14 DAY TRIAL // The Mortal Kombat series is trying to bring itself back to life, and the first thing it needed was a fresh, new look on the character design. Former Midway employee, artist Vincent Proce is the one that took up pen and paper and started a design project of the new characters of MK. Unfortunately, his ideas got shot down in a fiery ball of brimstone, and it's a shame too, because the new characters looked really nice. Proce was involved with the last fighting game that Midway put together, Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, but it seems like Warner Bros wasn't very satisfied with the end result at all, so Proce ended up departing from the company.
The way Proce envisioned the new Mortal Kombat, the game should have incorporated a "mixing modern multi-player and dismemberment game design with the original fighting mechanic." That alone sounds good enough to keep him on the team, but what's next is even better. Compared with the MK vs. DC concept, these characters are a lot darker, with a more visceral touch to them. Less shiny colors, and even if the female cast sports the same general amount of skin exposure, the characters do seem to be a lot more combat-effective.
In his vision, the characters of this new MK game were closer to Todd McFarlane's superhero than the ones of the DC universe. Scorpion is "a wraith wearing the yellow blood of the demon" that brought him back to life, while Kano is a "half Japanese half US military bad ass." Sonya was made to fit the character of "the daughter of a Texas Ranger whose sex appeal weakens her opponents while her Special Forces training kicks their asses," and, even though there will be plenty of voices to object and declare that her outfit is not "according to army regulations," she does look like she could do some serious damage.
The last character that was part of the failed pitch was Raiden, "a god [whose] feet rarely touch the ground." These new looks for the Mortal Kombat would very welcomed, compared with their pairing with Marvel's superheroes. After all, the characters of MK aren't suburban patriots fighting the "reds" for the glory of America, they're brutal fighters constantly locked in a fight to the death.
