Injustice Shunts Violence, Focuses on Spectacular Moves

Injustice – Gods Among Us is aiming to complete the difficult task of creating a fighting game that uses superheroes and villains from the DC Universe of comic books, and the developers working on the title say that the task required an important shift when it comes to how they handle violence.

Ed Boon, the leader of the development team at NetherRealm, has told Game Informer that, “We replaced gratuitous violence, like blood, arms and limbs being cut off, and all that with spectacular, over-the-top events.”

He added, “In Mortal Kombat you might swing a sword at somebody, in this game you’ll throw a car at somebody. In Mortal Kombat you might see blood come flying out from somebody when you punch them, in this game the person could fly through a building when you punch them. That’s really the identity of this game – an over the top, extreme battle of the gods-type experience with interactive backgrounds.”

Characters like Superman, Batman, Harley Quinn or Nightwing are usually portrayed as close to invincible in the comic books and that means that any violent moves performed against them need to be significant and rely on more than blood to show the player its effects.

Ed Boon has also emphasized the fact that, despite the template used by the NetherRealm team, the connection between Mortal Kombat and Injustice is limited.

The team is proud of the previous fighting games it has worked on, but the company wants players to look at Injustice as an entirely new property with a different philosophy.

I got some hands-on time with Injustice during the recent Gamescom 2012 event, and I was impressed by the attention to each character and his moves.

Injustice – Gods Among Us is set to launch on home console and on the PC at some point during 2013.