'Mortal Kombat 11' Fatalities Took Months To Come Up With And Design

What has made Mortal Kombat stick out amongst many different fighting games over the years is its fatalities. With every installment, it appears fatalities get more over-the-top and wonderfully grisly. They've become what the series is known for, and for good reason, a lot of work is dumped into thinking them up and then making them.

Speaking with Noclip, creative director on the series Ed Boon spoke to the series' fatalities, shedding light on the process the studio uses not only to conceptualize each and every one, but the process of bringing them to life.

According to Boon, it usually takes the conceptualization of one fatality to set the tone and get the ball rolling on the rest. And it's usually Boon himself who comes up with said fatality. And once the rest of the team sees the fatality, everyone begins to understand the tone and pitch their own.

And as Boon notes, this is a process that takes months and numerous meetings where everyone pitches their idea for a fatality for the game, and then everyone else basically votes on it. In other words, it's not just Boon calling all the shots and making all the fatalities, it's a democratic effort.

That said, the purpose of fatalities aren't just to be as gruesome as possible and constantly one-up each other. There's an element of that in play, but the fatalities also serve the purpose of demonstrating whatever the installment's new tech is as well.

Speaking of going over-the-top, Boon points out that the aim is always to go over-the-top and then some. Meaning, when they are designing fatalities, they don't want a single one to be too realistic or something someone can recreate. Rather, the goal is to go so over-the-top that it's almost comical how insane and unrealistic the fatality is.

Anyway, this is just a summary of Boon's talking points in the video -- for more details and insight into the fatality creation process, check out Noclip's work below:

Mortal Kombat 11 is posied to release on April 23 via the PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC. For more coverage on the highly-anticipated fighter, click here.

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