Every Mortal Kombat 11 Character Explained By Ed Boon | WIRED

hi my name is Edie Boone I am the creative director at NetherRealm Studios and co-creator of MORTAL KOMBAT we are here to talk about each and every character in Mortal Kombat 11 [Music] Baraka was introduced in Mortal Kombat 2 the coolest thing about Baraka is obviously his blades on his arms as well as those crazy teeth of his fun fact is his teeth were actually fake nails that we found at a custom shop that we put together to make these kind of vicious teeth he is tarkatan warrior and his race was kind of like you know always in jeopardy and the Mortal Kombat universe and he was kind of like representing them well I personally think that Baraka is one of the coolest looking characters and Mortal Kombat 11 he's got a lot of legacy people known what he's looked like since like 1993 but the visual upgrade that we gave him in this game is probably the best of any character in the game he is easily one of the most savage characters in the Mortal Kombat universe [Applause] know what that was strike three Cassie cage is the daughter of Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade two characters who I don't think anybody would have seen getting together let alone having a kid she is the absolute perfect combination of Johnny Cage and Sonya she has a very disciplined you know military upbringing from Sonya but she's very flashy very cocky that's the Johnny side she's exactly what you would expect a combination of Sonya Blade satori on is a new character in Mortal Kombat 11 she is the daughter of our big boss chronica she is there to serve her mother it's gonna be really fun to see people's reactions to what becomes a pervert at the end of the Mortal Kombat story Centurion is a good example of the challenges that we have introducing a new character in the Mortal Kombat universe by now we have about 80 characters in our roster over the years and whenever we introduce a new one the question is what haven't we done before and so her relationship the fact that she is the character we're introducing who is the daughter of another new character you know really gives us an open slate to do something interesting and how she serves her mother and her interest is a really big part of what makes her so interesting [Music] Devorah was a character that was introduced in Mortal Kombat X she was one of the favorite new characters in Mortal Kombat X so we knew we were gonna bring her back in Mortal Kombat 11 I personally think a lot of Devore's appeal is her look she is a very unique looking character and you know she has these kind of ovipositor x' on her back that she uses you notice to stab her opponents poison her opponents she is actually consists of a human body that has been taken over by bugs insects and she has some of the the more kind of gruesome story mode killings that a lot of the other characters don't get to do so she really kind of represents you know Mortal Kombat from that perspective she's also very interesting too in terms of her story she used to serve Shao Kahn but at the end of the day she's really just loyal to herself and her people and you know so she has some backstabbing moments that you'll be very interested to see it [Music] Aaron Black is another character introduced in Mortal Kombat X that is kind of like a a wandering Nomad in in Outworld he's one of our more mysterious characters when we created him we wanted a lot of his backstory to be mysterious you know he put a mask on him we want people to really wonder what the history of this character is been we do reveal a little bit more in Mortal Kombat 11 but at the end of the day we really want him to be one of the mystery characters of the game I personally feel that the biggest challenge we had with Aaron Black was not to make him look like a typical western character you know we really wanted to push that whole Nomad aspect of him the wanderer the guy who is you know it doesn't really have a home I personally would have liked to have him a little less cowboy than we had but I think that he's one of our cooler mysterious characters in the game I'm patiently waiting to kill you with every Mortal Kombat game we do want to introduce a character that players haven't seen in a long time frost is a character that we introduced in I believe it was Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance the simple explanation might be she's a female sub-zero but she's a lot more than that she is been cyber rised but with her own ACCA's kind of technology so she's a lot more advanced she still has the freezing abilities but at a much more sophisticated level than the other cyber ninja that we've shown over the years nothing within your power reader garrus garrus is one of the coolest new characters that we are introducing in Mortal Kombat 11 particularly because he can't be killed [Music] you can temporarily kill him but eventually he is going to rewind time and come back to life so he is kind of eternal in the game as far as gameplay is concerned he can actually rewind time and put himself for you in a situation that you were a few seconds ago he can affect the game clock so there were technological challenges that our gameplay and 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 back to the beginning of that so he plays very different from other characters as far as this design as far as this look is concerned I think he's one of the coolest looking new characters that we have in the game again he's got this ethnic / magical look about him probably one of the most unique characters in the game and he has maybe my favorite fatality in the game it's so ridiculous he hits you in the back of the head and your face and brains shoot out its now you see my Jade is a hidden character originally started as a hidden character in Mortal Kombat 2 back in the day we love to give players peaks of characters that were some somehow hidden in the game and Jade was one of the first ones a reptile I think was a very first one you couldn't