Since its announcement at The Game Awards late last year, fans have been waiting for a look at Mortal Kombat 11 in action. This morning’s reveal livestream dropped a raft of new trailers for the NetherRealm Studios fighter, all focused on gameplay and characters.
Following on from 2015’s Mortal Kombat X, MK11 introduces a time travel story, a corrupted version of longtime series good guy Raiden, a collection of brand new characters and a beheaded Shinnok. It also seems to be working hard to up the ante on MKX‘s numerous gory Fatalities. Fair cop, the trailer below is probably not for those with weak stomachs.
To recap, that was Baraka ripping Scorpion’s entire face off, caving his skull in, yanking out his brain and eating it, all rendered in pristine 4K HDR. Even by Mortal Kombat standards, it’s pretty full on. Not to worry, you’ll have plenty of other characters to dismember with complex end-of-match button combos. We look forward to seeing how far beyond the bounds of good taste NetherRealm are willing to go.
The game appears to use the same extremely detailed facial mo-cap system NetherRealm used in 2017’s Injustice 2 so if you found that dipped too far into uncanny valley territory, get ready to feel a bit weirded out all over again. As ever, NetherRealm seem to have perfectly captured the occasionally stilted feel of classic MK and combined it with some of the most fluid and characterful animations in the industry.
There are also a few returning characters, the most significant of which is Sonya Blade. Sonya was dead in MKX, replaced by her daughter Cassie Cage, but is once more alive and well thanks to the game’s time travel storyline. In an interesting piece of stunt casting, Sonya will be played by WWE Superstar Ronda Rousey.
Finally, the livestream ended with a look at Geras, one of the game’s newest heroes and a seemingly significant cog in the game’s time travel story. He appears to be a bit of a mashup between Jax and Tremor, landing heavy haymakers and using the earth itself as a canvas for spike traps.
Mortal Kombat 11 is set to release in Australia on April 23 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, provided the Australian classification board doesn’t get squeamish first.
