Despite being developed by the kings of gore, NetherRealm creative director and co-creator of Mortal Kombat, Ed Boon, insists that the studio's new fighting game, Injustice: Gods Among Us, won't focus on blood and gore.
Injustice: Gods Among Us will instead, as he explained in the latest issue of GameInformer, feature "spectacular, over-the-top events".
"We replaced gratuitous violence, like blood, arms and limbs being cut off, and all that with spectacular, over-the-top events," he said. "In Mortal Kombat you might swing a sword at somebody; in this game you'll throw a car at somebody. In Mortal Kombat you might see blood come flying out from somebody when you punch them; in this game the person could fly through a building when you punch them."
"That's really the identity of this game – an over-the-top, extreme battle of the gods-type experience with interactive backgrounds," he added. "We want these arenas to let players perform these over-the-top events that have something to do with fighting, that make you care about where you are in the arena in regards to what opportunities are existing and mixing up that whole thing. I think that's going to really be what this game is."
But what about the brutal fatalities we are so used to seeing from NetherRealm in the Mortal Kombat games. Surely, they'll have some form of that, right?
"Understandably a lot of people ask," Boon began. "That's specifically because we are NetherRealm Studios, we did Mortal Kombat, we have done a bunch of Mortal Kombats, and I think there is an assumption that is part of every game that we do. But the real message is that this is brand new, that this game has its own identity and we don't feel like we have to follow any kind of previous template of Mortal Kombat."
"While we are very proud of the Mortal Kombat legacy we have, it's certainly not part of this game," he concluded. "This game has its own identity."W
While some NetherRealm fans may disagree with me on this, I think it's a smart move for the studio to move away from gore. After all, these are superheroes we're talking about. Although it has a more mature, darker take on these superheroes and their universe, it's still the DC universe we're talking about. There's just something wrong with the picture of Batman beheading Superman with his batarang. You can have action and brutality without the loss of limbs and blood spurts.
In other related news, Ed Boon recently described the story of Injustice: Gods Among Us as a "deep, elaborate story" that will offer its own twist on the iconic characters we grew up with.
Injustice: Gods Among Us is set to release in 2013 for Xbox 360, PS3, and the Wii U.
