Raiden strikes back! Again!

The Mortal Kombat franchise’s God of Thunder just got his official Mortal Kombat X reveal this weekend during the big Evo fighting game tournament.

IGN released the character’s reveal trailer below, which shows off Raiden’s three distinct fighting styles (that’s the solar-powered Kotal Khan he’s fighting in the trailer, a newcomer to the series). Let’s break them down, shall we?

With his Thunder God mode, Raiden focuses on lightning-powered juggling attacks to keep his opponent off-balance. It doesn’t seem too different from his usual M.O. beyond (and I could be wrong) adding a slight delay above and beyond the usual launcher attacks from other fighters.

Displacer mode focuses on Raiden’s teleportation abilities. Initially, it doesn’t seem like there’s much new here, but a few seconds into the preview for this mode, NetherRealm appears to have given Raiden some Reptile-style invisibility paired with a quick teleport.

Then there’s Storm Lord, what looks to be the most dramatically different addition to Raiden’s move set.

Finally, Raiden has an all-new, head (and eye)-popping Fatality for that little bit of extra gruesomeness (based on the E3 Fatality reveals, Mortal Kombat X seems like it’s trying to set some kind of record for inventive ways of destroying digital bodies). Here, old “Lighting Eyes” can create electric barriers to keep opponents at bay. And if the other player is unwise enough to accidentally leap into the fray, then they’ll be set up for a nice little aerial combo (it’s like a twist on Sub-Zero’s ice clone).

My big question: what does Raiden’s return mean for Mortal Kombat X‘s story? We know it’s set a couple of decades after the time-hopping reboot from a couple of years back where many many characters were seemingly killed off (some of them by the Thunder God in his quest to fix the timeline).

During E3, our own Dan Casey spoke with NetherRealm’s Art Director Steve Beran about the vision for Mortal Kombat X and how the studio hoped to bring the franchise to the next generation of consoles.

[Sources: IGN via Joystiq]