Hello and welcome to Wasted Plotential, where we
discuss the wasted potential of our favourite plotlines.
It's kinda wild that MK11 has numerous characters who have their own chapters, featuring fights
against their future revenants selves, and yet the revenants are not given fights within these
chapters. Think about it - the entire argument for the chapter system is presumably that they don't
want players to have to change fighters constantly between fights in case they struggle to adapt to
the new moveset (even though they'll have to every new chapter). But this is a unique situation where
the villains are the same characters as the heroes. You can let the bad guys win
some fights without disrupting the logic behind the chapter system. All that you'd change is a
few customisation moves, similar to MKX switching variations between the present and flashbacks, and
nobody would struggle to adapt. And yet, the only character where we get to play as both versions of
them, even when they're on the same side and working together in a chapter, is Scorpion.
So let's go through each instance of this and imagine how being able to play as the
evil versions of characters who have chapters could have been used to enhance the narrative.
The first is Liu Kang and Kung Lao in Chapter 3. One of the two monks fights Scorpion,
then Jade while the other fights Scorpion, then their revenant, then Geras. Instead,
let's have the player chose who fights Jade, then automatically use the other to fight Scorpion.
Originally, I had the idea of a flashback fight against a temple guardian who uses Liu Kang's
moveset, maybe Kung Jin's father, and we learn where Jin is through him before Lao kills him.
But without any systems like that in place in MK11, we'll stick to the two existing fights,
but have them occur simultaneously instead of having Scorpion lose twice in once scene.
Moving into the Dragon Grotto, the monks meet their future selves. We then surprise the player
by having them choose a fighter, only to reveal that they're choosing which revenant to play
as. Or, maybe we do a tag match as both revenants. After the fight, Raiden arrives to save the monks,
and we fight Raiden as Liu Kang, allowing him to actually win this matchup for once. MK11
really did establish that Raiden has fought Liu Kang countless times across multiple timelines
and always, literally always wins. And then expects us to take a fight between good Raiden
and evil Liu Kang seriously when evil Liu Kang's power-up comes from another Liu Kang, and so there
is no reason whatsoever to think Raiden might have a chance of losing. So let's change that, yeah?
Shaolin reinforcements arrive, maybe led by Kung Jin, buying Raiden time to get a second
wind and start fighting back, resulting in Geras forcibly retreating with the
two revenants. We've now set the revenant monks up as a real threat to be reckoned
with for later in the story by showcasing that the past versions of Raiden and the
monks simply are not strong enough to beat them yet. Plus, Kronika's main enforcer
now takes one less L, which allows him to remain slightly more threatening later on.
Raiden can then have the monks train constantly at the Fire Gardens to better prepare them for
a potential rematch, occasionally training with them, instead of doing nothing between
now and Scorpion's chapter, aside from helping Kitana for a bit. I'd also have
Lao and Kitana stick around during the finale and fight their revenants (maybe in gameplay,
maybe not), while Liu Kang fights Kabal, and only then being rewound out of the
story once the revenants have bought Kronika time. Why Kabal and not Jade?
Well, Jade's chapter is the one that has the most story potential here. This
episode was actually going to be about Jade and Kotal, centred on this scene,
before I decided to expand it into all the mirror matches. In the game,
Jade is dragged into a Kytinn hive, beats her revenant, finds Kotal elsewhere in the hive being
accosted by D'Vorah, beats her, then infiltrates the tarkatan camp, has a pointless fight with
Kollector, then beats up Kotal for trying to genocide the tarkatans for the second time.
Let's imagine that it's D'Vorah who gets to Jade first. She goes down and Jade gets
Kahn's supposed location from her, and is then distracted by Kotal's shouts,
allowing D'Vorah to scuttle away to explain why Jade doesn't just kill her,
and then Jade heads off to find Kotal. Kotal is now being accosted by Revenant Jade. Keep in
mind that Kotal is from the present. Revenant Jade is his Jade, not the past one. As such, he can't
bring himself to properly fight her, allowing the player to best him as the revenant. Past
Jade shows up to save Kotal and we play as the revenant to win instead of the other way around.
MK11 weirdly has the odds stacked against the revenants since, going off of Liu Kang's
mutilation in Aftermath, we have to assume that past versions dying will wipe the revenant too,
despite being undead in new bodies. We're going to establish that revenants,
being undead, are uniquely able to kill their past selves without being harmed,
so long as the past version still becomes a revenant before they reach the age where they
originally did. This way, Revenant Jade can kill Past Jade with no negative consequences for her,
leading to Kronika having two Jades at her disposal.
This is where Kotal steps in and runs his Jade through with his sword to save
her human counterpart. She dies in his arms, not snapped back to her old self,
but bitterly chastising him for not trying to save her from Quan Chi's clutches, which is
kinda her entire beef with the two here. Kotal is heartbroken to have had to do this to her,
but Past Jade reassures him that he's laid her soul to rest, and she herself can rest
easy knowing his past self will do the same for her if she still becomes a revenant.
