Mortal Kombat vs. DC to include fatalities and “push the T-rating envelope”

When Mortal Kombat: Armageddon was released last year, most people weren’t too happy about the lack of fatalities. And when Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe was announced, touting its T rating, most people assumed that fatalities got the axe this time around as well. 

Well, it seems that we were all a bit presumptive, says MK creator Ed Boon, speaking with Gamespot:

When little information is released, there are a lot of assumptions and speculation made by people, some of which quickly become (incorrect) facts. Fatalities is a great example of this. I was surprised to see so many stories stating (with so much certainty) that the game wasn’t going to have fatalities. As if we made an official announcement.

It doesn’t take an intellectual giant to see where Boon’s going with this one: Mortal Kombat vs. DC will have fatalities. Sort of.

“All of the MK characters and all of the DC villains will have fatalities. The DC heroes who don’t kill that often will have brutalities that will function just like fatalities but don’t actually kill the opponent,” says Boon.

Boon states that, while DC has been incredibly supportive and co-operative during the project (I would sure hope so, they signed up for it, after all), they realize that the DC universe is less violent and graphic than Mortal Kombat‘s. Nevertheless, “Certain animations, blood effects, and sound effects that we have in the game are really pushing the T-rating envelope,” says Boon. 

Hit the jump for more.

It seems that DC might want to protect their heroes’ family-friendly status. While that’s understandable … Dude, you signed on to a Mortal Kombat game.

Alternatively, it might represent DC’s attempt to keep this game relatively canonical. Unfortunately, the divide between “heroes” and “villains” seems rather arbitrary. As Alan pointed out, very few characters in either franchise are wholly “good” or “bad.” Most of them fall into a gray area in between, with shifting alliances and personal motivations and all sorts of things that make good characters. That Midway Chicago is solely applying this to DC characters and not to Mortal Kombat characters only exacerbates this weird, unnecessary distinction. 

Furthermore, I can’t think of any fighting game that lets the loose storyline affect the gameplay. Sure, Liu Kang and Jax are on technically on the same side, but that never stopped anyone from letting them beat each other to a pulp. There’s been a sharp divide between arcade-style fighters and their narrative frames for as long as I can remember, and I really can’t imagine why Midway is trying to change that now. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not particularly unhappy about the situation. Boon said that brutalities will work just like fatalities, minus the “fatal” part — the actual gameplay remains relatively unchanged. And I’ll take brutalities over the clusterf*ck that was Armageddon. It just seems like a really strange decision to make.

I mean, seriously … it’s a Mortal Kombat game. This isn’t exactly the franchise to join if you’re worried about Batman disemboweling the Flash. 

[Via Gamespot]