Irony, but I have a blog about atmosphere again. Of course, I am not alone in this topic, but it turns out that when it comes to blogging on SG, this is exactly what falls into my hands.
Fate, no less.
Choose Your Destiny, as they say.
In general, today I want to talk a little about a topic that I raised a long time ago in a video version on my personal channel (I will attach it to the blog), but for some reason, at one time, I did not raise it on the blog itself, although, as for me, it is quite entertaining. Well, it’s time to correct the mistakes. And the first thing I want to start with is a question for you.
Have you not noticed how, in the process of its evolution, the most cruel and dark series of fighting games, Mortal Kombat, has quietly eradicated all the creepy and mystical atmosphere from itself??
No, she’s still fierce and uncompromising (not counting bending under SJW pressure. and not about that now), but today it resembles more of a bright superhero action film than, I note, it never appeared at the stage of its inception. Mortal Kombat, on the contrary, was created as an antipode to the bright, cozy fighting games of that time, where the characters, of course, sorted things out among themselves, but their showdowns never came to the point of outright crudity. Before the advent of MK, this genre was more like a friendly boxing match, in which, having figured out the relationship between the characters, say, mentally, you could safely go sip a soda somewhere on the sunny Cote d’Azur, lying under tall palm trees. These are the feelings that fighting games like Street Fighter or Tekken evoked. Games that manage to remain kind despite the people in them punching each other in the face.
Always liked this location. She radiated some kind of warm and kind atmosphere, and what pleasant music played on her. Mmm. in one word – relaxation!
But when creating Mortal Kombat, the developers from the then MidWay had to take into account the fighting games created before them in order to come up with something new, never seen before. And thanks for the original dark tone of the series goes to artist and designer John Tobias. It was his mind that produced such things as "Outworld" – Outer world and "Netherrealm" – Underworld, or, literally: Kingdom of the Void.
What the team managed to recreate, thanks to complex and coordinated work, can be called nothing less than horror from the world of fighting games. Every launch in my childhood of MK2, or even worse – MK3, was accompanied by an oppressive feeling of the presence of something otherworldly in the house. And to feel this, you can launch the main menu from MK3 even today, preferably in the Sega version, since it is its minimalism and dark flair that are well able to convey the feeling of doom that permeates the series from the early period.
According to the behests of Vereshchagin. The art and atmosphere in MK3 are just so dark. Skulls and bones were associated with suffering and death. Little me was very frightened, but at the same time endlessly impressed and attracted.
For the musical and general sound design, it is worth giving credit to the composer – Dan Forden, whose face often flew out in the lower right corner after a tasty uppercut. Screams and screams during the moments of blows and execution of fatalities are forever fixed in my memory as a kind of shock suffered in childhood. But it wasn’t just the sound and art that scared the fighting game. No, the most pressing thing about him, like the icing on the cake, was the naked, shocking violence that literally confused people in those days. Many parents simply did not understand how to feel about the fact that their child was soullessly tearing out the head with vertebral bones from his virtual opponent.
God, what are you doing!?
What if the child wants to repeat what he saw in real life??
Suddenly, after watching enough, he gets PTSD and begins to project his inclinations onto living people?
Will become a cannibal, maniac and sadist!
He will start his own family, and then devour it, having prepared it in the oven in advance!
These are the thoughts that, like https://bass-win-casino.uk/mobile-app/ a parasitic trend, have gripped the majority of adults, and, importantly, those sitting in the highest ranks of people who will continue to believe that games are evil and should be banned. Remember, friends, there were enough psychopaths in the Middle Ages, when no one knew about GTA, there are enough today and there will always be enough. For example, all the most terrible tortures were invented long before the advent of digital entertainment. I can tell you, for example, what it’s like to impale a person and what sensations the executioner experienced at the moment when the sharp shaft passed through his tissues and organs. but oh well, we’re talking about something else. In general, fortunately the world is not without wise representatives and instead of a ban, Mortal Kombat gave birth to what today we call the age rating system or in common parlance – ESRB.
Mortal Kombat did what you can see today on absolutely every licensed disc or digital version of any video game.
All this is of course good, wonderful and interesting. But what about the atmosphere of the game?? Personally, I’m used to talking about it specifically within the third part, although from the point of view of this topic it’s wrong. After all, it is the second part of the game that most old people consider to be saturated with the thickest and most breathable atmosphere. If the first was more of a concept in which the emphasis was on ultra-violence without scrupulous work on the surroundings, then the second part is a more meaningful work, based on oriental aesthetics, saturated with the deepest darkness.
