Nightwolf

Nightwolf
Mortal Kombat character
File:NightwolfRenderMK11.png Nightwolf in Mortal Kombat 11 (2019)
First appearance	Mortal Kombat 3 (1995)
Created by	Ed Boon John Tobias
Portrayed by	Litefoot (Annihilation)
Voiced by	Tod Thawley (DotR) Elias Figueroa (MK:D) Larry Omaha (MK 2011) Daniel Lujan (MK11)
Motion capture	Sal Divita (MK3, UMK3, MKT) Stephan Scalabrino (MK 2011)
In-universe information
Weapon	Tomahawk
Origin	United States (Earthrealm)
Fighting styles	Vale Tudo Tae Kwon Do Okichitaw

Nightwolf (born Grey Cloud) is a fictional character in the Mortal Kombat fighting game series. He debuted in Mortal Kombat 3 as a Native American shaman and historian who is chosen as a warrior of Earthrealm during Shao Kahn's invasion. As one of the main characters, he was also featured in the game's companion media, such as the live-action film Mortal Kombat Annihilation and the animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm.

He is also playable in the updates Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Mortal Kombat Trilogy. After being absent from Mortal Kombat 4 and Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance, he reemerged as a player character in 2004's Mortal Kombat: Deception and also appeared in the follow-ups Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, the 2011 Mortal Kombat reboot and as DLC in Mortal Kombat 11. Response to the character has been mixed, with some citing Nightwolf as an example of a Native American stereotype.

Appearances

In video games

Although he is introduced as a historian and shaman, Nightwolf does not live in the past. He is a proud and fierce warrior dedicated to the cause of good and is in contact with Raiden through visions. As such, he draws both on internal and external spiritual energy to enhance his strength. Although his patch of tribal land provided a vital protective area for the Earthrealm warriors during Shao Kahn's invasion, Nightwolf prefers solitary work to companionship. He had been warned of the coming invasion by a vision from Raiden. As such, he was fully aware and prepared for the events as they occurred, including attacks by the Kahn's extermination squads. As his homeland was protected by shamanic magic, Nightwolf would soon be joined by the other chosen warriors. Together, they traveled back to the East Coast, prepared for battle against the Emperor and his minions, and won.

Nightwolf returned during the events of Mortal Kombat: Deception. In the events leading to the game, Nightwolf suffered recurring nightmares of Onaga the Dragon King's resurrection. He recognized these as a warning, but despite knowing a new threat was coming, he was unable to stop his nightmares from coming true when Reptile transformed into Onaga. Fortunately, he was prepared as his forefathers handed down the means with which he could defeat the Dragon King, the "Sin Eater'; which involved absorbing the sins of his tribe. Fearing the possibility of hurting his friends after he became the Sin Eater, Nightwolf chose to face Onaga alone. He traveled to the Netherrealm, drew Onaga's soul to him, and released his ancestors' absorbed sins to remove the Dragon King from Reptile and bind the former to the Netherrealm.

In Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, having completed his quest, Nightwolf was guided back to Earthrealm by his spirit guides. Along the way, he received visions of a battle where an unknown power was forcing the participating warriors to fight each other. His visions slowly became reality when he agreed to help Johnny Cage and his allies combat the fallen Elder God Shinnok and his forces. While preparing for the battle, Nightwolf was met by Kitana and the spirit of Liu Kang, who was bound to Earth through his bond with her. Despite being weakened by his fight with Onaga, Nightwolf used his remaining magic to relieve Kitana of her burden and took custody of Liu Kang's spirit. In his arcade ending, Nightwolf defeats Blaze and absorbs his power. As a result, he is sent to the spirit world and becomes the ultimate shaman. He finds Liu Kang's spirit and guides it back to the physical world, making him human once more.

In the 2011 reboot, Nightwolf is seen as a participant in the first Mortal Kombat tournament. When Shang Tsung selects him as Scorpion's next opponent, Nightwolf berates Scorpion for his quest for vengeance though the latter accuses the former of dishonoring his people by not seeking vengeance for the injustices they have suffered. Nightwolf proceeds to fight Scorpion, but is defeated and eliminated from the tournament. He is later seen among the Earthrealm warriors who congratulate Liu Kang for winning the tournament, though he is not present during the victory ceremony nor the second tournament. He reappears during Outworld's invasion to recruit Stryker. During the battle, Nightwolf destroys Shao Kahn's Soulnado and survived Sindel's initial onslaught. Ultimately however, Nightwolf sacrifices himself to destroy Sindel during her second assault, allowing the sorcerer Quan Chi to claim his soul and turn him into a revenant underling. While Nightwolf's revenant is present during the events of Mortal Kombat X, he is a non-playable character with no lines and a negligible role in the story.

