There have been some very interesting developments on the Mortal Kombat 1 front lately. Following a rocky launch of its latest major expansion, Khaos Reigns, just a couple of months ago, a claim from a prominent leaker in the community has essentially flipped things on their heads.
This leaker, whose track record has been very strong for some time now, reports that further DLC plans beyond Mortal Kombat 1’s Kombat Pack 2 and the Khaos Reigns expansion have been cancelled due to poor performance. A lot of fans and players in the fighting game community and around the world are putting quite a bit of stock into these claims, which begs the question: Where does the Mortal Kombat franchise go after Mortal Kombat 1?
From the very beginning, Mortal Kombat 1 was a bit of an enigma in several ways. For starters, NetherRealm Studios had established an unspoken pattern of alternating between developing and releasing Mortal Kombat and Injustice games.
In 2011, the company released its flagship Mortal Kombat title in Mortal Kombat 9, which was followed by DC Comics fighting game Injustice: Gods Among Us in 2013. Mortal Kombat X came after that in 2015, then Injustice 2 in 2017, followed by Mortal Kombat 11 in 2019.
Right from the get-go, things already start to look a little strange when we see that Mortal Kombat 1 would ultimately be released back-to-back after Mortal Kombat 11 instead of the much expected Injustice 3. Even stranger still is that all of NetherRealm’s fighting games here were released about two years apart from each other, but there was an abnormally long wait of four years between MK11 and MK1.
There is speculation to this day that a potential Injustice 3 was in the works after MK11, but that NetherRealm was forced to pivot by parent company Warner Bros. Games somewhere during development in an attempt to put their best foot forward and make another game in their highest selling franchise as a means of generating better revenue.
This theory is certainly interesting when you look more closely at things like Mortal Kombat 1’s pre-fight intros that feature very similar arm-to-arm clashes between characters that originated in the Injustice series, as well as the game’s first Kombat Pack being 50% “guest” characters that all happen to be super heroes/villains. But, of course, this is merely speculation and nothing is confirmed.
Beyond that, though, Mortal Kombat 1 was also a bit confusing for fans to grasp on a foundational level. Not only is the name “Mortal Kombat 1” certainly odd for a 2023 game and essentially made searching for the original 1992 Mortal Kombat title much harder over night, but it also promised to reshape the franchise’s entire world with a brand new timeline that supposedly had nothing to do with the events of Mortal Kombat 11.
Spoiler alert, Mortal Kombat 1’s story does have ties to MK11 in that Fire God Liu Kang — who lived through the events of the previous title — literally created this new timeline, but we also later learn that threats from back in Mortal Kombat 11’s timeline return in MK1 to mess things up once again.
A new timeline means endless possibilities, but despite this we saw smaller, seemingly “changes for the sake of making changes” made to the 32-year legacy of beloved, fan-favorite characters that end up being more head scratcher than something that makes any real impact in the game’s story.
Scorpion is no longer Hanzo Hasashi in Mortal Kombat 1 because… new timeline, Cyrax and Sektor are no longer cyborgs but humans (and both female) in Iron Man-style power suits, and Raiden is no longer a thunder god, but instead gets his electrical powers from an amulet.
We also see a gameplay system that revolves around assists in the Kameo Fighters, who are largely comprised of classic, retro versions of fan favorite characters who do not appear on the actual playable cast. Fans of Sonya Blade, Kano, Jax, and Goro get to pick them as assists, but cannot actually play as these iconic characters, and that rubbed some people the wrong way.
Add into this witch’s brew bugs and unintentional behaviors consistently sprouting up with seemingly every update (the game’s latest DLC fighter, Ghostface, came equipped with inescapable, unblockable touch-of-death set ups that has already resulted in tournament bans), aggressive pricing on additional content offerings, and overall gameplay that, while currently might be in its best spot yet, hasn’t been all that well received by fans, and you start to get an idea of why many are believing the leaker’s claims about DLC cancellations and ending support.
Mortal Kombat co-creator and Chief Creative Officer at NetherRealm Studios, Ed Boon, famously said back in September that “NetherRealm is still fully committed to supporting Mortal Kombat 1 for a long time to come,” and back around when Khaos Reigns was first revealed in July, he also mentioned that the development team was “pretty sure when we launched Mortal Kombat 1 that we were going to be doing years of content, and this is year two.” But things can change and sometimes it’s out of the developers’ control.
