feotakahari

Kollector’s defining motivation is money. He was desperately impoverished in his youth, and his devotion to Shao Kahn is from no longer having to live that life. He’s constantly talking about taking money from people, collecting money for Shao Kahn, or selling people as slaves. His attacks involve a giant bag in which he stores all his possessions, and he has a special kill animation where he digs through his opponent’s organs to see which are worth selling.

What I’m trying to say is that in any other game, this character would almost certainly be written as a blatant Jewish stereotype, and yet in this game, he’s not Jewish-coded at all. That’s kind of impressive, in a way.

*The past-versus-future theme plays out surprisingly well. All the people who become zombies are of course horrified at their future, while Johnny is horrified at the person he used to be. Scorpion tries to teach his younger self the lessons it took him so long to learn. Raiden tries to deny that he could ever go down such a dark path again, but is forced to recognize his own flaws. Jax is willing to fight his own family to try to avert the horrors he's seen. And Sonya just can't believe she had a kid with Johnny.

*Anyone else feel like Kung Lao was underutilized? I really thought they were going to do something with Kung Lao's distrust of Raiden vs. Liu Kang's blind trust, but instead they went the route of Liu Kang slowly losing trust, so Kung Lao mostly vanished from the story as redundant.

*In a series where even the good guys kill people brutally, it's disappointing that the abilities more disturbing than punching hard or setting things on fire tend to be reserved for villains. I want a heroic character whose skillset happens to be as creepy as D'Vorah's or Skarlet's.

*Far be it from me to say that Mortal Kombat can ever be too bloody, but the eyeballs flying at the screen are a bit much.

*I still don't understand how Johnny can nut-punch a robot.

*Future Kabal is an evil zombie. Past Kabal was taken from before he quit the Black Dragons and tried to become a good person. Are we never going to see the return of our beloved burned cinnamon roll?

*I assume Nightwolf and Stryker are never coming back at this point. Probably just as well. There is no way to get rid of the racist implications of Nightwolf's design, and not even removing the backwards baseball cap made fans warm up to Stryker.

*I know this series started out as shameless Orientalism, but as the plot matured and the stereotypes turned into proper characters, it's become legitimately cool that an American developer has a Chinese man as the central hero of their game.

*Can't say I think much of the new characters. I get the impression that Geras and Cetrion are only around for plot purposes, and won't be appearing again now that their plots are done. As for Kollector, "selfish but insists he's unjustly persecuted," "way too obsessed with money," and "enjoys violence a little too much" have all been done better by other characters.