Ed Boon talks about what will happen in year 2 of Mortal Kombat 1

NetherRealm Studios revived its 32-year-old Mortal Kombat universe last year with Mortal Kombat-1restoring the balance of power and giving classic characters new origin stories. This week, NetherRealm continues the story of MK1 with the Khaos rules expansion, which introduces new (reinvented) characters and new conflicts.

Mortal Kombat-1The story ends in total chaos, much to the delight of Havik, the masochistic leader of Chaosrealm who wants to disrupt Liu Kang’s new order. Khaos rules welcomes newcomers Cyrax and Sektor — reimagined as armored female warriors — and Noob Saibot — now a twisted creation of Havik — to the roster, pushing the Mortal Kombat story further into uncharted territory.

Ahead of the expansion’s release, we spoke with Mortal Kombat series co-creator Ed Boon about what fans can expect in Year Two of MK1how NetherRealm selects new players for the game and what he thinks of Karl Urban as Johnny Cage.

The following interview has been shortened and edited.

Polygon: What was your approach for the follow-up? Mortal Kombat-1 of Khaos rules? What did you want to achieve?

Ed Boon: It’s something we started doing with Aftermath in Mortal Kombat-11 — it was the first time we continued the story, and I think it worked out really well for MK11This gives us the chance to continue this new Liu Kang reinterpretation of the universe, and to bring back more characters (and) more guest characters.

Everybody wants new characters. It’s funny, you know, with 20-something characters already, (everybody wants) more, more, more. Like someone plays all 25 equally.laughs) So we brought back characters, but we also wanted to mix things up. There’s always that kind of balance that we try to achieve: we don’t want to repeat ourselves too much, but there’s a really strong nostalgia itch. Everyone says, “I want to see my favorite character come back!” And with the 100-something characters that we’ve had over the years, it’s inevitable that we’re going to leave out a few that people are clamoring for.

Noob (Saibot) was definitely one of them. The cyber ninjas were another one. We still have people who want Jade and Sonya as the main characters and all that stuff. But despite that, we’re excited about this new pack. There’s, you know, new Animalities, game features, that kind of thing.

I wanted to talk about the character selection process, that balance between trying to hit the nostalgia but also the broader appeal of the guest characters. You have the three returning characters — Cyrax, Sektor, and Noob Saibot — and then you have the three guest characters. What’s that filtration process like? Do you just burst into the meeting room at some point and say, “It’s Noob time!”?

I’m definitely a fan of getting as many opinions as possible from the rest of the team. I always send out this obligatory email that’s like, “Here are all the big (Mortal Kombat) characters that we haven’t done yet. What do you think?” And everyone chimes in. I take all that and put my opinions in there as well. My opinions are usually most inspired by the feedback that I read from players. If there’s a relentless call for a character, that carries a lot of weight. But it’s definitely this big casting call that I send out, and then I spend a lot of time whittling it down, hearing the reasons, and then it usually comes down to what we release, with maybe one or two sneaking in and out.

Same goes for the guest characters. The first thing is (asking) what everyone wants. Some get eliminated just because we can’t make it happen — it’s not just our choice, it’s the IP holder. There are a lot of hurdles.

We try to find the balance between novelty and surprise.

Speaking of Noob Saibot, his head-splitting Fatal blow a reference to Hot Shots: Part Two?

No. (laughs) Maybe subconsciously. I wasn’t, mind you. That move came from the team, and it completely separated the head and the jaw. And even I thought at one point, “You know, if they separate the head and the jaw, they can’t stand up and fight.” We’ve pushed that boundary quite a bit over the years, but at some point — even we have to have rules. Our head of cinematics, he has this saying, “We’re NetherRealm. We’re not rocket scientists.”

Why bring back Animalities now?

We brought them back because of the feedback we got when we brought back Friendship moves, and even Babalities a long time ago. MK9. I think it once again satisfies the nostalgia itch that many Mortal Kombat fans have.

When we did the Friendship Movements (in MK11) and we got such a positive response, that I thought in my head: Next up is Animalities. And you know, we can render them with so much more fidelity and they’re so much more interesting than they were in MK3. We had, we had a (little bit of) memory left (for them) that we had to make them, like, 4-bit graphics. They were basically monochrome, and the animations were like, you know, two frames. But you know, Animalities were rumors of MK2 that we have made true for MK3And I feel like we’re finally seeing the realization of what they could be with Khaos rules.

What’s your favorite fighter and animal combination for the new Animalities?

Oh man, there’s a lot that everyone hasn’t seen yet. Let me think. Probably, and this is a bit of a cop-out, but Scorpion turning into a scorpion is probably my favorite.

What about the new Kameo Fighters? You haven’t announced any new ones yet, but is that something you’re looking to expand on in the second year of your career? MK1 also?

Yeah. It’s my fault, I guess I never really communicated it clearly outside of the team, but yeah. For me, it would feel a little weird to just stop with as much as we have in the game right now. I think the mix-and-matches are interesting. I really enjoy seeing players (come up with) crazy combos with this Kameo and this main fighter. I think that just keeps things really interesting.

MK1 is a big step into live-service, seasonal content with Invasions mode. What have you learned from running a live-service game now and what do you want to improve for Invasions? People are always looking for more rewards from Invasions, more reasons to play.

From my perspective, the term live service implies that Here’s even more content that you have to pay to experiencewhether it’s a battle pass or a new expansion or something. And we never imagined Invasions as, Here’s season two, pay us to play it, to play season three, and whatnot. So I never really saw Invasions as a games-as-a-service kind of feature. I always saw it as a re-engagement. There’s more to go through each season, but that comes with the expectation of Where are my skins? Where is my in-game currency?

For me, it’s more of an engagement thing. Why would I come back? You know, single-player-wise? Everyone consumes the story mode, and then it’s like, Okay, so what’s the reason I’m coming back?

But as you’re coming up on year two, are there any changes to Invasions? What’s your approach based on feedback?

Yeah, oh, 100%. The next season that’s coming up, there’s a lot more variety of modes to play. There’s more Test Yours, just a wider variety of experiences, some of which we’re going to be announcing soon. But there’s also others that we just want people to discover. But ultimately the goal was, let’s have a wider variety of things to do.

And again, we’re going to continue to release more updates, more skins, more cameos, more characters and things like that.

I know you probably hear about this all the time on Twitter, but one of the quality-of-life updates that people can’t stop talking about is character skin and color selection on the character select screen. Is this something you’re actively working on?

Well, it’s definitely a possibility in the future. We always have a running list of what we want to hear from players. That list is really long, and that’s definitely (on the list). And so we’re going to drop new features like that as we continue to support the game.

Finally, I know you’ve seen a rough cut Mortal Kombat 2 (the movie). What is Karl Urban like as Johnny Cage? Do you have any notes?

I like him. He’s very funny. You know, it’s interesting — oh, God no, I shouldn’t say it. You’ll see. He’s very funny in it. He’s definitely different from our Johnny Cage, like the one in MK1. He’s a little more down and out. He definitely has a lot of funny lines.

By the way, Karl is 52 years old. He didn’t have to do splits for the film, did he?

How can you not imagine Johnny Cage doing the splits?

That’s the kind of perfect Ed Boon non-answer I like to hear.

Yes. (laughs) Sometimes I feel like a politician.