Since reforming out of the ashes of Midway Games, Ed Boon and NetherRealm Studios have seemingly found a comfortable groove in alternating between two very popular fighting franchises. It's most recent release, Mortal Kombat 11 continues the cliffhanger storyline left at the end of Mortal Kombat X with the fall of Shinnok and Raiden's new darker persona. The game has already spawned plenty of downloadable content including an expansion which continued the experience and brought back a few familiar fighters along the way. However, the conclusion of this story arc almost didn't happen.
In a new interview with History Behind The Warrior, NetherRealm Studios writer Shawn Kittelsen provided a bit of insight into how the story came to be. Initial work on Mortal Kombat 11's story began as the development on Injustice 2's DLC was nearing its end. Creative director Ed Boon tasked Kittelsen and the writers with coming up with a story that would be unexpected and surprise longtime fans. The writers went through numerous ideas including a tournament to revive the Dragon King Onaga or a deadly alliance story with Dark Raiden being the primary antagonist.
Hilariously, Kittelsen also revealed that the team briefly considered a few outrageous storylines including a Friday the 13th inspired one where iconic Mortal Kombat characters were essentially camp councilors being picked off by monsters. However, as each idea was iterated on and fleshed out many were scrapped including the Dark Raiden deadly alliance alternative reality narrative which many felt veered too closely to the story of Injustice with an Evil Superman facing an alliance of heroes against him in an alternative version of these classic DC characters.
In the end, the team felt the need to continue the story left dangling at the end of Mortal Kombat X as it felt disrespectful to fans to tease the storyline and then do something completely different. To solve the problem while also introducing a way to bring back killed off characters like Nightwolf, Sindel, and Noob Saibot, and create interesting mirror matches, the writers developed a story involving time travel and the villain Kronika.
For now, Mortal Kombat 11 fans continue to wait for what may or may not be lurking around the corner for the popular fighting game. While the game has already received two kombat packs, an expansion, and an Ultimate Edition, fans want more. While new character skins and stages are always popular with players, the big ask from players is for more characters, especially the fan favorites that are missing from the roster. With Rain and Mileena finally available, fans have turned their attention to others like Smoke, Takeda, Sektor, Cyrax, and a host of others. Whether or not NetherRealm will make it happen is another story completely.
Mortal Kombat 11 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.