Deadpool Arena. It’s not for nothing that she is the opening character in MK2. This is the personification of all the horror that pervades the game’s universe. Walls blackened by damp, dangling metal hooks on which someone once hung and will clearly hang more than once, as well as the famous acid, which will instantly corrode your flesh and bones if you do not stay on the small safety island in the middle of the screen, winning both rounds against your opponent. The name "Mortal Kombat" is more than fully justified from all sides and angles.
And I agree with those people who put MK2 on this pedestal. The sounds, music and art direction in it stand out very much against the background of other genre representatives of those times. The creators took classic action films of the 80s and early 90s and mixed them with Asian mythology, which itself is replete with creepy and mysterious themes. And, not forgetting to provide our creation with a pinch of brutal physical violence, we got Mortal Kombat. This is the formula that is familiar to every self-respecting player today, and it has not been a special secret for a long time. True, in my case it happened that the majority of my impressions came from Mortal Kombat 3: Ultimate. And then, let’s go straight to the "Soul Chamber" arena. This is my favorite example. According to the game’s lore, this place is located in the dungeon of the fortress of Shao Kahn – the main antagonist of the series. In the middle of the hall grows that famous tree with an evil grimace and a huge mouth, inside of which a whirlwind of tormented human souls is spinning. A little further, in the background you can see dark priests in red robes, whose faces are hidden under the hood. Nearby, at their feet, you can pay attention to the dead bodies of those who were most likely unlucky in the battle, and now their souls will be consigned to green fire, which heats the hall to high temperatures. But the most important thing is the darkness in the background. You don’t see the boundaries of your background. Liminal spaces and your imagination come into play, which, against the backdrop of the darkest sound, successfully creates an eerie feeling of presence, despite the fact that you seem to be playing for an experienced fighter. It just adds a little honor, because how many experienced fighters were there before you?? And now, apparently, they have to share the floor of this hall with the rest of the lifeless bodies. The feeling is certainly top-notch.
But today, “Soul Chamber” in MK11, for example, is a terrible squabble and a misunderstanding of what was so good about the design of old games. No, don’t think so, I love modern games and always love progress. And I also like to play MK 11 (if you play on PS or PC – write, add me, teach me some cool tricks), but the atmosphere in the new games in the series very much reminds me of one harsh word from the lower criminal strata – Forshmak. Although there is also a herring dish, but I don’t think it’s important. Here it is important to understand how to treat the modern vector of development of the series: how to deprive fans of p@rasha or how to treat a herring that was baked with potatoes. I’m leaning towards the first one, because look at the hall of the soul in MK 11 – there is nothing there that was so good in the original. Except for the mouth in the center of the screen. And it rather resembles some kind of, it may sound stupid – elven fantasy. Neither the soundtrack nor the surroundings even come close to evoking any dark nostalgic feelings. There are only cool heroes around, causing cool showdowns in a bright cool environment accompanied by brown music.
The Hall of Souls in MK11 is an excellent indicator of the beauty of the picture in modern games and good fantasy art direction. But the main thing was lost.
Don’t take my words as insolence. I like MK11 and in general everything connected with it, but when objectively compared with the spirit of the original games, modern creations are (!) my personal opinion, they are a complete fiasco. And this is not surprising, because chief art director John Tobias left the studio back in 1999, giving the reins of the atmosphere to the hands of other artists and designers, who over time lost their strong visionary connection with the original. No, I’m not crying, I just got a speck in my eye.
Despite the fact that MK4 is considered an unsuccessful and largely failed game (with which I do not completely agree), it had a successful fusion of the spirit from MK2 and MK3. Dark, creepy, damp and bloody.
I like many of the Mortal Kombat parts. The ninth, for example, tried very closely to return to its roots and at times it was even successful, but the desire for new young blood and greater popularity led to the fact that the series had to be put on a par with popcorn blockbusters.
The change in tone of the series affected not only the locations and sound. Here I like to give the example of Cabal from MK3. His person was shrouded in mystery. This was a fighter who stood out significantly from the rest. Firstly, he had an unusual, memorable design in a gray suit with a stylish mask and long metal hooks. Secondly, he had a non-standard fatality, which was based on the fact that Cabal takes off his mask and shows his real face, scaring the enemy to death. Previously, the information field was not filled with videos in the spirit of “The History of Kabal from Mortal Kombat” or “Secrets of Lore of the MK Series” and similar things. And due to the lack of proper information on the topic, there was that same feeling of mystery and misunderstanding of what was happening, which only added advantages to the general atmosphere. So you sat and wondered: why is Cabal so creepy and why is he such a person that I would never want to run into in a dark alley??
