The upcoming fighting game will introduce a crazy number of new characters to the series

Aug 18, 2014 06:54 GMT  ·  By

Mortal Kombat series creator Ed Boon revealed a bunch of new information regarding the upcoming entry in the series, Mortal Kombat X, particularly focusing on the story that will unfold sometime next year.

During an interview with IGN at Gamescom 2014, Boon talked about what gamers should expect from the upcoming installment in the popular fighting game series, detailing how the game's story would play out and revealing the developer's plan regarding the roster of playable characters.

"It's a direct continuation, but the timespan it crosses is 25 years in length. There are periods that are directly after MK9, then there are periods that are five, ten, 15 and 20 years out. A lot of the events take place 25 years after where we see older versions of the characters, like Cassie Cage and all that. But it does jump around in time; it's not a linear thing," Boon began.

"You still play the different chapters and each chapter has a character where it follows their actions, but instead of just jumping from one character to the next, it'll jump in time as well. So all of a sudden, you may have a flashback and you'll participate in those, but sometimes the story will just move forward five or ten years," he explained.

The story mode of 2011's Mortal Kombat 9 serves as a sort of basis for how the events of the upcoming title will unfold, although Boon refrained from revealing anything specific.

"A lot of the new characters are those that came into power after MK9. Kotal Khan is one of them. He was one of the rulers of Outworld during that 25 year period, and the story mode basically follows his rise and fall. D'vorrah works with him, but there's twists there. I won't give away the story, but a lot of these characters come in and out of power over the course of the story," he said.

After the game's announcement, developer NetherRealms released a series of videos showing a bunch of new characters in action, making its intention to bring a breath of fresh life into the series quite obvious.

"The last game we did in 2011 was a complete fan service title, so we really felt it was time to add a lot of new characters to the mix. So yeah, a lot of old faces won't make the roster, but to us it was more important we did introduce new characters. We're probably introducing more in this game than in any other MK title ever."

Boon also promised that the roster of playable characters would be expanded in the future through DLC packs after the game's launch, and confirmed that platform-specific fighters would once again be part of the mix.

"One thing that's certainly on my mind after jumping ahead 25 years, is I don't know where we'd go from here. We wanted to do something bold, and this is a bold new story, despite the fact it's the tenth game. But when you jump ahead 25 years it's like... what do you do now? Do you jump in time again? Do you go back 25 years? Do you introduce a whole new cast? We'll worry about it when we reach it, but I do think it could be hard to continue, if we do another one," Boon concluded.

Mortal Kombat X is scheduled to come out sometime in 2015, headed for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. According to Ed Boon, developer NetherRealms is getting ready to make an announcement regarding the release date sometime in the coming weeks.

Mortal Kombat X screenshots (8 Images)

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