play as them but you could fight against them later as we started expanding on the story we really gave her more of the history and in Mortal Kombat 11 we established that she's had this relationship with Kotal Kahn that dates back way back so she has really become a much more rounded and character than kind of hidden very shallow kind of representation that we gave her Jade's fighting style she has this really cool staff that expands uses it in combat she uses it in her fatalities as well she has this great kind of boomerang type weapon which uses as well in terms of projectiles so she's a really great penalty boy character so she was one of the few kind of all-around kind of weapons based fighter [Music] then I hope it washes off Cotto Jackie Briggs like Cassie cage is the offspring of one of the classic Mortal Kombat characters so Jax had a daughter that ended up just like him came back you how about we keep this between me myself and I her game play she's got you know he's great arm guns on her and it's kind of like a you know a little bit of a parallel with Jax who has those kind of mechanical arms he's kind of known for at this point but so she kind of carries on that tradition a little bit more modern a little bit more high-tech than her dad obviously 25 years later Jackie is one of my favorite looking characters in the game the actress and the mall that we use to create the Jackie character it was just it's just perfect you know we were casting when we saw her we were like that is Jackie and you know in the winter that was the dirt we're gonna use I often do double takes thinking that it's an actual real person than there she looks so real how about you turn yourself in Jax is one of our classic characters you know we introduced him in Mortal Kombat 2 in Mortal Kombat 3 we kind of gave and gave him these kind of cybernetic arms which really became a big part of his signature look his signature moves that he does in the game fun fact in Mortal Kombat 2 I was the voice of Jax I was the guy who was a gacho and when he would bang the guy he punched him I was a voice for a number of characters before we actually hired professionals to do that I was a voice of Scorpion Jack's Luke hanging in the first game Jax is one of my favorite characters in the game just because he is our first kind of big brawler type of fighter you know big guy you know big hits and not super agile like or Sonya [Music] have you been to Hollywood Johnny Cage is Mortal Kombat 11s comic relief I think he is the funniest character we have ever made especially his antics and Mortal Kombat 11 just would you asked in Mortal Kombat X we kind of introduced this kind of magic heritage that he has that explains like the green energy that he can shoot out and we also explained how he's passed that on to Cassie Wow he is very much a funny kind of comic relief with Mortal Kombat at the same time you know Cassie was the winner of Mortal Kombat X and it was because of this kind of magic power that he gave her that let her win so he does have a really big important role in the world Kombat story who hired this guy with deadly uppercut take 19 never forget I've always been the biggest fan of the flash in the DC Universe and cabal was kind of my personal outlet trying to get him into one of our games you know his SuperSpeed was absolutely you know inspired by the flash when I put that move in the game we had to write a story about and 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 stick and he has just this variety of gear that is the different variations of hooks that he has in the game it's very cool to see this character you know and all his renditions tons of hooks with the mask without the mask burned non burns and every iteration of the ball is representative finally make two strikes 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 is obsessed with getting revenge on him and he is easily our dirtiest character he will backstab anyone he will do anything for money he has no loyalty to anyone except for himself but he has been hired to a number of times throughout the world on that storyline to do somebody else's bidding and he doesn't care as long as he gets paid on behalf of them you duh katana was a character that we introduced in Mortal Kombat 2 she is the daughter of sindel and she has a very complicated relationship with sindell Shao Kahn Molina where there is probably more deceit 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 beats in you know Kitana and Mileena as far as when we introduced them they were kind of motivated by our desire to have like kind of the female version of Scorpion and sub-zero we wanted two characters who kind of look the same but we're almost the polar opposites of each other and so we came up with a costume that can the color can change and it can become a different person you know there were other wins of that in terms of just you know from a technology standpoint the amount of memory and these arcade games that allows us to make two characters out of one but we really wanted to have the female version of the Scorpion and sub-zero kind of parallels but conflicts at the same time and that's pretty much what inspired the creation [Music] Oh God the beds Bone Collector is another new character that we are introducing in Mortal Kombat 11 he collects basically heads and body parts and hearts from from all the opponents that he kills the hardest thing about making collector was the technical challenges these additional arms that are on this backpack were a design and technology nightmare in our game we have what we call skeletons and so we have medium male big male small female big female and the collector has his own skeleton as we call it because he has the forearms we have to animate those independently of him and give him his own unique skeleton and that introduces a ton of problems as far as throws special moves fatalities fatal blows all of those we have two kind of special case for a collector so in the motion capture studio we would