Mortal Kombat‘s co-creator Ed Boon was recently interviewed by Billy from GI about Midway’s current and next-gen fighting games. It’s there he made surprise revelations about Mortal Kombat 8.
Outside of must-have options such as online multiplayer, he makes mention of some really crazy ideas he’s been having in order to bring that early 90’s arcades feeling back, only this time in a “virtual arcade” lobby setup. Here are some choice quotes:
GI: How far into development is it?
Boon: The main thing we’re doing right now is the core technology. We’re using the Unreal 3 engine, and we’re getting our base, “How do display a character, normal-mapping, bump-mapping, shadows” all the things that are expected of the game. I have a bunch of ideas on paper in terms of things that I’d like to theoretically try, but it’s not like it’s in a playable state yet. — We’re doing something with the next game that’s unbelievably unexpected, and there’s going to be an announcement. I totally was told, “You cannot talk about this thing” I think it’s going to be rolled out.
GI: How has the experience been with the next-gen, and what are some of the nuances that you’re finding with the Xbox 360 and PS3?
Boon: Our goal, graphically, with this game is to be as gritty and (I don’t like to use the word “dirty,” because I don’t want to imply not-cool graphics but) a very dark, serious Mortal Kombat. Not vibrant, saturated colors, but more of a really down and dirty Mortal Kombat game. To me, when I saw Gears of War, I was like, “Holy sh*t! That’s the look that we’ve been talking about” Visually, that’s what we want to do. Gameplay-wise, I kind of attribute it to what we did with Deadly Alliance, where everything is thrown out. We’re not going to have three fighting styles, we’re not going to have the same punches and kicks and the same kind of control scheme. Everything is getting trashed. We’re reinventing everything from the ground up. We really think that’s needed — you know, we’re on Mortal Kombat 8, in a sense — to kind of wipe the slate clean every once in a while, and I kind of feel that now is the time. Our visual presentation and our game presentation and our thing that you’ll hear about very soon are all going to be new to this game. It’s going to be nothing like you’ve ever seen before.
GI: What’s it like to flush it all and start over?
Boon: It’s really scary. There’s some stuff that I thought really worked well in the previous three games, but I really feel that we can’t do any more of it. We can’t do the new fighting-style stuff. We need to do something different. A lot of people say, “How do they keep selling well?” And we really believe that’s one of the reasons. We’re not afraid to say, “That’s working, but it’s time to do something new because it’s been five years”
GI: Hypothetical time-frame for release. Are we talking 2008?
Boon: Yeah. I would guess — and I wouldn’t promise — it would be around the fall, Novemberish time of 2008.
GI: Across all three platforms?
Boon: We’re talking about that.
Update April 18th, 2008: Mortal Kombat 8 has been renamed to Mortal Kombat VS. DC Universe.