Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon has explained every single Friendship move present in Mortal Kombat 11 in a new hilarious and insightful video, including Mileena's tea party and John Rambo's laser tag arena one. Rambo's the third classic action hero from the 80s added by the NetherRealm team to the game following the introduction of Robocop and Terminator.
It might come as a surprise for the modern generation of gamers, but the Mortal Kombat franchise is decades old. While it is an immensely popular fighting series, its core fan base consists of those hardcore gamers that started playing the original installments in the 90s. Back in the day, kids loved action movies from that particular era, which included some classic motion pictures from the 80s such as Robocop, Rambo, and Terminator. The ultimate reason why NetherRealm paid homage to the titular characters of these movies by including them in Mortal Kombat 11 was to comply with the nostalgia of the series’ core audience - and, judging by the attitudes of Boon and NetherRealm, probably because they're just fun to create and play.
In a Wired video, Ed Boon, the co-creator of Mortal Kombat and the creative director at NetherRealm Studios, has explained every single Friendship move available in Mortal Kombat 11. The industry veteran goes into details revealing what the non-violent finishing moves are based on, and what backstories are hidden behind them. Out of 37 existing characters in the game, each one has a single Friendship move, which was initially chosen out of 4 to 5 original pitches. One of the major criteria was for the move to be as silly as possible and to represent the opposite of a Fatality or Brutality while staying true to the character. Funnily, the dumbest Friendship ever pitched by the team ended up being actually added to the game. Boon also stresses that modern technology allowed the creation of impressively detailed Friendships unlike older times in the 90s when a great idea could be turned down because of technical limitations.
Interestingly, there could be more Friendships coming to Mortal Kombat 11, as another five additional characters are rumored to be on their way to the game's all-star roster. At the beginning of 2020, it was discovered that the number of reserved character slots in the game was 42. With 37 kombatants already available, there’s still space for five more, which seems to have been confirmed in a recent leak. Listing for Kombat Pack 3 briefly appeared on the Brazilian PlayStation Store, with its higher price indicating that it could contain more than just three characters.
It is delightful to see just how much effort went into creating Friendship finishing moves for Mortal Kombat 11. According to Boon, there’re tons of nuances that can be picked up only after a while. Subtle head nods, facial expressions, slight background details create the most elaborate experience ever in the history of the franchise with the mocap team performing at its best to deliver the most impressive results. Friendships are indeed silly, but there’s a lot of high-quality work put into this silliness.
Mortal Kombat 11 is available on PS5, PS4 Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, and Google Stadia.
Source: Wired