Mortal Kombat's Creator Talks
"There are a lot of assumptions that there will be no blood in the game, that there are no fatalities in the game. My response is that, no, we're modifying fatalities. But I have every intention to keep finishers."
Ed Boon, co-creator, Mortal Kombat
Since its 1992 debut in arcades, Midway's fighter Mortal Kombat has been acclaimed by players and denounced by livid parents. The superviolent fatalities and finishing moves put it front and center at the local quickie mart as a must-play arcade game, but those same moves also fueled parent groups, which used what they deemed as a growing out-of-control level of violence in videogames to help form a formal ratings system.
In April, Midway announced the eighth version of the successful American fighting series, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, debuting the likes of DC superheroes Superman and Batman alongside Mortal Kombat characters Sub-Zero and Scorpion. We caught up with co-creator Ed Boon, who spoke about the new inclusion of DC characters, balancing superheroes such as Superman, the new storyline, and the new face of fatalities and finishers.
ReBoot
GameTap: With Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, why did you feel that you needed to do something so different?
Ed Boon: We have done this a few times before. The 2002 release of Deadly Alliance was also a reboot in many respects. When you do sequels, it's an interesting balance. You always introduce something new or people take a "been-there-done-that" approach to your game. And I'm a big fan of our competitors--Street Fighter, Tekken, all those games--and some of them are in their fourth, fifth, sixth iterations. We keep our eyes on how well fighting games sell, and fighting games in general have decreased in sales. They don't have the impact they used to, but we have managed to continue to sell our games well, I think because we introduce new elements to each version. This being a new generation of consoles requires a whole new presentation for Mortal Kombat. So we thought we should do something dramatic. If you're counting, this is Mortal Kombat 8. Had we done something with a little tweak to the story and minor adjustments to the mechanics, I think people would get it and just move on really quickly. That's what I have witnessed with some of the other fighting game franchises.
GameTap: Fighting games and platformers were once prominent staples in the industry. Not any longer. When you look at Mortal Kombat, how do you decide what elements should stay and what should be cut?
Ed Boon: To a large extent, we started from scratch. We had two characters on screen throwing kicks and punches. We asked ourselves, "What have we always wanted to improve on?" We have had such a great opportunity to rethink some of the basic 3D mechanics--3D walking, punching, kicking, all of the basic moves in the last generation. It's not like we got rid of something just because we had to. We basically just reset everything. What makes Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat is magical moves: People teleport and throw spears, as opposed to just hand-to-hand fighting. So we know we'll keep the magic element, with the DC characters really lend themselves to amplifying MK's best qualities. Now we have even more outrageous moves. We have always tried to separate ourselves from the other fighting games by going our own direction.
GameTap: Most fighting games are tweaked in such subtle ways it's hard to know what exactly is changed, unless you're a super dedicated hardcore fan.
Ed Boon: That's exactly true. There are nuances that people discuss, but the reality of the situation is that 90 percent of the public will never experience it or will realize that it's even there. To me, that's a question of game design. If you're implementing changes that most of the people who are buying the game will never recognize, I have to question whether adding something so subtle is a good idea.
Toned Down?
GameTap: Speaking of subtleties, fatalities and Mortal Kombat have always been part of the same equation. With the recent revealing at Midway's event in Las Vegas, now it seems that fatalities are being eliminated. How do you expect fans to react to what is considerably a major alteration to the series?
Ed Boon: I guess that's my favorite part of the reaction--your exact sentence, which is, "it looks like fatalities will be gone." There was never any statement on our part that fatalities will be gone or that finishing moves will be gone. We did acknowledge that we won’t be able to do the same kinds of outrageous moves, like tearing someone's head off and the spine being attached to it. But there are a lot of assumptions that there will be no blood in the game, that there are no fatalities in the game. It's an assumption that, because the DC characters will be in there, those features will have to be dropped. My response is that, no, we're modifying fatalities. But I have every intention to keep finishers. You know, to let gamers do a really cool secret button combination and follow with a really outrageous finishing move to end the match. The names of these moves, and the level of violence we use, are to be determined. But it's certainly not a feature we plan on eliminating from the series.
