Every Mortal Kombat 11 Character Explained By Ed Boon | WIRED

Hello, my name is Edie Boone, I'm the creative director of NetherRealm Studios and co-creator of MORTAL KOMBAT. We're here to talk about each and

every

character

in Mortal Kombat 11. Baraka was introduced in Mortal Kombat 2. The best thing about Baraka is obviously his blades on his arms as well as those crazy teeth his fun fact is that his teeth were actually fake nails that we found in a custom shop that we put together to make these type of fierce teeth, he is a Tarkatan warrior and his race was something like this As you know, he's always in danger and the Mortal Kombat universe and him were like representing them well.

Personally, I think Baraka is one of the coolest

character

s and Mortal Kombat 11 has a lot of legacy, people have known what he looks like since 1993. but the visual upgrade we gave him in this game is probably the best of any character in the game. He is easily one of the wildest characters in the Mortal Kombat universe. Do you know what the third hit was? Cassie Cage is the daughter of Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade, two characters that I don't think anyone would have seen together, much less have a child. She is the absolutely perfect combination of Johnny Cage and Sonya.

She has a very disciplined military upbringing, you know, from Sonya, but she's very flashy, very stuck up. on Johnny's side, she is exactly what you would expect, a combination of Sonya Blade satori, she is a new character in Mortal Kombat 11, she is the daughter of our chronic big boss, she is there to serve her mother, it will be very fun to see people's reactions. What becomes of a pervert at the end of the Mortal Kombat story, Centurion, is a good example of the challenges we have when introducing a new character to the Mortal Kombat universe. Now we have about 80 characters on our roster over the years and

every

time we introduce a new one the question is what haven't we done before and then their relationship, the fact that she's the character we're introducing, that she's daughter from another new character, you know, it really gives us an open slate to do something interesting and how she serves her mother and her interest is a big part of what makes her so interesting.

Devorah was a character that was introduced in Mortal Kombat X. She was one of the favorite new characters in Mortal Kombat Mortal Kombat 11 I personally think a lot of Devore's appeal is his appearance, he's a unique looking character and you know he has this kind of x' ovipositor on his back that he uses, you'll notice, to stab his opponents, poison his opponents , she's actually consists of a human body that's been invaded by bugs and she has some of the most gruesome kills in the story mode that a lot of the other characters can't do, so she really represents, you know, Mortal Kombat .

From that perspective, she's also very interesting in terms of her history, she used to serve Shao Kahn, but at the end of the day she's really loyal to herself and her people, and you know, she has some backstabbing moments that They will be very I'm interested in seeing it. Aaron Black is another character introduced in Mortal Kombat X who is like a wandering nomad in Outworld. He is one of our most mysterious characters. When we created it, we wanted a lot of his story to be mysterious, you know? With a mask we want people to really wonder what the history of this character has been.

We revealed a little more in Mortal Kombat 11, but at the end of the day we really want him to be one of the mystery characters in the game. I personally feel that the biggest challenge we had with Aaron Black was not making him seem like a typical Western character. You know, we really wanted to push that whole nomadic aspect of him, the wanderer, the guy that you know he doesn't really have. home. Personally I would have liked to have him a little less cowboy than us, but I think he is one of our coolest mystery characters in the game.

I'm patiently waiting to kill you with every Mortal Kombat game we want to introduce. character players haven't seen in a long time Frost is a character we introduced. I think he was Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance. The simple explanation could be that she is a sub-zero woman, but she is much more than that, she has cybernetically ascended. but with his own type of ACCA technology, so he is much more advanced, he still has the freezing abilities, but at a much more sophisticated level than the other cyber ninjas we have shown over the years, nothing within your power , Reader Garrus Garrus is one of the coolest new characters we introduced in Mortal Kombat 11, particularly because he can't be killed, you can kill him temporarily, but eventually he'll turn back time and come back to life, so he's kind of eternal in the game.

As far as gameplay goes, he can actually rewind time and put himself in a situation you were in a few seconds ago. He can affect the game's clock, so there were technological challenges that our gameplay and our designers faced in terms of having the ability to rewind time. The game needs to remember what happened a few seconds ago and rewind it to the beginning, so he plays very differently than other characters when it comes to this design. As far as this appearance goes, I think he's one of the coolest new characters out there. we have in the game again, he has this ethnic/magical look, probably one of the most unique characters in the game and maybe has my favorite fatality in the game, it's so ridiculous that he hits you in the back of the head and in the face. and the brains go off, now you see my Jade is a hidden character that originally started out as a hidden character in Mortal Kombat 2 back in the day, we loved giving players character pickaxes that were somehow hidden in the game and Jade was one of the The first were a reptile.