So, if these leaker’s claims are indeed true, it sounds like Mortal Kombat 1 might be suffering a similar premature content support conclusion fate that Mortal Kombat 11 did. And with this, we go back to… what’s next?
Since Mortal Kombat X, NetherRealm has been experimenting with ways of adding more to the series’ combat system. In Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11 there were variations of each fighter that players could choose from which would ultimately change the tools a fighter has at their disposal in a match, and it made things a bit complicated at times.
As mentioned previously, Mortal Kombat 1 goes for more depth with the Kameo Fighters system. The meta revolves around finding not only a strong main roster character, but also a strong assist to supplement their abilities, and picking a combination that synergizes well is key and adds more layers to the gameplay.
For the next Mortal Kombat game, which we can deduce is coming again after MK1 due to Warner Bros. making it one of the four main franchises the company is focusing on going forward, it might be time for NetherRealm to go back to the basics and make the next title a 1v1 experience with just a single fighter to select and no gimmicks.
Mortal Kombat 9 is still revered as one of the best fighting games the franchise has ever produced and is considered one of the best fighting games of all time for some, and it stuck with the traditional formula of just 1-on-1 kombat. It might be time for the franchise to steer back in that direction, while also putting a heavy focus on the other things the franchise does well in blockbuster story modes and character customization.
All of the aforementioned fighting games that NetherRealm Studios has released have been 2.5D fighting games, and with back-to-back Mortal Kombat games having been released in recent years with potentially another on the way (again, if support for MK1 is truly nearly at its end), then another potential direction for the franchise could be a return to the 3D landscape.
Though fans typically prefer the 2D battleground for Mortal Kombat games and the series’ most successful competitive entries have all been that, there are several 3D entries that are still widely appreciated by fans.
It has been a long time since we’ve seen a 3D fighter version of Mortal Kombat, and if NetherRealm really wants to shake things up after Mortal Kombat 1, that is certainly a strong way of doing so. Funny enough, we haven’t seen a proper 3D Mortal Kombat game since 2008’s Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (which was produced by the now defunct Midway Games), which brings us to our next potential direction…
MK vs. DC was a game that could best be described as “lukewarm.” People don’t hate it, but they certainly don’t love it, and a large part of why comes down to the main concern you might be thinking of when you hear the game’s title — it’s a Mortal Kombat game without its trademark blood and gore.
While Mortal Kombat characters can definitely exist in a world without the excessive violence the series is known for, which has been proven by several fighters from the franchise appearing as guests in the Injustice games, having an entire game where that’s the case just doesn’t feel quite right and lacks one of the main attributes that makes Mortal Kombat memorable and unique.
NetherRealm could make another attempt at this endeavor here in the modern era and potentially attempt to garner interest both from Mortal Kombat fans and those who love the DC Comics characters, but the same issue would very likely still remain as the likes of Batman and Wonder Woman simply cannot be seen getting ripped apart limb from limb by an undead sorcerer.
What could be very interesting is another Mortal Kombat vs. DC game that instead shifts over to 2D from its original 3D and basically combines some of the ideas from recent Mortal Kombat games and the Injustice series. We have already seen tastes of this with the aforementioned MK guests in Injustice and seeing characters like Homelander, Omni-Man, and Peacemaker taking on the likes of Sub-Zero, Scorpion, and Kitana in MK1.
Warner Bros. stated that Mortal Kombat is among the four main franchises they will be focusing on for video games going forward, but that does not explicitly mean fighting games.
Fans have been clamoring for a sequel to the highly renowned PlayStation 2/original Xbox classic Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks for so many years now. This title originally released in 2005 and instead of being a standard fighting game deviated away and acted as an action-adventure beat ’em up that starred Liu Kang and Kung Lao.
This game could be played single player or as co-op with each player controlling one of the main protagonists, and Shaolin Monks was essentially a retelling of the events of Mortal Kombat 2 as Liu Kang and Kung Lao fight to protect Earthrealm from the threats of Outworld.
The demand for a sequel to this game has been there for years now, so it might be time to finally give it another shot and release an action adventure title that could either be a true sequel or a brand new game with a similar style.
Though, releasing something like this might be a big risk here in this day and age as it would deviate away from Mortal Kombat’s core at a time where the competitive fighting game scene and pro tournament circuits are still a major part of its identity.
If Mortal Kombat 1’s content support is actually ending with Khaos Reigns and Kombat Pack 2, where would you like to see the franchise go next? Let us know in the comments below.