Mortal Kombat 11 is a game that has been preparing for almost 30 years

the Deadly fight The series has been around since 1992, but it's a franchise that has aged with surprising grace. In reality, Deadly fight is probably more popular now than in any moment in history. The most recent version, 2015 Mortal Kombat X sold 11 million copies, making it the largest MK release to date.

After a success like this one can expect the developer NetherRealm Studios to offer more, but with Mortal Kombat 11, which launches today, the team decided to change things. MK11 offers a redesigned combat system aimed at a more strategic game, as well as a much larger focus on the story. According to creative director and creator of the series, Ed Boon, this will to continue to change is one of the main reasons Deadly fight has managed to stay relevant for so long.

"It's scary, but it's necessary," he says. "The reason we are going stronger than ever, is because we are not afraid; Well, in fact, we are afraid, but we do not hesitate to make changes radicals to the formula of the game. We know that some commodities should not change, but we firmly believe that we must continue to change. "

Boon says that the desire to create something different is the starting point for any new Deadly fight. "The first thing we are talking about is:" What are we going to do again, which has not been done in our previous games? ", He explains. MK11it started with a story concept. MKX The series advances 25 years into the future, offering fans an insight into aging versions of classic fighters like Johnny Cage. The new game mixes these different timelines so that younger and older versions of Deadly fight Veterans interact with each other.

Photo of Tasia Wells / Getty Images

"We really wanted to tap into the nostalgia of older versions of these characters," said Boon. "It really plays on people's memory Deadly fight. So when you see MK2 Scorpion meeting MK11 Scorpio, who are fighting or fighting each other, there is something really cool about it. "(To follow the more and more complicated story of the series, Boon says he relies on MK writers Dominic Cianciolo and Sean Kittleson, keepers of the legend. "I will say," Why do not we do that? "And they will say," Well, no, because in Mortal Kombat 4, we established this arrived & # 39;. ")

At a time when fighting games are gradually moving away from the story to focus on the competitive side, MK11The big budget single-player campaign stands out. But it's also something the team wants to do since the beginning of the series. Long-time fans may remember their filming attempt Deadly fight in a series of hit action movies, with the 1995 film and its sequel of 1997, Annihilation. At the same time, various narrative experiences in the game have been conducted, including Konquest single-player mode of the PS2 era.

"Since the first Deadly fight game, we realized that the players were really intrigued by the background of these characters, "says Boon. "It was just small paragraphs saying," Liu Kang was a Shaolin monk from the White Lotus Society "and all that, and there was such an attachment. We knew that this aspect of the character – not just their appearance, not just the moveet – we saw the players moving in that direction. "

Recent games like Mortal Kombat 11 are a long-term accomplishment of this goal, interspersed with gorgeous cinematic cinematics with all the bloody fighting actions. It's a bit like watching a movie Deadly fight Synthetic film in the theater, but with lots of breaks to play the arcade outside. Once the technology was in place, especially with larger storage media such as Blu-ray Discs, they finally succeeded. "This presentation is something I wanted to do for a long time before we actually did," Boon says.

With this idea of ​​constant change and reinvention for the long-term series, Boon says that we need to put in place some essential constants for what a game stands for as such. Deadly fight. This includes such iconic characters as Sub-Zero and Sonya Blade, extremely violent fights and, of course, deadly accidents – these latter moves often depict dismemberies with disturbing graphics.

These aspects have been in place since Deadly fight debuted in 1992, but pretty much everything else has changed. The team of four who created the original has gradually become a studio of more than 200 people. Deadly fight, NetherRealm is also developing the incredibly popular DC Comics fighter Injustice. "It's been over the last 25 years," says Boon about his career at the studio. "There was not a single time I thought," Oh, now we're tall and we were little yesterday. "It's more of an awareness than you have long after it happened."

This had a curious effect. Many members of the current development team have actually grown up with the series, which, according to Boon, has helped keep Deadly fight reinvigorated over the years with new ideas. "They played in the arcades and remembered them," he explains. "They bring an incredible wealth of new ideas from this perspective. I have been working on the game since the first game and I have my point of view as a developer, but I have never been a player who saw it for the first time. I have never participated from the outside. They bring new great ideas that are put into the game. "

With Deadly fight As he approaches his 30th birthday and Boon has been involved since the beginning, he is part of a very small group of game developers who have been loyal to a single franchise for decades. Dragon Quest The designer Yuji Horii, for example, has been working on this series since 1986 and does not plan to stop any time soon.

But this kind of singular focus is rare. Boon says that taking breaks to work Injustice creative, but it is mainly inspired by the popularity of this universe that he helped to create. "It's very contagious," he says. That said, Boon will not predict how long he could stay with Deadly fight, preferring to take one game at a time.

"If you ever asked me," How long are you going to work on Deadly fight? 'When we were 10 years old,' he says, 'I do not think I would have guessed another 15 years.'

Mortal Kombat 11 is now available on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.