“Feels like a badly written fanfic compared to…”: Mortal Kombat 1 Fans Are Starting to Appreciate a Messy Expansion After Khaos Reigns
Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns proves that perhaps Aftermath was treated a bit too harshly.
- Mortal Kombat 1 received its first story expansion on September 24.
- Khaos Reigns proved to be disappointing for fans wanting a cohesive narrative.
- Although initially disliked, Mortal Kombat 11's Aftermath is getting more respect now.
Now that it has been a couple of days since Mortal Kombat 1 received its first ever story expansion in the form of Khaos Reigns, fans of the franchise have had a chance to explore everything that the DLC has to offer. Unfortunately, it does not seem like the expansion managed to satisfy the fanbase when it comes to continuing the narrative of the base game in a coherent manner, resulting in it looking back at a story DLC that may have been treated a little too harshly when it was first launched back in 2020.
Despite receiving a less than ideal reception more than four years ago, players believe that it was still much better compared to what NetherRealm Studios has done for its latest Mortal Kombat installment.
Mortal Kombat 1’s Story Expansion Ignites New Appreciation for Aftermath
Although it was becoming abundantly clear to the Mortal Kombat fanbase that NetherRealm was running out of ideas for the franchise after its twelfth mainline entry, especially after witnessing some of the content being used to promote the recently released Khaos Reigns expansion, the DLC’s narrative quality has, perhaps not unexpectedly, failed to please the players.
Being the direct major successor to 2019’s Mortal Kombat 11, it was inevitable for the latest installment’s expansion to be compared to Aftermath, the story DLC that NetherRealm launched a year later in 2020, similar to how it has done for Mortal Kombat 1.
Players admit the fact that Aftermath definitely made some errors in its storytelling, making many of the base game’s narrative elements much less impactful, but it still put in effort to build on the already established lore and present some interesting ideas of its own.
Which is what Khaos Reigns could not succeed in accomplishing, as even the promotional material for the new expansion seemed like it was building up towards an unsatisfying and incoherent storyline that did not have much thought put into it, according to Mortal Kombat fans.
A shared sentiment among the community is that the latest DLC does not conclude in a convincing manner, and considering Ed Boon’s recent comments about Mortal Kombat 1 being the priority at NetherRealm, it just feels like an incomplete story that only leads to another expansion in the future.
Khaos Reigns and Mortal Kombat’s Reliance on the Multiverse May Not Be the Best Approach
As Mortal Kombat 1 rebooted the entire franchise for the second time and started to heavily rely on the multiverse to explain some of its narrative inconsistencies, the approach did not prove to be as effective or successful as massive franchises like Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Which is where Aftermath has the edge over Khaos Reigns, even though Mortal Kombat fans are aware of how inconsistent the storytelling in Mortal Kombat 11 actually was.
Another area in which the Mortal Kombat 1 expansion falls inferior to its 2020 counterpart is the character development, as players could not get invested in the tales of characters like Cyrax and Sektor.
The reception to Khaos Reigns and all of its problems may serve as a wake-up call for NetherRealm Studios, and as it has already announced that Mortal Kombat 1 will continue for years, maybe the developer could take some lessons from its first story expansion in what not to do while creating the upcoming ones.
