How Mortal Kombat X Will Keep You Koming Back For More

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t have much of a clue about fighting games. The intricate timing, the learning of combos and the execution of said combos all elude me, and my frantic button mashing is matched only by my ability to be outdone by other people who are better at button mashing or, heaven forbid, know what they’re doing.

Were I to try and pick one up and learn all the nuances of, let’s face it, a single, slightly overpowered character, then next month’s Mortal Kombat X feels like it would be a good start. I mean, it has all the gruesome appeal of its fatalities and the shudder inducing X-Ray moves, but then there’s also a sweeping story that will span multiple chapters and places your one on one fights into the context of a civil war, set 25 years after the events of 2011’s series reboot. When I think of fighting games, I don’t generally think of them as somewhere to find a compelling narrative, but maybe I should reconsider.

“Story mode is probably one of the things that we’re known for and we’ve gotten a lot of praise about it over the years,” explained Hans Lo, Senior Producer at Netherealm Studios.”So we’ve come to really embrace it and spend a lot of time crafting a good story to go with our game. Compared to the last Mortal Kombat game, the one that came out in 2011, we’ve tried to take it a little bit further and really up the presentation. We like to think we’ve upped the writing and the story as well, and hopefully the fans will agree, and try to introduce some new elements as well, like the Interactive Cinematic Moments.

He continued, “For us it’s fun and the feedback we’ve gotten back from the players has been very positive, so we decided, you know, let’s keep going, let’s see how we can push this. How much bigger and better can we make this?”

With that shift in time, there’s a whole host of new characters set to join the existing and ageing originals, with many of them related to existing characters in a number of ways. Jacqui Briggs is Jax’ daughter, while Takeda Takahashi takes on some elements of his father Kenshi, but blends this with Scorpion’s style, as he was his apprentice.

Yet, front and centre, to my mind at least, is Cassie Cage, the daughter of Sonya Blade and Johnny Cage and the leader of the Special Forces group which includes Jacqui, Takeda and the mysterious Kung Jin. Together, they go into Outworld to find out if this civil war is going to threaten Earthrealm, finding that there’s a lot more going on than just this war.

“[Cassie’s] definitely a very fun character,” said Hans. “She’s kind of a mix, in many ways, of both her parents. Her personality’s very much like, ‘There’s protocol, we need to get this done.’ But at the same time, if someone says something, she can be just as much of a smart mouth like her dad. She’ll say some comment, she has a little bit of attitude, and I think they’re mixing there at times.

“And then, again, the gameplay. There’s going to be elements of both; they’re not exactly like what her parents would do, but they’re very similar, in the flavour of what their parents would do. So you can see the relationships and how she was influenced growing up.”

That blending of existing styles, rather than trying to come up with new character paradigms is a curious one though. It could look like a form of wish fulfilment to fans, to mix their two favourite characters into one and have the best of both worlds, but from a development point of view, Hans felt it had a different root.

He said, “I think [blending existing characters] is part of it. I think it’s also, you know, just creating some new characters and trying to flesh them out and give them a real background and some history. Something that we hope the players will latch onto and maybe make them become just as iconic as some of the characters that we already have.”

Of course, the story will set out to be an introduction of sorts to the game, with the chapters cycling through characters and pushing you to play with more than just the one or two characters that you know like the back of your hand. Each character does have a trio of variations to learn and explore, meaning that even existing characters will have an added spice for long term fans, but beyond that, the game offers up new ideas and game modes in the form of the Living Towers and Factions.

Living Towers provide a fresh twist on the 2011 game’s Challenge Towers, making use of the pervasive internet connections of modern consoles to update the challenges on an hourly basis in the Quick Tower, each day for the Daily Tower and weekly in the Premier Tower. Factions meanwhile see practically everything you do in the game tally towards one of five online factions – Black Dragon, Brother of Shadow, Lin Kuei, Special Forces, White Lotus with the goal being to see your faction rise to the top. They’re part of a strategy to keep more players engaged with the game over a much longer period of time.

“That’s kind of the whole idea of Factions,” Hans agreed. “This is really to keep you involved and keep you coming back, trying different things, exploring the game and feeling as though they’re part of the community. A lot of times, I think traditional fighting gamers out there have been like, ‘I’m just going to sit around on the couch and play with my friends and that’s all I’m going to do. I don’t want to go online,’ or ‘All I’m going to do is go online and online only.’

“The idea here is to get people to break out of their shell a bit more, try different things, play with other friends. In the case of the Living Towers, we change up the challenges to keep people coming to say, ‘What other things can I do? What’s going to be different this time?’ And then reward them as well.”

But importantly, this won’t force you to play certain things in order to participate. The same can be said of the mobile app, which puts its own spin on the Mortal Kombat universe with a card-based fighting game that has cross-unlocks with the main game, and lets you also boost your faction’s stature further. It does, however, play very differently.

Based off their work with the Injustice: Gods Among Us app, Hans explained, “The mobile game’s a hybrid system. It’s a fighting game as well as a card game. So what you do is you have your fighting mechanics using the touch screen and very intuitive things that we’ve learned from games such as our Injustice mobile game, and then you have the card part, where you’re collecting your cards and you’re building up cards to get more powerful characters. Then you’re finding the right combination of cards.”

Simplistically, each fight sees you pick three fighter cards to take into battle and then, using a trio of attack buttons in the corner, your fighter strikes at the next opportunity, while prompting you to perform various swipes, taps and precisely timed taps in order to determine how much damage you do. It’s actually a nice little bit of fun that can be enjoyed in short bursts, with some great graphics and all the gory and gruesome fatalities you’ve come to expect of the series included.

Mortal Kombat X itself will do little to persuade me to join the ranks of a faction on a regular basis, but then, knowing just how hilariously bad I am at fighting games, I doubt I’d be much use. Yet, I can see just how broad and far reaching Netherealm have been in making this a connected and endlessly engaging game for fans and willing newcomers alike.

Me, I’d probably be better off in the corner, tapping and swiping on the mobile game.