ones too.

He's straight up dressed like a chip-in-dale. It's not a "theory", he is clearly sexualized. And it does have a man literally in a thong, he's had this since his introduction in SFIII in fact, as did his brother, who's cloths disintegrate into nothing pre-match.

Take note as well how significantly better SF looks, it's not trying to adhere to realism both in design and animations.

Realism, is boring.

For anyone claiming realism blah blah, then women fighting men is unrealistic due to biology.

Skimpy outfits might actully bridge the gap and distract male fighters so they make mistakes.

lol, would you be distracted or turned on if a naked woman was trying to kill you?

@uninspiredcup: Is he a ninja?

I'm 43 and like the female form just fine. I just realize that video game characters aren't real and don't give me funny feelings down there.

@uninspiredcup:

I say that because you had to search far and wide to find that example which is an outlier, while the vast majority of female characters designed from video games of years past are bikini clad, for no reason other reason than the designers like bikinis. There's no artistic or story/design reason behind that so with future iterations things will of course change.

Meh. Fine with me. If I have a female sidekick who will be fighting alongside my character, I like to see her dressed for it.

By that you mean, replying in minutes with a game with around 700+ hours play-time?

Using google!

!

I'm sure there's gonna be a not dead version of her for you pervs out there

You can not be serious... you right-wing nutjobs are fucking cancerous..

@uninspiredcup: Nah, I'd rather for my characters to look badass in a fighting game, not sexy.. It's pathetic to see a mid 40 year old man crying on the internet about "pandering" cause game developers aren't "pandering" to his sexual fantasies. lol

I'm not seeing a problem? Her design is more horror/creepy which the series turned to in MKX.

Holy shit, folks, let's not read into this too much.

So they gave her some clothes. So what? I don't think it really means anything; styles change *shrug*

Why don't we see how the actual gameplay is, first.

Right? Moving on...

What did they do to Wolfenstein?

@mrbojangles25: Nothing really, all they did was change the swastika, and people went crazy over it. lol

Oh, and shaved Hitler's moustache, but only in the German version. lol

Well, of course. The game has split into two timelines. One with reverents, and the 2nd one, the zombies turn back into humans.

It has to do with having interchangeable armour pieces. You have to unlock the fancy bikini armour by playing or buying kombat cash and buy it.

@mrbojangles25: wolfeinstien was full of just terrible dialog. Full of SJW stuff for example BJ says “die you white nazi scum” even though he’s white also? If you google it there’s ton of articles on it.

There will be multiple costumes for each character so I’m sure they will give you your fix man.

This is a pretty ill thought out comment. With an insult tacked on to try demean the argument, as the base argument wasn't very good to begin with.

Sexy and strong are not mutually exclusive. And if you actually compare the 9 designed with this, they are far more athletic in design. Akin to WWE fighters. So even in this vague context of "bad ass", one is a stick, the other is built like a shit brick-house.

This extends to other fighting games as well, V compared II is night and day, it's now body builder builder proportions.

This idea that, sexy character designs are not appealing to a mass audience is pretty much bullshit and shows a woeful lack of knowledge. Like the 1993 congressional hearings on video game violence, is an ignorant puritan attitude that holds games back.

@uninspiredcup: New Jade looks worlds better than the old MK9 Jade TBH. If they were to meat in battle, I have no doubt in my mind that dead Jade would make MK9 Jade dead too

You keep changing your argument or trying to put a spin on mine. Now it's reached a point of "TBH", like that's credible.

If you prefer it, knock yourself out, I won't begrudge you over it. Just try not to push your opinions as fact or spin it on other people.

I like beautiful women in entertainment...hell, I like beautiful people in general.

What I don't like are extremes, though. Caricatures, even. "Thick" women as portrayed in previous MK games, I don't find them offensive, they don't "trigger" me like so many think it does.

I find it laughable, hilarious, preposterous. It's embarrassing.

Would much prefer a middle ground of attractive, but able to be taken seriously. But as we can see that might be too challenging for developers to create.

That's a pretty narrow-minded view of the debate, but I suppose it does bring up a good point: the inability to compromise.

No, you can't have both. You can't have a woman that is strong of body, mind, and with a personality...

...that also wears a physics-defying dress that only covers her swimsuit areas. I mean, technically you can; Jade is a pretty interesting character, with a fun story behind here...but you cast all that aside when you dress her like that. She could be a god damn rocket scientist that saves starving puppies on her day off and it wouldn't matter.

You can blame society, but in entertainment the two "ideals" are exclusive; if you're dressed like a skank, it doesn't matter how smart or kind or independent you are, a skank is your identity.

Not if the tone is fantastical. Which resoundingly Mortal Kombat is.

If you're going to argue that, well, Batman dresses as a Bat, lives in a cave, drives a bat-car, has a bat-plane and goes to a bat-signal and anything bat related. Eh fights a clown. Who created a two-face.

Hell, the movie even references it.

Again, it's ridiculous to say "this is embarrassing!" about titties when it's a game that shows off blood and guts like an enthusiastic 12 year old watching Robocop for the first time.

It was, from the start, exploitive schlock. It was that, not solid gameplay that got it where it was. Mechanically it was vastly inferior to it's Japanese peers. (Capcom/SNK). Which had significantly better titties as the original MK games used real models who couldn't really complete with well animated hand-drawn stuff, especially SNK who arguably still are the best, even though they've ditched 2D many years back.

@uninspiredcup: That a fair point. It's schlock, and sometimes that is enjoyable.

I think I just needed to hear someone say that haha. Everyone is so busy accusing people of being SJWs, perverts, and all other manner of nonsense I think when you just stop thinking about it too much and call it for what it is, it sort of defuses the whole thing.