With the rise of battle passes and microtransactions over the past console generation, it’s easy to grow complacent to pre-order bonuses and view them as the lesser of three evils. When you’re being forced to constantly engage with a game to never lose out on exclusive skins or events or just straight up having to pay more money to get such things, having to pre-order a game to bag a few cosmetics doesn’t seem like such a big deal.
There are times, though, when pre-order bonuses are so egregious and anti-consumer that they put the other two to shame. NetherRealm Studios has sadly been the king of this with its last few releases, starting with Goro in Mortal Kombat X. Locking such a fan-favourite character behind a pre-order paywall was a bad look, but at least Goro wasn’t important to the story in any way and did feel like an extra fighter if, for some reason, you wanted to look for an excuse for the decision.
Next came Darkseid in Injustice 2, another popular character, sure, but one that also didn’t appear in the main story and didn’t feel as much like cut content. Crap, but somewhat excusable. Things got worse in Mortal Kombat 11, as that time around it was Shao Kahn as the pre-order bonus, who is not only one of the most important villains in the series, but one that also had a role in MK11’s campaign, albeit a small one.
Shao Kahn being locked away unless you trundled down to GameStop and pre-ordered was bad enough, but Mortal Kombat 1 has somehow outdone itself with its pre-order bonus - Shang Tsung. Considering Shang Tsung was the main villain of the Aftermath DLC and seemed unlikely to take top billing two games in a row, I originally hoped that NetherRealm and Warner Bros. had learnt their lesson and gone back to at least choosing characters who don’t show up in the story for pre-order bonuses, just like it did for Injustice 2 and Mortal Kombat X.
Boy was I wrong. Not only does Shang Tsung appear in Mortal Kombat 1’s story mode but, just as I feared when I previewed the game at Gamescom last month, he’s also one of its most important characters, kicking it all off by appearing in the first cutscene and then going on to star as the game’s main villain. Make no mistake here - Shang Tsung is critical to Mortal Kombat 1 and has absolutely no business being turned into DLC.
Locking any character on the roster behind the player’s decision to pay for the game before release is disgusting, but it’s an especially strong slap in the face when you’re picking a character that has such a massive impact on the game’s story. It’s like if Superman was the pre-order bonus for Injustice.
Shang Tsung isn’t a character who was added late into development for the purposes of being a fun pre-order bonus for players with enough faith in the game to support it before release. No, this is a plot-crucial fighter that’s been purposefully sliced out of the game and dangled in front of you, one that you can only get if you paid before launch or fork over $5.99 once you realise that you’re missing a key part of Mortal Kombat 1.
This isn’t the only shady character-cutting that’s in Mortal Kombat 1, either. Quan-Chi and Ermac, two of the fighters being offered in the first Kombat Pack, are also key to the main campaign and have seemingly complete movesets. I’ll cut them some slack because there’s a chance they have a bit more work to be done behind the scenes, but it’s still a bit slimy to offer them up when they seem to be completely playable at launch. I’ll let the modders uncover the truth of that one.
If Mortal Kombat 1 is willing to go this far and lock off one of its main antagonists, I dread to think who might end up slapped on the pre-order bonus when the next Mortal Kombat rolls around. I would joke that it could be Scorpion or Sub-Zero, but it’s dangerously close to becoming a reality at this point and I don’t want everyone pointing a finger at me when it ends up happening.