Is it possible for a fighting game to have a coherent story?

Can I join the "we spell our names from other words backwards" club? MK9's story works because everyone has a similar goal that revolves around this single event, people from Earthrealm are trying to save Earthrealm. People from Outworld are trying to conquer Earthrealm. Netherrealm is teaming up with Outworld to further their goals etc.etc.. in a game like Soul Calibur, even though pretty much everyone is more or less trying to either obtain Soul Edge or Soul Calibur, there are too many different angles to tell each character's individual story from for a story make up like MK's to work. I think Bamco got it right with the idea of short and sweet individualized story mode playthroughs. Maybe to improve upon that, better narratives could be involved with a little more in depth story telling? I didn't enjoy having to read a paragraph of text to get what they're trying to portray.
 
I think there's several elements which is against that idea:
-Most fighting games use the typical arcade mode to present the story. Which leaves no easy way to tell story between fights, and it has the problem that any character in the game can "win" the game so each ending is contradictory.

-They can't easily kill characters off as they are expected to return in sequels, which reduces a lot of the suspense (this is honestly a minor point though. Everybody knows Nathan Drake will always survive in Uncharted games, but they're still compelling from a story standpoint.)

-Fighting games are notorious for awful storylines. I can't pinpoint the reasoning for this. Maybe it's common the story is written by a producer/director instead of a person dedicated to only that.

So yeah, I'm gonna go with no.

I think the only fighting game which actually did a somewhat good job at presenting a storyline (I should note I haven't played MK9, so I can't speak for that) is SC: Broken Destiny. I'd love to see a fighting game go for a pure comedic storyline than a serious one. That way they'd have an easy way to get around some of the problems (like the multiple ending thing).
 
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