Nightwolf returns in Mortal Kombat 11, with his human self from the 2011 reboot as his default appearance while his Revenant form appears as an alternate gear appearance. In his arcade ending, a young Nightwolf -- then known as Grey Cloud -- initially resented his people for selling out to the colonizers and fell in with Kano's Black Dragon crime cartel as a result. However, when Kano asked him to help steal the Matoka's sacred treasures, he refused. Kano mortally wounded him in retaliation, but the Great Spirit saved him and granted Grey Cloud the mantle of Nightwolf. In the DLC story expansion, Aftermath, a past version of Nightwolf joined forces with Shang Tsung and Fujin to retrieve Kronika's Crown of Souls and help Liu Kang restore history. While battling his revenant counterpart during a mission to capture Sindel's revenant and revive her, Shang Tsung drained revenant Nightwolf's soul in retaliation for wounding him. Despite securing the Crown and taking part in assaulting Kronika's keep, Nightwolf and his allies were betrayed by Shang Tsung and Sindel.

Design and portrayal

During early development of Mortal Kombat 3, the character was known simply as "Indian" before his name was determined. Ed Boon described him to VideoGames magazine in April 1995 (issue #75) as "a very nontraditional Indian. He doesn't swing an axe that he's always holding, like Chief Thunder from Killer Instinct. He doesn't have all of the stereotypical Indian-type things like T. Hawk or Chief Thunder; he doesn't go 'Hoya! Hoya!' and all that." Nightwolf uses a mystical set of weapons (a tomahawk and a bow and arrow) in battle.

Nightwolf was portrayed by Midway Games artist Sal DiVita in Mortal Kombat 3, who also played Cyrax, Sektor, and Smoke. DiVita said about his casting: "I was just walking around and John [Tobias] said, 'Hey, man, you've got some arms; hey, got a big chest. You want to be a character?' I'm like, 'Sure!' And that's how it happened."

Gameplay

According to guides by both Mean Machines Sega and SuperGamePower, the best part about him in the original MK3 was his then-unique ability to deflect any projectile back towards an opponent. Total 64 opined that, once mastered, Nightwolf "is one of the brightest stars" of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, as "none of his moves are seemingly useful at the start, but stick[ing] with him [might] get some great results."

Prima Games' official guide for Armageddon gave Nightwolf a poor overall rating of 4/10, stating: "Nightwolf is a punishing character type, but he is almost forced to punish using ranged attacks. Unfortunately, this means that Nightwolf, while being a solid punisher character, has a difficult time inflicting heavy damage on opponents." In Prima Games' official guide for the 2011's Mortal Kombat, Nightwolf was judged to be a much-improved character, especially since his player "can play the aggressor or the defensive force based on the fact that his Shoulder and Power Charge moves to knock down and are instantaneous" if the former is blocked; his Uppercut is also "an excellent move to counter jumpers." Nightwolf's best matchup is against Reptile, and one of the only few characters that will give him serious problems is Noob Saibot.

In other media and merchandise

File:MKA Nightwolf.png

Litefoot as Nightwolf in Annihilation

In the 1996 cartoon series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, Nightwolf (voiced by Tod Thawley) serves to offer both spiritual and technical help to the Earthrealm warriors, having experience with computer technology. He only fights a few times, spending most of his time back at base monitoring the Earthrealm looking for dimensional rips. Nightwolf has a pet wolf named Kiva, who could merge with Nightwolf to increase his power.

Nightwolf briefly appeared in the 1997 live-action film Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, played by Native American rapper and actor Litefoot. Nightwolf has no fight scenes, although he attacks Liu Kang in his wolf form and strikes him unconscious with a hatchet in order to put him in a "dream state," during which he is shown sitting at a campfire in Liu's dream and teaching him how to use his Animality. Nightwolf was described in the shooting script and movie novelization as wearing a Stone Temple Pilots T-shirt and a pair of Oakley sunglasses, which was ultimately aborted in favor of his in-game outfit.

Nightwolf has since featured in no other MK alternate media, but stunt coordinator Larnell Stovall said in a 2011 interview with ShogunGamer that he had wanted the character for the 2013 second season of the Mortal Kombat: Legacy web series, describing him as "too cool due to his powers, knives and that axe!" An action figure of Nightwolf was released by Jazwares in July 2012. It came in two versions, 4-inch and 6-inch.