GameTap: OK, so there will be fatalities and blood, but they just won't be as violent as in the past.
Ed Boon: Yes. I certainly can't speak with authority as to what DC will permit. There will certainly be some limitations. But my intention is that we want to push the envelope of a T-rated game as far as we can without being an M-rated game.
GameTap: What is DC's take on violence in videogames? What are the restrictions?
Ed Boon: There is no guideline. It's not black and white. It's really a matter of us creating animations in the game and showing them to DC. We'll have Superman or Batman doing these moves and DC will identify certain moves, and we'll go back and forth with them.
Starting from Scratch
GameTap: When you sat down to design this game, what were your goals? And when did you start working on the game?
Ed Boon: When Mortal Kombat: Armageddon was completed in 2006, we started working on this having no knowledge of including DC characters. We started planning out the game. The DC Universe idea was presented to us, and we talked it over. My idea was that for this next generation of systems and MK, we needed to do something really different. We needed to do a dramatic reboot to the series. We needed to make a dramatic change. Even something that will attract attention and may cause controversy. And DC filled a lot of those goals. We knew there would be a knee-jerk reaction, especially with so little information being released initially. Over the course of the next few months, as we release new information and characters, a lot of those questions and a lot of those gaps that people are filling in with their imagination will be answered.
GameTap: Given Mortal Kombat's level of violence in the past, did you ever deliberately think that while designing it, the next Mortal Kombat should just be less violent and more accessible? And did you ever decide to just work for a more kid-friendly ESRB rating? Did Midway executives ever say, "Well, MK has done so far, but we really need to tone it down a little, Ed"?
Ed Boon: For this title, believe it or not, the goal of making the game more accessible was never on our list of things we wanted to accomplish. We kind of inherited the T-rating because of the DC license. I suppose if we were crossing with another R-rated or M-rated movie, it might not have been an issue, but we never thought to ourselves, "Let's make this more mainstream." A lot of what makes Mortal Kombat what it is, is the violence and M-rated moves.
GameTap: How did the opportunity arise for Mortal Kombat and DC to work together?
Ed Boon: I don't know all of the details, but my understanding is that the head of marketing at the time had a relationship with somebody at DC. And on a separate note, we have had a few conversations with our marketing people, "Wouldn't it be cool to have a Mortal Kombat versus Tekken or Mortal Kombat versus Street Fighter?"--just like Alien versus Predator or Street Fighter versus Marvel. It's not that uncommon to cross into different worlds now. But when I was a kid, I thought that was the coolest thing in the world. I bought Superman versus Spider-Man. It's that kind of magic that we're trying to tap into; you know, the novelty of, "Oh my God, Batman and Sub-Zero are on the screen, together, fighting!"
Prepare to combo the hell out of Batman or Sub-Zero this fall. Also, expect very popular heroes and villains from the DC universe to be revealed this summer. That's no joke.
Ed Boon is working with famed comic writer Jimmy Palmiotti to put the DC characters in the right perspective.
GameTap: How have veteran DC writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray put things in perspective for you?
Ed Boon: We already had in place the overall direction of the events. Those guys know the DC characters so well--their habits, temperaments, behaviors, how they would react in certain scenarios-- that, in some respects, they kept us in check. We'd say, "What if this villainous DC character did this?" and they'd say, "Oh, he can't do that." Their main thing was to keep the DC characters authentic to their personalities in the comic books.
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A Question of BalanceGameTap: How do you balance Sub-Zero with Batman, Scorpion with Superman?