have somebody standing next to the main motion capture talent pretending to be his upper arms and so he would they would kind of work in unison you know to do the special move and then our animators would take those the second guy's upper arms and attach them to the collectors backpack and that's basically how we managed to get four arms [Applause] the color is reserved for Asha techcom Kotal Kahn is Shao Kahn after Shao Kahn effectively you can almost think of him as a boss but he's kind of like in the same vein as Shao Kahn and what's cool about this game is Shao Kahn who is kind of from the past and Kotal Kahn is kind of like the present in the future with time folding they actually meet and that's one of the big conflicts that is in Mortal Kombat xi and they are basically battling for who is Kahn who is ultimately going to be the king so that the challenge was kind of like making him live up to the scope the legacy the the awesomeness that is Shao Kahn somebody can parallel like him but you know Shao Kahn was the big boss in Mortal Kombat two and three corticon were just introducing you know how do we make him in the same league kalau was one of our classic characters that we introduced in Mortal Kombat to our future Liu Kang it is insane along with Liu Kang had the unfortunate outcome of being killed and turned into a revenant the thought of becoming used sickens me what was once one of our most noble characters has become you know one of our villains now his journey along with Liu Kang's and they're kind of similar outcomes is one of the things that is kind of revealed when we bring Kung Lao from the past and he realizes that he and Liu Kang have died and have become revenants in there and now bad guys you know the conflict that those four have together both kung Laos both Liu Kang's is to me is one of the coolest kind of novelty moments that you would see in in our story mode because you know seeing your future self haven't turned evil and how you would react to that is just such a big moment for like a hero like a con law or Luke a chronica is the boss that we are introducing in Mortal Kombat 11 she is the architect of every single event that has happened in Mortal Kombat history this is not our destination Ock no we learned that she wanted everything to happen she knew everything was going to happen all the way up to the point where Raiden cut shinnok's head off so cool because she's the first female boss character that we've had in the game she is the boss of bosses and I'm very excited to have people finally see who's been running the show all along one of the biggest challenges with chronica was what she was gonna look like she actually started off as a male character and we tried a number of different concepts that just wasn't resonating with us somebody on the team you know suggested what if we make this character female and at that point everything just kind of clicked together I'm Veronica Keeper I mean I come from the real Lu Kang has been the hero of MORTAL KOMBAT since the very first one he is our protagonists he is the main hero he's the one who won the first two Mortal Kombat tournaments and he is unfortunately was killed in the Mortal Kombat story and turned into what we call a revenant and a revenant being kind of like an undead version of the character basically turned evil well what's new about Lu Kang is we get to see him again as his in his heroic self and it's also even more interesting as to see him interact with his revenant self at the end of the day you know Liu Kang in his current form is still one of the bad guys you know used to be a hero and now he's a bad guy and that's what makes this story that much more interesting he's probably the sum of all of the heroes that we've seen you know throughout our experiences with movies you know he is Bruce Lee he is Luke Skywalker he is you know all of the kind of martial arts and action movie hero is kind of locked into one he is the ultimate good guy he's a Shaolin monk is all about good is he does not have ego I think he's the epitome of the hero up until the point [Music] noob saibot was one of our first hidden characters in the Mortal Kombat arcade games he had no story at the time and then later on we established him as behind who was the very first sub-zero his name noob saibot is actually my name and John devises name our last names spelled backwards and you know it was something very silly that we never anticipated to be taken seriously let alone become the lore of you know part of the whole Mortal Kombat story but there it is Mortal Kombat 11 has by far the best visual and story representation of noob saibot in a lot of ways he reminds me of Batman would be so proud look at him you just go you know what is the history behind this character what is behind you know those masks what's the origin of this character the fact that he is so shrouded in mystery and is so cool so many people are intrigued by it and how he started with such a simple really dumb idea and a dumb name that had he's become one of our coolest characters part of how interesting this story is just just from the development standpoint [Music] Rayden is the mentor to the Mortal Kombat characters from the very beginning he was the one who is kind of like you know guiding them telling them what they need to do inspiring them and he's a God so he can't participate in the tournament but he can stand on the sidelines in the shear but he's the Thunder guidance so you know he has he commands a lot of respect you know but ultimately he is kind of like a mentor to all the beacon Raiden is inspired by a number of action movies that we all do Big Trouble in Little China had a big influence on us and so there's a number of kind of visual cues that we borrowed from the character in that movie and applied it to Raiden he has a lot more of a noble presence he's less shrouded like you can actually see his face but the Hat and the electricity and all that was kind of inspired I think at least from the beginning the should