Reception

Ethnic representation

Nightwolf has often been unfavorably discussed in the context of the portrayal of Native Americans in video games. Boon's 1995 description of the character to VideoGames provoked a comment from the magazine: "For a character described by Midway as a 'nontraditional Indian,' he certainly has all the trappings of one. Let's see, he wears feathers and war paint, swings a hatchet, shoots arrows...could there be a 'Scalp' Fatality?" In 2011, Dorkly included Nightwolf among their selections of the seven most stereotypical Native American fighting-game characters. "Instead of carrying around actual axes, Nightwolf is so in touch with spirits and elders and, you know, energy, that he can form tomahawks out of green ectoplasm." Complex, in 2012, deemed Nightwolf the top stereotypical character in all video games, describing him as "the epitome of every red-skinned, feather-wearing sports mascot and old cowboy movie serial ... [he] has warpaint on his face, a feather in his hair and the sleeveless vest as if Geronimo himself just gave it up." David Wong of Cracked included Nightwolf as an example of an ethnically-stereotypical game character in a 2012 feature about racial prejudices in video game design.

Hardcore Gaming 101 said of the character's role in the Mortal Kombat series, "In the mid-'90s, it was practically an unwritten law that every fighting game had to have either a Bruce Lee clone, [or] a Native American ... Nightwolf takes up the latter slot." This belief was concurred by Gavin Jasper of Den of Geek: "He seemed to be there [in MK3] because throwing a Native American into your fighting game series was the in-thing to do back in the '90s." In a 2008 feature on Native American stereotyping in video games, GamesRadar exemplified Nightwolf for the "Warrior" trope. "[W]hile this pro-Indian sentiment is certainly heartwarming, much of Nightwolf’s character is wide of the mark." The site added that the act of "sin-eating" (his role in Deception) was actually European in origin, and criticized his Animality in MK3 as being "for gratuitous shock value." Topless Robot said, "Nightwolf’s design and backstory are standard-issue for Native American characters in fighting games ... [but] his look is actually less stereotypical than, say, Chief Thunder’s from Killer Instinct." Eric "Woodyman" Vole of ScrewAttack offered a positive reaction by naming Nightwolf fourth in his 2011 ranking of the top eleven Native American game characters. "I was never a huge fan of Nightwolf in the older Mortal Kombat games...but that all changed from his appearance in MK9."

Other reception

The character's presence in the 2011 reboot was better received. UGO ranked him 20th in their 2012 list of the top fifty series characters. "Nightwolf uses the magic of the shaman to ward off evil-doers and to bring peace to the realms...by kicking everyone's ass." Fans voted him the series' 28th-best character in a 2013 online poll hosted by Dorkly. Den of Geek placed Nightwolf 51st in their 2015 ranking of the MK franchise's 73 playable characters, calling him "the most ho-hum member of the Mortal Kombat 3 cast," yet lauding him for killing Sindel in the MK2011 story mode "when she went all John Cena" on the Earthrealm defenders. Complex ranked him among the MK series' most underrated characters, stating that "the fact that he can transform into a wolf and maul you to death should tell you he's nothing to play with." In 2012, Game Informer unfavorably compared the "uninspiring" then-new Soulcalibur V character Z.W.E.I. to Nightwolf in that, he "summons a spirit wolf, and his move set is more annoying than practical."

His "Ascension" Fatality from MK2011 was ranked ninth in Paste's selection of the reboot's top nine Fatalities. Two of his Fatalities were included in WhatCulture's 2015 ranking of the "10 Worst Fatalities in Mortal Kombat History" for what the site considered their lack of originality, with his finisher from Mortal Kombat: Deception, where he throws a single tomahawk into his opponent's head, in the fifth spot, and his "A Little Off the Top" from MK2011, in which he again embeds one tomahawk in his opponent's head before decapitating them with the second, at number two. "Seriously, Nightwolf?! What is WRONG with you? You’re bringing this weak nonsense back to the party?"

As was the case with most of the cast of characters in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Nightwolf's appearance was critically panned. Newsarama dismissed him as "useless," and Maitland McDonagh of TV Guide called the character "dopey." Eric Snider of Film.com said of his opening dialogue exchange with Liu Kang, "I couldn’t hear the rest because my brain was exploding." 411Mania called his tutelage of Liu Kang "hippie Native American Yoda spiel." Patrick Coyle of Jabootu's Bad Movie Dimension included Nightwolf among the film's "shallow, one-shot characters that serve little or no purpose." Kate Willaert of Game Informer sardonically remarked, "Nightwolf delivers the best line in the movie when he tells Liu Kang he must test his courage, and find his Animality. ... As a result, the film's final climactic battle turns into Primal Rage: The Movie." Io9's Alasdair Wilkins said of the character's depiction in the film, in particular the scene of Nightwolf knocking out Liu Kang with the hatchet, "Nightwolf isn't just a magical shapeshifting shaman who only exists to show the hero his destiny...he's also kind of an asshole." However, Doug Skiles of KillerMovies said in his 1997 review, "The only person putting forth anything resembling effort is Litefoot, who plays Nightwolf, at least for the whopping two minutes that he's on the screen."