Ed Boon: What cracks me up about that idea, and I have been asked that by so many people, is that you can make Superman as strong or as weak as you want in the programming. But how do you make it to make any sense? Well, we know the back stories to the characters. For instance, Superman has two weaknesses, Kryptonite and magic. The Mortal Kombat universe is surrounded by magic--I mean, we have sorcerers, people from the Nether realms; we have chi and magic attacks. So, remember that cataclysmic event which merges the universes? The source of that is magic. When you mix that in, that explains why Superman, who can move a mountain, who can push a planet, is, in this scenario, weakened a bit. It explains how the other MK characters are strengthened a bit, which levels things out. Superman is a big one, and one of my favorite DC characters that I cannot mention yet is another. Any character with huge, crazy superpowers begs the question, "Well, why don't they just use these superpowers? Why wouldn’t Superman just move at light speed behind his opponent's back and break his neck?"
GameTap: Then there is Batman who, depending on which Batman you're looking at, is either a brawler or a gadget guy. If you’re looking at the TV version of Batman, he is a gadget guy. But if you’re looking at the Frank Miller-inspired Batman, he is more of a brawler. Which Batman are we going to see in this game?
Ed Boon: That’s a good question. One thing we were asked to do was to stay away from the Batman in the movies. He had armor, and we obviously didn't want to go anywhere near the Adam West version, so we created this hybrid one. Our Batman has similarities to the Alex Ross and Jim Lee versions. We worked for quite a long time with our design of Batman and came up with one that's dark and brooding and that fits in with Scorpion and Sub-Zero.
GameTap: How did you decide which characters to include and which ones to skip?
Ed Boon: The decision is based on several factors. One was popularity. And I would associate that with recognizability. We don't want to pick some obscure character that nobody would recognize. No matter how cool he is, there is no value in including Krypto the Super Dog in the rosters. But then there are those characters that fit into the Mortal Kombat universe. And again, a character like Super Monkey is another extreme example of a no. There are gray level characters, and then there is variety. We didn't want to have everybody with the ability to fly, or everybody with blatant superpowers. So we started thinking in terms of counterparts. We have this brooding, dark Sub-Zero guy. Who is the counterpart to that? Batman.
GameTap: So, I have taken a pretty big dislike to Aquaman over the years. Is Aquaman in the game? I mean, seriously, his superpower is to talk to fish.
Ed Boon: I guess I'm supposed to say I can't confirm any characters other than the four. But just try to think of Mortal Kombat characters known for their swimming.
GameTap: Can't think of any swimming characters off the top of my head.
Ed Boon: Well, you'll have to keep thinking.
GameTap: What about potential Mortal Kombat characters who might not have DC counterparts?
Ed Boon: The only thing we knew right off the bat is that we knew we didn't want to introduce any new characters. We wanted every one of the Mortal Kombat and DC characters to be recognizable. We are not introducing any new Mortal Kombat characters. And we're using the same rule set for picking them: popularity, fitting in with the DC universe, and parallels.
GameTap: Among other powers, Superman can fly. How do you restrain him to work as a fighting character?
Ed Boon: Having him fly in an unlimited fashion just won't work. We are giving him the ability to fly, but not an unlimited ability to fly. He'll have special moves in there where he'll fly, but we'll limit it. Just like heat vision. Realistically, his heat vision would burn through any human and kill him. But there are limitations. It does damage, but it doesn't kill because his powers are affected by this phenomenon around him. So, really the story solves a lot of these problems.
GameTap: So do you feel that parents groups who reacted so strongly in the 1990s to your game will look at Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe and say, "Finally, Ed Boon has come to his senses!"
Ed Boon: I am wondering about that myself. Certainly, MK was one of those games associated with violence in videogames, so I can see certain parents making absolute decisions with their kids. Part of what we're doing is communicating that Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe is a different game. The DC license will partly communicate this notion, but what it boils down to is the novelty of having these two sets of characters fighting together. What we're really most excited about is asking "What is Mortal Kombat?" and redefining it and rebooting it. That's the most exciting part.
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