Generation difference in jackal quality. But this is enough to distinguish RealGangstaShit from Circus. Okay, again I seem to be spilling bile over everything new. This is not true, but in this case, nostalgia WIN.
Today, Cabal is just a cool dude whose story is as clear as glass after washing it with newspaper. Of course, times are not the same anymore, and sooner or later we would have to show this guy in more detail. But you know, today the characters from MK are not at all impressive. No, they are very cool and stylish, just look at the brutal Shao Kahn from MK11 or the same daring high-speed Kabal from the same place. It’s just that their stories are structured in such a way that you treat them like superheroes from Marvel, that is, these kind of people who have some kind of tragedy behind them, but which the creators themselves or the guys from YouTube will definitely chew on for you, as is usually the case with most pretentious and comic book characters. Not exactly what I would like from Mortal Kombat today. I want to return those feelings of lack of information, I want to collect lore literally piece by piece, as fans of Dark Souls and similar games do today. I want more questions, more mysticism and more hopelessness. After all, with this, the MK series was once closely related to YOU.
And here I want to outline several reasons why today we have what we have. Of course, the most important thing is the restructuring within the studio, now it’s no longer Midway, but NetherRealm. With the departure of Tobias at the end of the 90s, the series still remained in a dark environment for some time, but the further it developed, the more it leaned towards an epic blockbuster, which I also can’t call bad, because it’s cool! Let this differ from my inner feelings, but not to admit that Mortal Kombat today is a freaking epic story with bright heroes is, at the very least, stupid.
An equally important point here is the growing dynamics of the gameplay itself. More strikes and special moves appear, the length of combos increases and the most unimaginable animations are drawn for the characters, and their roster increases significantly with each game. And it’s clear that with all this goodness it will be quite cramped within the framework of only viscous mysticism. Accordingly, with the growth of dynamics and scale, there is also a change in the color palette. If you look at the latest games in the series, you can easily confuse them with another fighting game from the studio: Injustice. Yes, the developers are trying to show that these are still dark games, but there is not much proper use of dark shades here. The picture is always juicy and literally bursts with all the colors on the screen. Well, where there is no room left for pictures and dynamics, it loses its powers and sound. No, blows and broken bones with tearing of something meaty in the frame are voiced, as always, simply drop-dead. Here the sound designers can be given endless respect. But there are no good memorable musical themes here anymore. Previously, there was cool dark electronics with an unusual sound, which was the signature face of the game, but now, in the trailers, we hear low-grade rap, and in the game itself, it’s skewed towards a Hollywood movie like The Lord of the Rings. Is it bad? The Lord of the Rings vibe – no. Does this make the series stand out from other representatives?? No either. And this is my main complaint about the current direction of the series. After all, the desire to stand out and outdo other representatives of the genre does not fit in with the desire to please a larger number of audience members, forgetting about the original goal of one’s great path.
MK11 looks, wow, how beautiful! And this is Unreal Engine 3. Albeit significantly redesigned. Waiting on the fifth.
Everything that remains of that same spirit can be found today in the Krypt – a local arcade game based on searching and opening various chests with art, fatalities and other game bonuses. The atmosphere in them is so cool that sometimes it may even seem to you that the creators are very talented horror authors and the MK series within the framework of just a fighting game is very cramped.
Changing trends and people’s tastes over time is normal. It’s not that I’m criticizing. But I wouldn’t mind a full restart. Playing Mortal Kombat, which will cause horror just by being in its menu, is worth a lot. I don’t know what the developers will do next, but I would really like, from the bottom of my heart, for them to reconsider their approach to the series a little and remember what they started with. After all, as they say, everything new is well forgotten old. And using new technologies with a classic approach in a modern way – you can make such a gun, after which they will come up with a new age rating system))))))))))))
P.S: By the way, about the fact that the game shocked me as a child. More than one game shocked me. But I didn’t grow up to be a maniac and a sadist. I’m not perfect, with my skeletons and problems. But in general I love people, and I’m only glad to contact adequate representatives. And I am amazed at how some members of our species can be wasted and cause significant harm to others, while (!) having never touched a single video game in my life. In general, I lead to an interesting observation: all the demons are in our heads. And before you go out in public, it would be advisable to deal with them thoroughly. So for the most part, everything depends not on video games, but on yourself, and of course, those nearby who are or are NOT vigilant towards you. I would like to say, be more attentive to each other, but here, I think, you yourself decide how you should be and who you should be. Why am I doing this, I’ve even forgotten. But I’ll be happy to ride in MK11, write to me 😉