What do you think when you think of Mortal Kombat? You think of Fatalities, of course. These over-the-top, brutal, ridiculously violent finishing moves have been synonymous with the series for as long as it has existed, so it’s no surprise at all that the developers spend a long, long time working these out during the development of each new title in the series.
Recently, in a video documentary uploaded by Noclip (which you can view below), creative director and NeatherRealm Studios boss Ed Boon spoke about the process of developing Fatalities for Mortal Kombat 11, revealing that the team spent months on conceptualizing and developing each of these, while also giving out details on what exactly the process entails.
He also, interestingly enough, spoke about the philosophy of developing these Fatalities, saying that the developers design them to be as over the top as they possibly can be, to the point where they’re almost parodies of themselves.
“The more outrageous, the better,” said Boon. “Like, not realistic. You know, nothing that somebody could look at and think, ‘oh, I’m gonna repeat that.’ It’s so ridiculous- you know, Geras hits somebody behind in their head and their whole face comes out. It’s ridiculous. And the fact that we’ve made eleven of these games, and each one is more outrageous than the other puts us in the stratosphere- it’s so outside of reality, it’s almost a parody at this point.”
Ed Boon has previously spoken about the process of developing Mortal Kombat 11’s Fatalities as well, and how much time the development team spent on getting their slow motion blood spatter effects just right. Read more on that through here.
Mortal Kombat 11 launches on April 23 for the PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.