I think he was the first one where you couldn't play as them, but you could fight them later. As we started to expand the story, we really gave her more of the story and in Mortal Kombat 11 we established that she had this relationship with Kotal Kahn going back a long time, so she's really become a much more of a character. complete than a kind of hidden and very superficial representation that we gave it. Jade's fighting style, she has this really cool staff that she expands, she uses it in combat. He also uses it on his kills, he has this great type of boomerang type weapon that he also uses in terms of projectiles, so he is a great penalty character, so he was one of the few types of fighters based on weapons back then.

I hope Cotto Jackie Briggs is erased as if Cassie Cage was the offspring of one of the classic Mortal Kombat characters, so Jax had a daughter who ended up just like him and came back. How about we keep this between me and me? You have to know that he's a big gun with her and it's kind of a parallel to Jax, who has those kind of mechanical arms that he's known for right now, but she's carrying on that tradition. a little more modern, a little more high-tech than her father, obviously, 25 years later, Jackie is one of my favorite characters in the game, the actress and the mall that we used to create Jackie's character, it was just perfect , You know?

We were casting when we saw her and we thought that's Jackie and you know, in the winter that was the land we'll use. I often do it twice thinking she is a real and real person, then she seems so real, how about you turn back? Yourself in Jax is one of our classic characters, you know, we introduced him in Mortal Kombat 2, in Mortal Kombat 3, we gave him and we gave him these kind of cybernetic arms that really became a big part of his signature look, his movements. characteristics that it does. in the game, fun fact in Mortal Kombat 2, I was the voice of Jax, I was the guy who was a jerk and when he hit the guy, he hit him, I was the voice of several characters before we hired professionals to do that.

I was the voice of Luke from Scorpion Jack in the first game. Jax is one of my favorite characters in the game just because he's our first kind of big wrestler, you know, big guy, you know big hits and he's not super agile like or Sonya, have you been to Hollywood? Johnny Cage is the comic relief of Mortal Kombat 11. I think he's the funniest character we've ever created, especially the antics of him and Mortal Kombat 11, you might ask? In Mortal Kombat Wow, he's such a fun comic relief with Mortal Kombat, while also knowing that Cassie was the winner of Mortal.

Kombat Kombat story, who hired this guy with a deadly hook? Take 19, never forget it. I have always been it. The Flash's biggest fan in the DC Universe and Cabal was kind of a personal outing trying to get him into one of our games. You know, his SuperSpeed ​​was absolutely inspired by Flash when I put that move in the game we had. write a story and just so you know, we

explained

how he got the super fast speed cabal in MK 11, you can actually see him in his burn state and his pre-burn staff, and he has this variety of equipment which is the different variations of hooks. that he has in the game, it's great to see this character, you know, and all his performances, tons of hooks with the mask without the mask burned, not burned and each iteration of the ball is representative, finally do two hits to get here .

Kano is one of the original bad guys and Mortal Kombat 1, you know he has this kind of rivalry relationship with Sonia that was really a big part of Sonia's motivation. Listen, if you killed her partner, she's obsessed with getting revenge on him and he's easily our dirtiest character. will backstab anyone, do anything for money, has no loyalty to anyone but himself, but has been hired multiple times around the world in that story to do someone else's bidding and doesn't care as long as he gets it . paid on their behalf you duh katana was a character we introduced in Mortal Kombat 2 she is sindel's daughter and has a very complicated relationship with sindell Shao Kahn Molina where there is probably more deception in her story than any of the Mortal Kombat characters and what happens to her and her continued relationship with Sindell and Shao Kahn is one of the biggest themes, you know, Kitana and Mileena.

As for when we introduced them, they were a little motivated by our desire to have some kind of woman. In the version of Scorpion and Sub-Zero we wanted two characters who look the same but who are almost polar opposites of each other, so we came up with a costume whose color can change and become a different person. I know there were other wins in terms of, from a technological standpoint, the amount of memory and these arcade games that allow us to create two characters from one, but we really wanted to have the female version of Scorpion and sub-zero parallels but conflicts at the same time and that's pretty much what inspired the creation Oh God, the beds Bone Collector is another new character we introduced in Mortal Kombat 11.

He basically collects heads, body parts, and hearts from all the opponents. that kills, the hardest thing about being a collector was the technical challenges, these extra arms that are on this backpack were a design and technology nightmare in our game, we have what we call skeletons, so we have a medium male, a large male , a small female, a large female and the The collector has his own skeleton as we call it because he has the forearms, we have to animate them independently of him and give him his own unique skeleton and that introduces a lot of problems when it comes to casting special moves , deaths, fatal blows, all we have.

