Fatality!
From Ed Boon : “This game really is a response to what players have been demanding: mature presentation, reinvented 2D fighting mechanic and the best, most gruesome fatalities ever!” Is that really going to drive sales? I remember MK back in the day being the game that was outrageous. You'd look at the arcade machine, see a dude get his head ripped off (with the spine still attached), and say t...
“This game really is a response to what players have been demanding: mature presentation, reinvented 2D fighting mechanic and the best, most gruesome fatalities ever!”
Is that really going to drive sales? I remember MK back in the day being the game that was outrageous. You'd look at the arcade machine, see a dude get his head ripped off (with the spine still attached), and say to your friend, "Dude! That was sick! Awesome!" It was one of the first games to depict that kind of over-the-top violence, at least in a mainstream capacity. Nowadays, extreme violence is not that out of the ordinary. You have Kratos ripping guys in half with his bare hands (and that's one of his tamer moves). You have the Bloody Mess Perk in the Fallout games. You've got ridiculous ways of impaling dudes in Wii games like MadWorld. The "most gruesome fatalities ever!" in the new MK game doesn't seem like that strong of a selling point these days.
Still, nostalgia is definitely the rule of the day right now. And Street Fighter 4 has shown that you can capture the nostalgic feel while still making the gameplay seem fresh. It's a tricky balance to achieve, but I think that Ed Boon's quote was likely an attempt to say, "Yeah, we're going to try to do that." They want people to look at it and say, "Hey! Mortal Kombat! I remember when that was awesome!" And then they want them to pick it up and say, "Hey! This is actually pretty cool still!" But with all the sub-par to downright crappy MK games they were churning out for a while there, I wonder if Mortal Kombat still has the power to do that? Or is this a way to appease the remnants of the Mortal Kombat fan base, who were upset at the T-rating for MK vs. DC? Are they just conceding to them, since they're the only ones who are still willing to buy a Mortal Kombat game? I don't know. But hey, at least that concept movie trailer was pretty cool, right? They should make that movie. I'd watch it.