A few websites have had chances to play “Mortal Kombat X,” which was unveiled this week, and it’s being described as possibly the most violent or gory game ever created.
“Visually the game is impressively (or more usually disgustingly) detailed, but there’s still a comic book style edge to it, rather than being an attempt at straight photorealism. But the purposefully wooden animation of the last game, a throwback to the original game’s use of digitised live actors, has been abandoned and replaced with a much smoother and more traditional system,” writes The Metro in a playthrough of the game.
NetherRealm Studios art director Steve Beran talked to Kotaku in an interview this week about why the game is so gory.
“It’s almost like a really weird artform seeing the musculature of the characters,” Beran said. “It’s kind of this gruesome beauty to it, like, ‘Oh my god, that was really nasty but it was really cool seeing the guy’s skin peel away and seeing the muscles in his face and a spike going through his head.’”
Beran said the gore is balanced with black comedy.
“It’s obviously very dark and gory but at the same time there’s always a sense of humor to Mortal Kombat that it’s almost unavoidable,” he told Kotaku. “Because obviously you don’t want to make a snuff film or anything, but at the same time it’s all tongue in cheek and I think at the beginning people are kind of like ‘eeeeh’ and cringe, but eventually they’re laughing and applauding when they see it for the first time. That’s something I’m really proud of, that we found that good balance. Showing it at E3 for the first time and having it explode and getting so much attention is more than flattering.”
The game was revealed at E3 earlier this month.
It will be slated for release sometime in 2015.
The trailer for the game can be seen here.