Two types of special cases for a collector, so in the motion capture studio we would have someone standing next to the main motion capture talent posing as their arms and therefore they would work in unison, you know, to do the special move. and then our animators would take the second guy's arms and attach them to the collector's backpack and that's basically how we managed to get four arms, the color is reserved for Asha techcom Kotal Kahn is Shao Kahn after Shao Kahn, sure enough, you can almost think in him as a boss, but he is in the same vein as Shao Kahn and the good thing about this game is that Shao Kahn is kind of from the past and Kotal Kahn is like the present in the future with the folding of time, they actually meet . and that's one of the big conflicts that there is in Mortal Kombat xi and they're basically fighting over who is Kahn, who is ultimately going to be the king, so the challenge was how to make him live up to the scope and the legacy and the genius.

That's Shao Kahn, someone can compare him to him, but you know Shao Kahn was the big boss in Mortal Kombat. Two and three corticon had just presented, do you know how we do it in the same league? Kalau was one of our classic characters that we introduced. Mortal Kombat for our future Liu Kang is crazy along with Liu Kang had the unfortunate result of being killed and turnedin a revenant the idea of ​​being used sickens me what was once one of our noblest characters has become, you know, one of our villains. now his journey along with Liu Kang's and they are similar results is one of the things that is revealed when we bring Kung Lao from the past and he realizes that he and Liu Kang have died and become revenants there and Now guys bad guys, you know that the conflict that those four have together, both Kung Laos and Liu Kang, is for me one of the coolest novel moments that you would see in our story mode because you know that seeing your future self has not turned evil and how you would react to that is a great moment for a hero like a conman or Luke, a chronicle is the boss we introduced in Mortal Kombat. 11 she is the architect of every event that has happened in Mortal Kombat history, this is not our destiny Ock, no, we learned that she wanted everything to happen, she knew everything was going to happen until the point where Raiden cut her off head to Shinnok.

It was cool because she's the first female boss character we've had in the game, she's the boss of bosses and I'm so excited for people to finally see who's been running the show all along. One of the biggest challenges with Chronica was how she would look, she actually started out as a male character and we tried a number of different concepts that just didn't resonate with us. Someone on the team you know suggested what would happen if we made this female character and at that point it all just kind of fell into place I'm Veronica Keeper I mean I come from the real Lu Kang he's been the hero of MORTAL KOMBAT since the first one he's our protagonist he's the main hero he is the one who won the first two Mortal Kombat tournaments and unfortunately he was killed in the Mortal Kombat story and became what we call a revenant and a revenant as an undead version of the character basically turned evil.

Well what's new about Lu Kang is that we get to see him again as his heroic self and it's also even more interesting to see him interact with his returned self at the end of the day you know Liu Kang in his current form is still one of the bad guys that you know he used to be a hero and now he's a bad guy and that's what makes this story so much more interesting. He's probably the sum of all the heroes we've seen. You know, throughout our experiences with movies. You know he's Bruce Lee, he's Luke Skywalker, and you know everything. the type of martial arts and action movie hero is locked into one, he's the ultimate good guy, he's a Shaolin monk, he's all about good, he has no ego, I think he's the epitome of the hero to the point where The rookie Saibot was one of our first hidden characters in the Mortal Kombat arcade games, he had no story at the time and we later established him as who the first sub-zero was behind.

His name noob saibot is actually my name and John came up with the name of our last one. names written backwards and you know it was something very silly that we never anticipated would be taken seriously let alone become the story of the entire history of Mortal Kombat, but there it is Mortal Kombat 11 has by far the best visual representation and of history. by noob saibot in many ways it reminds me of batman i would be very proud look at it just see you know what the story is behind this character what's behind it do you know those masks what is the origin of this character the fact that he is is so shrouded in mystery and he's so cool that so many people are intrigued by him and how he started with such a simple, really silly idea and such a silly name that if he had become one of our coolest characters, part of how interesting this story is from the beginning .

Developmentally, Rayden has been the mentor to the Mortal Kombat characters from the beginning. He was the one who guided them, told them what to do, inspired them and he is a God, so he cannot participate in the tournament. but he can stay out of the way in the shear, but he's the Thunder's guide, so you know he gets a lot of respect, you know, but ultimately, he's kind of a mentor to all the lighthouses. Raiden is inspired by several action movies. The fact that we all did Big Trouble in Little China had a big influence on us, so there are a number of kinds of visual cues that we borrowed from the character in that movie and applied to Raiden.