I buy you embrace danger scorpion is my favorite character in the Mortal Kombat universe for a number of reasons not only his look and his moves but he was the first character that we got in the game that really set the tone of how Mortal Kombat was gonna play we always wanted more outrageous moves than the other fighting games that are out at the time you know it's so scorpion he teleports he has this awesome spirit took to a chain that pulls the opponent in gives him a free hit he became a specter because you know that voice was kind of like like a little hellish his infamous fatality you know taking his mask off and breathing fire on the on the opponent he was also you know him and sub-zero were kind of like the first rivalry that was in Mortal Kombat that really established a lot of the story between those two that has expended some twenty something years later he just represents so much to me in terms of us starting Mortal Kombat and where it's going you will always be my favorite I will 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 from the blood of dead warriors even though she was the DLC character in Mortal Kombat 9 she was one of the most requested to come back in Mortal Kombat 11 so when we had started this game we knew from the very beginning that scarlet was going to be one of the characters who was gonna come back with a completely different look a completely more sophisticated costume and we're very happy with how a players of attached er that's exciting for us because it's always a big challenge to introduce a character when we have so many and to have them stick and like players want to see more of them the biggest challenge with scarlet was probably just how far we want to take the blood blood is kind of a queasy visual and you know her fatalities and Mortal Kombat 9 probably cross the line a little bit in terms of her kind of bathing in her opponents blood I think we toned that down a tiny bit with Mortal Kombat 11 but where that line was was probably the toughest thing with her you know making her unique and cool and dangerous but not getting too too nauseous about it trust me I'm not your type Sonia blade is one of the original Mortal Kombat characters from the first game what's interesting is the first Mortal Kombat that we tested did not have Sonya in it it was just six characters we put it in arcade and it was a huge huge hit and at that point we realized that 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 the blade was a result of that she was kind of like military you know Special Forces component to the Mortal Kombat story everything was kind of like you know a bunch of magic Johnny Cage was kind of Hollywood and Sonya was military so we really wanted to kind of represent all these kind of walks of life and she built that void and real nicely Sonya is one of the few characters who does not run into her former self I can't tell you why but it's a big deal you'll have to play anything [Music] savagery is no match for skilled sub-zero like scorpion is visually the most recognizable character in the Mortal Kombat cast he has a very deep soap opera-like history and story and relationship with a number of the Mortal Kombat characters it's a main adversary of scorpion but visually if you were to 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 away too much you will be surprised to see him working with scorpion in Mortal Kombat 11 after all the history of their more adversarial Shao Kahn was introduced in Mortal Kombat 2 he was kind of like where we took our first step to expanding the Mortal Kombat University it wasn't just this tournament all of a sudden it was for bigger stakes and Shao Kahn was kind of the head of all of that his big hammer is very iconic to him you see him standing there with big hammer and you know who he is his helmet is very identifiable we got his shoulder charged and swinging with the hammer functioning in the game there was something really special about this character he was one of our most difficult to defeat boss monster characters because of his that shoulder charge in that Hammer but probably the hardest thing was toning him down to the point where he was actually beatable you know he was just so ridiculously powerful in the arcades we had to kind of dial that down a bit welcome traveler I am Shang Tsung Shang Tsung is the original bad guy in the first Mortal Kombat game as far as the arcade game was concerned his powers were inspired by our lack of memory you know we had very little memory left for Shang Tsung's images and so to make the most of what we can we said okay let's just make him morph into the other characters and use their moves and so that really just inspired his ability to turn into the other characters it was way more of technical limitations that we had and so that really gave him a mystique to him it was something that was carried into the movies and other forms of media from Mortal Kombat and that's really what he's associated with right now people expect Shang Tsung to morph 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 spent years well rambling well that's every character in Mortal Kombat 11 I want to say thank you to all the Mortal Kombat fans both old and new and we can't wait for you to get your hands on Mortal Kombat 11 - this

Channel: WIRED

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Keywords: mk, mk 11, mortal kombat, mortal kombat 11, ed boon, ed boon interview, ed boon mk, mortal kombat 11 characters, mortal kombat 11 roster, mk 11 roster, mk 11 fatalities, fatalities, mortal kombat 11 backstory, mortal kombat 11 lore, mk 11 lore, mortal kombat 11 interview, ed boon mortal kombat 11, ed boon explains, mortal kombat 11 fatalities, wired mortal kombat, mortal kombat 11 wired, mortal kombat 11 story, mk 11 story, mk 11 characters, mortal kombat wired, wired

Id: 0giRCGA6FDk

Length: 33min 25sec (2005 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/TKHunsaker]

Long but good. Always interesting to hear new little tidbits of info.