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Mortal Kombat 11

What We Know About Mortal Kombat 11

The lid has been blown open and here's what we know about the upcoming fighting game from Netherrealm Studios.

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Mortal Kombat 11 had a highly anticipated reveal event yesterday, showcasing a glimpse at gameplay that fans were desperate for since its announcement at the Game Awards. The event - which lasted just over 30 minutes - was filled with all sorts of tasty details about the game. Here's everything of note we saw while watching the reveal. Sprinkled in between our observations are exclusive direct-feed gameplay clips from the event.

Mortal Kombat 11 Gameplay

• Before we even saw a fight, we saw that 17 stage slots were present on the stage select screen, which is a decent selection for a fighting game at launch.

• Moving onto the actual fighting mechanics: There are two separate meters, offensive and defensive, rather than the single meter available in Mortal Kombat X. Both can hold two charges and allow for the player to make use of enhanced moves. The offensive meter provides players with the opportunity to enhance their special moves, which changes the moves properties and the amount of damage it does. On the other hand, the defensive meter allows you to grab items from the environment for a single powerful attack against your opponent.

• The slow-motion cinematic moments where you get to see all sorts of gruesome injuries used to be limited to X-Ray attacks in Mortal Kombat X. Not anymore. Mortal Kombat 11 has these intensely violent attacks littered all over the place. In the reveal we see Baraka's grab feature him taking a big chunk of meat out of Scorpion's arm. Delicious.

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• X-Ray attacks, the big climactic super moves that would use all of your meter in Mortal Kombat X, have been replaced with Fatal Blows. These moves become available once your health has been reduced to 30%. These are especially bloody attacks that do a bunch of damage. If you miss your Fatal Blow, don't worry, it'll become available after a short cooldown period of a few seconds. And of course, Mortal Kombat's famous fatalities return once again, somehow managing to be even more gruesome than before.

The Story of Mortal Kombat 11

• It's clear that Raiden is still on his bad streak he started on since the epilogue of Mortal Kombat X. He's currently keeping his hands busy torturing Shinok - the final boss of the previous game - and decapitates him in order to send him head to Liu Kang in Netherrealm as a warning that Earthrealm is strictly a no-go.

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• After Raiden leaves, Mortal Kombat 11's new villain Kronika appears, telling Shinok that being a head isn't his destiny and that Raiden's tendency of changing the future is getting old. This is really cool because according to Ed Boon she is a god-like being who controls time, planning out events since Mortal Kombat 1. That's right, the series reboot AND the original series are both canon and Raiden messing up her plans has clearly rubbed Kronika the wrong way.

Character customisation

• Character variations are now customisable, allowing for the player to pick what unique moves are available to each one.

• Ed Boon explained that some of the variations shown were made by the player, while some are in the game from the start.

• The custom variations not only allow for custom moves, but custom equipment too. Each character will have three pieces of gear that they can change, each with three augment slots. This is clearly different from how they handle gear in Injustice 2, which had equipment increase stats like health and strength, but what exactly these augments will do is currently a mystery.

• There also seems to be a rarity attached to the gear, with all of Scorpion's equipment being 'Elder' quality in the footage.

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• There is also a 'Kosmetics' tab, where your character's skins, cinematics and finishers can be changed. It appears as though you can change both what skin you wear and its colour, as the demonstration of Scorpions several appearances features duplicate pieces dyed differently.

• If you want to see how well your variation holds up in a fight you can also set the AI behaviour of individual variations so that you can practice against your own creations. This includes how well they can land combos, how aggressive they are, and how often they'll break out of grabs among other options.

• Hidden at the bottom left of the screen during the character creation showcase you can see how much in-game money you have. The only thing we saw that you could spend money on is re-forging your equipment, what exactly that is remains unclear. But in previous games money was spent in the Krypt, where unlockables are gained through spending in-game cash. Whether this will remain the same, or if Mortal Kombat 11 will contain loot boxes like Injustice 2 has yet to be announced.

Character information

• First of all, there were 26 slots open on the character select screen, whether Shao Khan (MK 11's pre-order bonus) counts towards that number is unclear. That's a huge amount of characters for a fighting game to start with on launch, and since the game's coming out in April it's safe to say we'll be seeing plenty of character reveals in the coming months.

• Seven characters were shown as playable in the character select screen during the reveal event. These characters were: Baraka, Sonya Blade, Scorpion, Sub Zero, Raiden, Skarlet and Geras. Geras, a devote follower of Kronika, is the only entirely new character present of the seven. Scarlet was a surprise pick for many people too, being a DLC character released relatively late in Mortal Kombat 9's life cycle, although she has earnt a fan following ever since.

• With the story dealing with time-travel shenanigans, Ed Boon talked about how cool it's going to be that characters from all over the series can appear. We've got our fingers crossed for Stryker.

• That's not to say we don't have a hunch on who might be coming. In a montage of gameplay and story clips at the start of the event we saw a variety of characters not seen in the character select later in the show. These include Sub Zero, Kung Lao and Liu Kang, who were safe bets for the Mortal Kombat 11 roster even before they showed up.

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• Finally, near the end of the reveal we saw a character run really fast past the screens on stage. This is almost certainly Kabal. The masked fighter was first introduced in Mortal Kombat 3, and has become a fan favourite ever since. One of his special moves is his offensive dash, that makes him moves incredibly fast through his opponent, hence why the tease during the event is likely to be him.

Contents of the Kollector's Edition

The Kollector's Edition features a handful of unique items such as:
• A special premium edition case for the game
• An exclusive steel case and magnet that fits in the front
• A 1:1 replica of Scorpion's mask, 35 x 18 x 21cm in size
• A special Kollector Box to fit all the above in
• Shao Kahn DLC character and access to the Beta that releases March 28th (although you get this bonus if you pre-order any version of the game).

That sums up everything we caught while watching the Mortal Kombat 11 reveal event. The game is due out on April 23 across PC, PS4, Switch and Xbox One. What character do you want to see added to the roster?

Mortal Kombat 11
Mortal Kombat 11
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Mortal Kombat 11 (Switch)Score

Mortal Kombat 11 (Switch)

REVIEW. Written by Jonas Mäki

"It's a fine version of the game. Sadly, the controller options the Switch provides aren't great."



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