He has a much nobler presence. He is less. wrapped up like you could actually see his face, but the hat and the electricity and all that was kind of inspired. I think at least from the beginning, he should buy you, embrace the danger. The Scorpion is my favorite character in the Mortal Kombat universe for several reasons. Not just his appearance and his moves, but he was the first character we got in the game that really set the tone for how Mortal Kombat was going to be played. We always wanted more outrageous moves than the other fighting games that came out at the time, you know. he's such a scorpion that he teleports he has this incredible spirit tied to a chain that pulls the opponent he gives him a free hit he turned into a specter because you know that voice was like a little infernal his infamous doom you know take off his mask and spit fire on the opponent, you know him too, and Sub-Zero were like the first rivalry that was in Mortal Kombat that really set up a lot of the story between those two that took place about twenty years later.

You just represent a lot to me in terms of how we start Mortal Kombat and where it's going, you'll always be my favorite. I'll open Scarlet was one of the first DLC characters in Mortal Kombat 9, she's like the blood character, you know, she was created by Shao. Kahn of the Blood of Dead Warriors even though he was the DLC character in Mortal Kombat 9, he was one of the most requested people to return in Mortal Kombat 11, so when we started this game we knew from the beginning that Scarlet was going to appear . being one of the characters that was going to come back with a completely different look, a completely more sophisticated costume and we are very happy with the way the players attached, that's exciting for us because it's always a big challenge to introduce a character when we have so many and in order for them to stick and for players to want to see more of them, the biggest challenge with Scarlet was probably how far we want to take the blood.

Blood is kind of a dizzying image and you know, the deaths of it and Mortal Kombat 9 probably intersect. line a little bit in terms of kind of bathing her in her opponent's blood. I think we toned it down a little bit with Mortal Kombat 11, but where that line was was probably the hardest thing for her, you know, making her unique and cool and dangerous. but without feeling too nauseous, trust me, I'm not your type. Sonia Blade is one of the original Mortal Kombat characters from the first game. The interesting thing is that the first Mortal Kombat we tried didn't have Sonya, there were only six. characters we put it in arcade and it was a big success and at that point we realized we needed more than six characters so we decided to add a female character, we didn't have any female characters in the game and so on in Blade.

It was a result of that, she was kind of like the military, you know, the Special Forces component of the Mortal Kombat story, it was all like, you know, a lot of magic. Johnny Cage was kind of Hollywood and Sonya was military, so we really wanted to represent. all these types of walks of life and she built that void and very well. Sonya is one of the few characters who is not reunited with her old self. I can't tell you why, but it's a big deal, you'll have to play anything wild. She is no match for the sub-zero experts, as Scorpio, she is visually the most recognizable character in the Mortal Kombat cast.

She has a very deep soap opera-like story and relationship with several of the Mortal Kombat characters. He's Scorpion's main adversary, but Visually, if you put any Mortal Kombat character in front of people, I think Scorpion and Sub-Zero would be the most recognizable in Mortal Kombat 11. I can't give too much away, you'll be surprised to see him working with Scorpion in Mortal. Kombat 11, after the whole story of his adversary Shao Kahn, was introduced in Mortal Kombat 2, it was like the place where we took our first step to expand Mortal Kombat University. It wasn't just this tournament, suddenly, it was for something bigger. at stake and Shao Kahn was kind of the head of all of that, the big hammer of his is very iconic to him.

You see him standing there with a big hammer and you know who he is. His helmet is very identifiable. We carry his shoulder and swing him with the hammer. running in the game there was something really special about this character, he was one of our hardest boss monster characters to defeat due to his shoulder charge on that Hammer, but probably the hardest thing was toning him down to the point where he was actually beatable . You know he was so ridiculously powerful in the arcades that we had to slow him down a bit, welcome traveler. I'm Shang Tsung Shang Tsung is the original bad guy in the first Mortal Kombat game as far as the arcade game goes, the powers of him.

We were inspired by our lack of memory, you know, we had very little memory left for the Shang Tsung images, and so to make the most of what we could, we said, "Okay, let's make him transform into the other characters and use their movements." It inspired his ability to become the other characters, there were a lot more technical limitations that we had and that really gave him a mystique, it was something that carried over into the movies and other forms of Mortal Kombat media and that's really what with the which is associated right now, people expect Shang Tsung to transform into other people, all because that first game didn't have enough memory to give him a full moveset, take what you want within reason, you'll find the time past years rambling, well, that's all. character in Mortal Kombat 11 I want to thank all Mortal Kombat fans, both old and new, and we can't wait for you to get your hands on Mortal Kombat 11: this