Board Thread:Mortal Kombat X/@comment-5561191-20140830173232/@comment-5561191-20140911220327

I called Liu Kang selfish because I think the reason for him becoming an antagonist this time are his selfish points of view. Think about it: was Raiden really being a "careless" protector or did Liu Kang say he was careless because he was so obsessed with playing the hero that didn't even want to think about any other course of action over Shao Kahn's threat? You saw how he completely ignored Raiden's plans and literally ran directly in Kahn's direction to try to defeat him. He didn't care if what Raiden was saying made any sense or not. That's selfishness for me. His ending in the arcade ladder of MK 9 supports this, and Shang Tsung's one even more, which says he became a dictator and got corrupted by power (or so it would have been if he had defeated Shao Kahn).

His actions in Legacy seem to follow a similar course, with him willingly leaving the Shaolin Monks (and also the burden of protecting Earthrealm) to try to live his own life, and then blaming Kung Lao for his disgrace. Nothing wrong about dropping the towel after protecting the Earth so much and trying to raise a family, but this path was his choice, and I bet everyone tried to warn him not to do so. Neither Kung Lao nor anyone else could do anything about this, and yet he refused to listen to his friend - who always cared and tried to protect him - once again and blames him because he's too stubborn to take the blame for himself.

What I think to be so interesting about this is: isn't it probable that he was like this all along, and not only in the alternative timeline and Legacy? He's always been in the center of about everything in Mortal Kombat, beating every bad guy that would show up. The question is: did he do such merely for the common good or to satisfy his ego? For the first time, we see how he reacts to his superior contradicting him and telling him not to play the hero, and that if he does so he will be doing something bad not only to himself, but to everyone else. That's where I saw selfishness: in wanting to be in the center of everything everytime and not tolerating any contradictory opinion, specially one that tells that he might be stupid and bad if he does so.

Sorry, I've wrote a little too much about Liu Kang... That's what I get for liking psychology so much. But thanks for explaining the "25 years later" thing for me. In the way you said it, it still makes sense that Shinnok is the villain. Maybe the game happens in a span of 25 years because of Kotal's betrayal. Maybe he's the responsible for taking most of all of those new characters to the game, to fight for Outworld - Ferra and Torr, D'Vorah etc. That'd be why the MK X war would last for so much longer than the MK 4 one.