Mortal Kombat X (Possible Spoilers)

[Psyren]

Mortal Kombat X activates tonight at midnight EST. I have it preloaded on Steam and ready to go (hopefully I can run it without too many issues.)

The story - well, for a fighting game, I've always thought MK had a slightly better storyline than most (better than KOF or Soul Calibur anyway), so I put a spoiler warning in the title and will be using tags throughout. I've diligently avoided most spoilers on the net, but from what I can tell it's set several years (decades?) after the events of MK9 where the entire universe got rebooted and a big chunk of the cast was bumped off. No idea how they'll handle that, or what the tournament will be about this time.

So gameplay wise, who does everyone plan on maining? Who's trying to take over Earthrealm this time? (It's always Earthrealm, right?) What do people think of the new brutality system? And so on.

[AvianMalkavian]

I honestly never expected to be interested in the story of a Mortal Kombat game. Then MK9 happened. I've been looking forward to this one for a while and that launch trailer they put out has me super hyped. No clue who I'll main. Cassie Cage or Sonya Blade, maybe? If anyone has doubts about MKX, check out IGN's video of the game's first 25 minutes.

[Psyren]

The story is pretty interesting so far. I'm on Chapter 3.

Shortly after the events of MK9, Shinnok and Quan Chi try to stir up some beef, similar to the plot of MK4. They go after Raiden and Fujin's temple, which contains some kind of power source for Earthrealm, bringing with them an army of demons. Also, it turns out that everyone who died In MK9 really are dead, and most (so far I saw Jax, Stryker, Kabal, Nightwolf and Sindel) are reanimated puppets under Quan Chi's control. I'm guessing this is also the case for Kung Lao and Liu Kang since they're in it. Hopefully we figure out a way to save them, but in the meantime they are assisting in the beatdown of the two earth gods.

Johnny Cage and Kenshi have joined the special forces under Sonya. They arrive to help out just in time (well, minus some interference from Scorpion and an unknown cryomancer, but Shinnok comes close to killing Sonya. Cage goes... super saiyan?... and faces off against Shinnok. We learn that Cage may not be totally human, which explains all the green energy blasts and such without any particularly disciplined training on his part. Cage wins and Shinnok ends up trapped in his amulet while Quan Chi escapes.

Time skip 20 years and now we've got Young Justice the junior members of the Special Forces - who appear to be the children of our surviving protagonists going on missions together and generally butting heads. They're tasked with investigating unrest going on in Outworld - the new emperor (an Aztec-flavored brick slab named Kotal Khan) is interested in maintaining cordial if not peaceful relations with Earthrealm, but his rule is also pretty harsh on Outworld's own inhabitants, plus he has no plans to undo the merging of Outworld and Edenia that Shao Khan presided over. There is a resistance movement against him headed up by Mileena, Tanya and Rain, who each have agendas of their own. And that's where I left off so far. They attempt to assasinate Kotal, assisted by Kano, but fail - as Mileena is cornered and about to be executed, lo and behold she whips out the same amulet containing Shinnok and vaporizes an entire contingent of Kotal's guards with it before Rain helps her escape. That's where I left off so far.

What's most interesting is that there seems to be some moral grayness in the story this time around. Kotal wants peace with Earthrealm, but he's kind of a d*ck to his own people. The Special Forces team are trying to work with him because if Mileena's rebels win, it could mean another war with Earthrealm, but they don't particularly like him either. The younger fighters are also clearly chafing under the accomplishments of their elders. And of course there is the very open question of how Mileena got her grubby mitts on Shinnok's amulet in the first place when it was locked up in Earthrealm 20 years ago.

Gameplay-wise, the fight mechanics are better than ever. I've only been playing the story mode though, so I haven't gotten to try any brutalities and only tried a couple of fatalities. (Scorpion's default one is NASTY.)