The long-awaited second year of Mortal Kombat 1’s support started on September 24th with the release of the Khaos Reigns update, featuring many big changes, including a brand new Kombat Pack, special new fatalities, and a story expansion similar to MK11: Aftermath. There were many great changes and additions to the game with this new update, but fans are conflicted (or should I say konflicted) on others, especially the story.
For those unaware of what MK1 is, it’s the latest addition in the Mortal Kombat franchise of fighting games, known for its awesome characters, prominent story, and most of all, its gruesomeness. This latest addition stands out for resetting the timeline, featuring classic characters with new twists. As well, it introduces the Kameo system, allowing for the player to summon other characters for combos, like a less involved tag-team system such as in Marvel vs. Capcom.
Before going into story, let’s talk about the great new features of the update, my favorite of these being Towers of Time. They work like the previous game and replace the original Gateway Mesa from Invasions. There are weekly towers in the front, hourly towers in the middle, and event towers (i.e., character free-trials) in the back. The best part about the towers, however, is the first renewable way to earn Dragon Krystals, the in-game currency, by completing weekly quests.
Animalities, on the other hand, work like fatalities; after the match, you input certain directions and buttons to get a gruesome finisher, but with a twist. Returning all the way back from MK3, all characters (including DLC) turn into animals to kill their opponents. They’re honestly much more creative than many normal fatalities, and quicker too. Other changes include balance changes, new moves for certain Kameos, two new Brutalities for every character in the seasonal shop (don’t worry, they’re permanently there), and massive decreases in file size due to optimization.
The following will contain spoilers for the story expansion Khaos Reigns.
Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns brought many things, but I feel it’s best to go in-depth with the story expansion before anything else, as it’s the most controversial part of the update. This serves as a continuation of the base game’s story, revolving around an alternate universe’s Havik trying to take over Liu Kang’s new timeline. Along the way, we meet the new Cyrax and Sektor, powerful fighters originally cyborgs but currently in high-tech suits. As well, Bi-Han (Sub-Zero) gets transformed into Noob Saibot like previous timelines in a much different manner.
This expansion was short, around 90 minutes for all the cutscenes combined, but likely taking between 2-3 hours to play through all the fights alongside it. The main problem with it is that the multiverse is just… not sustainable for a storyline. Before Havik arrived, we could’ve had a great setup for the expansion already. Bi-Han, Sektor, and the Lin Kuei try to tear down Kuai Liang (the new Scorpion, not Hanzo) and his Shirai Ryu, while Cyrax learns of the Lin Kuei’s faults and starts to aid the Shirai Ryu.
Instead, Titan Havik shows up, kidnaps Liu Kang’s tried-and-true assistant Geras, and the cast goes on a krazy adventure to get him back, mainly because he apparently has some time crystals in him that create this device to control all timelines (they don’t explain it much, which is surprising given it’s the plot device that drives the whole expansion). We also get introduced to an alternate Rain and Tanya, which you could almost feel for if they weren’t irrelevant to the overall story. Bi-Han luckily remains the same idiotic, egotistical orphan-hater I love, but I do wish he was given just a bit more development, especially when he’s literally tortured by Havik into Noob Saibot.
As mentioned before, the multiverse isn’t a sustainable plot point, and that certainly shows with Khaos Reigns. The reason I say this is for two reasons: First, stakes are practically worthless when infinite universes exist, and second, there’s nowhere higher to go. For instance, I mentioned that there are alternate versions of the characters Rain and Tanya; well, Rain gets crushed saving a few other people’s lives, but what’s the point? He isn’t our Rain; he’s some random one plucked from a random timeline; why do we care?
The main villain in this expansion, Titan Havik, I feel conflicted about. On one hand, I think he’s characterized exactly as he should’ve been. His schtick is chaos, and he plans to “bless” all timelines with it, but there is a layer of irony to the fact he is controlling what chaos he wants, displayed in the story. Still, he pretty much watches the entire story through TVs, and the one time he actually does something is when you fight him, where he’s still pathetic. As well, he has now added “chaos” and “anarchy” to the words etched in any MK1 player’s brain because he used them so repeatedly, just like “timeline” in the main story.
Cyrax and Sektor, as mentioned earlier, almost had a good storyline set up, but then they get split up for the rest of the story and pretty much remain the same for the rest of the time, with Sektor obsessed with Bi-Han and Cyrax just trying to survive the chaos. Liu Kang is generally the same as the main story, same as Geras, and that applies with everyone else who made a brief pop-up in the beginning.
Overall, Khaos Reigns is great in every way… except for its main selling point. It’s shorter, more boring, and generally disappointing when you compare it to MK11: Aftermath (which was the best part of MK11’s disappointing story). It ultimately does not use its time effectively; when we could’ve had more development for Cyrax and Sektor, we got chaos and an alternate Rain and Tanya we’ll never see again. The DLC is priced at $49.99 for the story/Kombat Pack, $59.99 for that along with the first Kombat Pack, and $89.99 for everything and the base game. Personally, unless you really want to play Noob, Cyrax, and Sektor right now, I’d wait for a sale. Historically-speaking, it won’t be long, I’d predict around winter when Ghostface will presumably have been out.