I've actually written this scene out in prose form as part of Mortal Kombat Khronicles.
And that story also fixes Kotal and Jade's relationship so that they are exes who end up
reconnecting through the events of this story. So if you want to see how much more effective
this scene would be than what is actually in the game, go ahead and check that out.
But after this, they go to the camp and we can replace the Kotal fight with Baraka since we've
already had a Kotal fight here. Kotal can be chastised by Jade, right before Baraka
ambushes them and Kotal gets knocked out by Kahn when he arrives, right as Baraka loses
to Jade. Revenant Jade can be replaced in future scenes by Revenant Kitana or Kabal.
Kitana can be given a brand new mirror match too, the revenant helping Shao Kahn at the
arena to give the multi-faction alliance some scenes of unity instead of keeping them all
segregated. Kitana's chapter, as is, is one of the better ones in terms of fight relevance,
since something is achieved in each fight except Kollector. Save Jade, secure the
alliance with Baraka, filler, defeat the Outworld forces. So, instead of the Kollector fight,
I'd like to have two new fights here. Jax and Jacqui got five, despite most of them
being low-relevance fights, so we can drop one of the revenant fights or the Noob fight for this.
Kitana can fight Kollector in cutscenes while the revenant attacks Jade right after she frees
Kotal. Our Kitana then challenges the revenant and beats her, partially thanks to the revenant
having just fought Jade and been wounded when Jade brings up her future self's death,
which no one knows about, causing Revenant Kitana to become shocked by the death of her friend,
allowing her to actually have some personality for once. After the mirror match, she escapes somehow,
possibly through Kronika pulling her away because she'll be important for
her plan later. This serves as a sign to Kahn that Kronika has abandoned him,
which can make his frustrations with Kronika later in Aftermath a bit more reasonable.
This mirror match is less about setting up the threat and more about capitalising
on a missed opportunity, presenting a more unified front for the villains,
and adding a little more triumph for Kitana, while removing some filler from a later chapter.
Kabal is harder to implement, seeing how he has no chapter and little plot relevance. He could
join the good guys and fight his revenant in the final battle. Or the revenant could be Kronika's
agent in the Black Dragon, helping maintain Kano's lies, which are exposed by Cassie,
leading to a cutscene battle between the two Kabals around the time of the Kano fight.
Maybe if they brought back the QTEs from MKX of the minigames from Injustice,
they could've utilised that in the story mode for characters who don't get their own
chapters to actually have some gameplay. Why have I never thought of that before?
That's not even scripted - I just came up with that while recording. Damn...
Nightwolf is fine winning his existing one, but I'd like to establish that the revenant
can no longer tap into the Great Spirit's power, while the human version still can,
which gives him the edge. Alternatively, the revenant does win, but Shang Tsung takes his
soul and saves the past version, possibly making a snide remark about how he could only do that
because the wounds inflicted by past Nightwolf loosened the connection between his body and soul.
And if you're wondering about Sindel, her setup in Aftermath would need to change to accommodate one,
introducing a second Sindel that we didn't know about, or having a Queen of Edenia era incarnation
be part of the initial group, with revenant Sindel being just another obstacle instead
of the main goal for a chapter and a half. I do like the idea of the group killing some villains
and having Shang use their souls to power up the human Sindel, like Kahn did with his soul back in
MK9. It's a neat bit of irony that also sets up why she's so dominant in her own chapter.
Jax, being more experienced and augmented by Kronika, should win his fight with his
past self. This could lead to Jacqui fighting him right after while he's tired and he's not
able to go all-out against his daughter. Might be a tad repetitive to fight him twice, I admit,
but I don't have any other ideas here. Maybe just chalk it up to him being like 60 and let him lose.
And just as an extra, I want to make a slight tweak to the Scorpion mirror match. It makes
perfect sense that Hanzō, the older, more experienced version, would come out on top.
Especially since he still has his spectre powers. So what if we established that,
canonically, Hanzō does not have those powers? Then, when he's fighting Scorpion,
Scorpion has more power. But Hanzō has more experience. So the two are roughly equal,
rather than one just being objectively better than the other. Now, there is a little more tension in
the fight, and maybe we do play as Scorpion rather than Hanzō, and Scorpion wins because
Hanzō refuses to fight Scorpion. Scorpion then stops short of killing Hanzō because he doesn't
understand why he won't fight back. and then Hanzō showcases some of the wisdom he has obtained in
the thirty years between their two points in time. And that's what helps to bring Scorpion around.
And yeah, Johnny's mirror match is fine.
With these changes, the revenants are depicted as a threat,
the bad guys gets some wins which helps to present the alliance at large as a threat,
and in some cases, set up something for the heroes to work towards during their downtime.
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Today's recommended video is Mortal Kombat 11 : The Revenants SUCK by SonicHaXD.