The developers of “Mortal Kombat X” said that they had a challenge in front of them: to make the game better than 2011’s “Mortal Kombat.”
“I remember saying to myself [while making Mortal Kombat 2] ‘We’re never gonna sell six million units like we did the first one,’” developer Ed Boon told Polygon. “I wouldn’t have guessed that, but then I find myself in the same situation we were in 20 years ago, which was ‘Oh [expletive], we’re following up this crazy success.’”
He added: “So it’s like this new nervousness: How do you change things up? Because you don’t want to offer the same experience, just skinned with next-gen graphics. But then you don’t want to remove something that everybody loved and [make] the new one suck ... It’s just been this odd thing I haven’t felt in many years.”
During E3, the developers unveiled the trailer (warning: graphic) for “Mortal Kombat X.”
However, Polygon writer Ben Kuchera said the trailer seems misleading.
“The trailer doesn’t look like in-game footage to me, and the pre-rendered scene only tells us that two characters we knew would be in the game are in the game. The video content shows off graphical details and tricks like the breaking bones and bruised organs that were in the last Mortal Kombat game,” he wrote. “If the challenge was to interest me in the next game in the series, or to show off what that game will provide or how it will look? The trailer completely falls flat.”
The game will get released sometime in 2015, and will be developed by NetherRealm Studios, which rebooted the franchise in 2011.
“Mortal Kombat has always been about over-the-top, visceral fighting and with Mortal Kombat X we wanted to utilize the power of new-gen consoles to give players our most intense game yet,” Boon said when the trailer came out. “The team has worked hard to make sure Mortal Kombat X delivers everything fans expect along with new characters, new game modes and an all-new graphics engine.”
