Ed Boon on the next generation of Mortal Kombat

We caught up with Ed Boon, creator of the Mortal Kombat series, to discuss the next iteration of the franchise. The interview covers the new concept of three variations of each character, interacting with the environment, and "fatality meetings".

As far as the roster goes, with only a few characters confirmed for now, Boon had this to say of the selection process:

"The last Mortal Kombat game that we did was kind of like a love letter to the Mortal Kombat 1,2, and 3 days," says Boon. "So we brought back all those characters. All the ones people remember from when Mortal Kombat was a flat 2D game and then kind of just updated it with the more modern graphics and this game we wanted to have as much newness to it. We call this Mortal Kombat X it's kind of like the next Mortal Kombat as far as generation, the next console generation, the next character generation. So we really wanted to introduce characters that were related to the existing Mortal Kombat characters, so they're kind of descendants. Cassie Cage is Johnny Cage's daughter. This game our goals was to really introduce as many new characters to the mix as possible."

Boon also spoke of the headache that three variations of each character brings in terms of game balance ("huge task to balance the game out").

Backdrops are often overlooked in fighting games, but not only do they set the stage, in Mortal Kombat X they are also highly interactive.

"The first thing we go for is the look. So our concept art team basically just dreams up whatever they can do and then we have just hundreds of images that we go through and the stuff that kind of resonates with us like 'oh! that's really cool, let's kind of start building on that'. That was certainly the case with the background that we're calling The Cove where we have these waves crashing up against the bridge.. And that one immediately when we saw it we knew it was something that was going to get in the game. And we refined that many, many times as far as visual look and then we basically model it in 3D and try to match that visual as close to the concept as possible."

Naturally the conversation also touched on fatalities with Boon jokingly admitting it's hard to sleep at night given the gruesome nature of some of the finishers.

"Most of the fatalities come from fatality meetings," says Boon. "And you'd be surprised how many of them don't make the cut. Just because it's kind of crossing a line. But they're a lot of fun. Everyone kind of just stands up and acts them out and then we get responses from people and that's one of the more fun meetings in the company."

Mortal Kombat X is due out next year on PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC.