You're watching Advertisements

We travelled over to Chicago to get some hands-on time with the upcoming game in the classic Mortal Kombat franchise and after spending some time with the brutal characters and their equally brutal set of moves we had the pleasure of talking to some of the developers behind the anticipated fighting game. We sat down with Derek Kirtzic (Senior system designer, Netherrealm Studios) for a quick chat and talked about the possibility of Mortal Kombat cross-play, cult classic movies and the e-sports scene. Haven't read our preview yet? Check it out here and read the interview down below.

The visuals and the game design of Mortal Kombat is ever-evolving, that's clear. What is your favourite new visual and mechanical aspect with Mortal Kombat 11?

DK: The new visuals have to be the Fatal Blows. They look really, really good and you get great captures of the reactions in the character's faces since the character's faces look so amazing now in Mortal Kombat 11. To see that detail in the brutal transition of this attack is just really cool. I mean there's blood just slo-mo-ing out of everything, it's one of my favourite new things that we have.

So you guys have talked a lot about trying to make the Mortal Kombat 11 the same game on all platforms, do you think that is a reasonable goal now, having seen it almost being finished and would cross-platform play be possible from a technical standpoint?

DK: Great questions, I think the game is going to be fabulous on all platforms, absolutely, and the Switch version is the one I'm probably the most excited about and look the most forward to because I just love handhelds. I'm on planes a lot and things like that so it's going to be nice to have that version I think it's going to be awesome. When it comes to cross-play, I feel as if there's a studio NOT thinking about cross-play at this time, they're not thinking about the future. It's definitely something that we're thinking about. It's not something we're implementing or working on currently, but the idea of having it? I think every game should have it, or at least work towards it.

How are you approaching e-sports this time around? Will we be seeing a Mortal Kombat 11 e-sports scene?

DK: We make a competitive fighting game, of course. You saw at the MK reveal event, the people playing were competitive top-level players, it doesn't get higher on the scale of being a competitive level fighting game player than SonicFox. Of course, it's going to be a competitive game. We haven't released our official "hey, this is what we're doing" schedule but we're doing the Combo Breaker tournament in May in St Charles, Illinois so we'll be there and of course we have this summit that we just recently announced as well so it's a competitive game, a hundred per cent.

For new players or for the button mashers out there, playing online can be daunting at times, how are you balancing the online mode regarding players of lesser knowledge of the game and its combo system?

DK: Naturally with our games we always try to cater to both the casual players, as well as the more hardcore players and we are implementing matchmaking systems to get players matched against players of their own skill rank. We will also have something coming that basically is a visual that tells players that 'okay, that's my ranking and that's the type of players that I'm playing against'. We want to make sure you're in this window of 'this is who you should be playing with'. Of course, we still have different modes too, some of which are more casual so we're always making sure we have that balance between the hardcore and the casual player.

So a lot of Mortal Kombat characters are household names at this point. How does it feel bringing these characters to life?

DK: It's the greatest honour. I've been a huge Mortal Kombat fan since I was a child, it was pretty much the only game I ever played as a kid and I spent all my time at the arcades and spent the entirety of my allowance doing that. I didn't have a lot of friends so I played against myself on the console with my feet and hands. I mean, I love this franchise, it's my favourite franchise of all time and it's been nothing but an honour to bring these characters to life, creating those personalities that they have.

You guys have added guest-characters from other franchises to Mortal Kombat in the past. If you could add any character from any franchise, who would you add?

DK: The Crow! Eric Kraven from The Crow, absolutely, a hundred per cent. I love him.

So imagine you're a fighter in Mortal Kombat 11. What would your Fatality be?

DK: What would be my fatality? Okay, so I am that character? I would tell terrible jokes until they just wanted to drop dead. It would basically be like a harakiri, like it would start off with them begging me to stop and then maybe they would bash their own ears in so they couldn't hear me anymore. I mean I talk a lot and I'm obnoxious and annoying so it would probably be a self-inflicted ear-bashing.

Mortal Kombat 11 releases on April 23 for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Switch and if you're looking for more Mortal Kombat goodies to read, you can check the interview with Dominic Cianciolo right here.