Hi, my name is Ed Boon,

and I'm the creative director at NetherRealm Studioses

and co-creator of Mortal Kombat.

We are here to talk about each and every character

in Mortal Kombat 11.

Baraka was introduced in Mortal Kombat II.

The coolest thing about Baraka is obviously his blades

on his arms as well as those crazy teeth of his.

Fun fact is his teeth were actually

fake nails that we found at a costume shop

that we put together to make these kind of vicious teeth.

He is a Tarkatan warrior,

and his race was kinda like always in jeopardy

in the Mortal Kombat universe

and he was kinda like representing them.

I personally think that Baraka is one of the coolest

looking characters in Mortal Kombat 11.

He's got a lot of legacy, people knowing

what he's looked like since 1993,

but the visual upgrade that we gave him in this game

is probably the best of any character in the game.

He's easily one of the most savage characters

in the Mortal Kombat universe.

Know what?

That was strike three.

Cassie Cage is the daughter of

Johnny Cage and Sonya Blade,

two characters who I don't think anybody would have seen

getting together, let alone having a kid.

She is the absolute perfect combination

of Johnny Cage and Sonya.

She has very disciplined military upbringing from Sonya,

but she's very flashy, very cocky, that's the Johnny side.

She's exactly what you would expect

a combination of Sonya Blade and Johnny Cage should be.

Cetrion is a new character in Mortal Kombat 11.

She is the daughter of our big boss Kronika.

She is there to serve her mother.

It's going to be really fun to see people's reactions

to what becomes of her

at the end of the Mortal Kombat story.

Cetrion's a good example of the challenges that we have

introducing a new character into the Mortal Kombat universe.

By now, we have about 80 characters in our roster

over the years, and whenever we introduce a new one,

the question is what haven't we done before.

And so, her relationship, the fact that she is

a character we're introducing who is

the daughter of another new character,

really gives us an open slate to do something interesting

and how she serves her mother and her interest

is a really big part of what makes her so interesting.

This one killed many on Shao Khan's behalf.

D'Vorah was a character that was introduced

in Mortal Kombat X.

She was one of the favorite

new characters in Mortal Kombat X,

so we knew we were gonna bring her back in Mortal Kombat 11.

I personally think a lot of D'Vorah's appeal is her look.

She is a very unique looking character.

She has these kind of ovipositors on her back

that she uses to stab her opponents, poison her opponents.

She is actually, consists of a human body

that has been taken over by bugs, insects,

and she has some of the more kind of gruesome story mode

killings that a lot of the other characters don't get to do.

So she really kind of represents

Mortal Kombat from that perspective.

She's also very interesting too in terms of her story.

She used to serve Shao Khan,

but at the end of the day,

she's really just loyal to herself and her people.

So she has some backstabbing moments

that you'll be very interested to see in Mortal Kombat 11.

Erron Black is another character introduced

in Mortal Kombat X

that is kind of like a wandering nomad in Outworld.

He's one of our more mysterious characters.

When we created him, we wanted

a lot of his backstory to be mysterious.

We put a mask on him.

We want people to really wonder

what the history of this character's been.

We do reveal a little bit more in Mortal Kombat 11,

but at the end of the day, we really want him to be

one of the mystery characters of the game.

I personally feel that the biggest challenge we had

with Erron Black was not to make him look like a

typical Western character.

We wanted to really push that whole nomad aspect of him,

the wanderer, the guy who doesn't really have a home.

I personally would have liked to have him

a little less cowboy than we had,

but I think that he's one of our cooler

mysterious characters in the game.

Like I'm patiently waiting to kill you?

With every Mortal Kombat game,

we do want to introduce a character

that players haven't seen in a long time.

Frost is a character that we introduced in,

I believe it was Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance.

The simple explanation might be

she's a female Sub-Zero but she's a lot more than that.

She has been cyberized but with Kronika's technology,

so she's a lot more advanced.

She still has the freezing abilities

but at a much more sophisticated level than the other

cyber ninjas that we've shown over the years.

Nothing within your power, Raiden.

Geras, Geras is one of the coolest new characters

that we are introducing in Mortal Kombat 11,

particularly because he can't be killed.

You can temporarily kill him,

but eventually he is going to rewind time

and come back to life

so he is kind of eternal.

In the game, as far as game play is concerned,

he can actually rewind time and put himself

or you in a situation that you were a few seconds ago.

He can affect the game clock,

so there were technological challenges

that our gameplay end designers faced

in terms of having the ability to rewind time.

The game needs to remember what happened a few seconds ago

and rewind it back to the beginning of that.

So he plays very different from other characters

as far as his design.

As far as his look is concerned,

I think he's one of the coolest looking new characters

that we have in the game.

Again, he's got this ethnic slash magical look about him

that I think a lot of players are really gonna gravitate to.

Probably one of the most unique characters in the game

and he has maybe my favorite fatality in the game.

It's so ridiculous.

He hits you on the back of the head

and your face and brains shoot out

from the front of your head.

It's pretty disgusting.

Now you seem overconfident.

Jade is a hidden character,

originally started as a hidden character

in Mortal Kombat II.

Back in the day, we loved to

give players peeks of characters that

were somehow hidden in the game,

and Jade was one of the first ones.

Reptile, I think, was the very first one.

You couldn't play as them, but you could fight against them.

Later, as we started expanding on the story,

we really gave her more of a history.

And in Mortal Kombat 11, we establish that

she's had this relationship with Kotal Kahn

that dates back, way back.

So she has really become a much more rounded character

than the kinda hidden, very shallow kind of representation

that we gave her in Mortal Kombat II.

Jade's fighting style, she has this really cool

staff that expands.

She uses it in combat.

She uses it in her fatalities as well,

and she has this great kind of boomerang type weapon

that she uses as well in terms of projectiles.

So she's a really great kind of keep away character.

So she was one of the few kind of all around kind of

weapons based fighters.

Then I hope it washes off, Kotal.

Jacqui Briggs, like Cassie Cage, is the offspring

of one of the classic Mortal Kombat characters.

So Jax had a daughter that ended up just like him.

Hang back, kid.

How about we keep this between me, myself, and I?

For gameplay, she's got these great arm guns on her,

and it's kinda like a little bit of a parallel with Jax

who has those kinda mechanical arms

he's kinda known for at this point.

So she kinda carries on that tradition,

a little bit more modern, a little bit more high-tech

than her dad obviously 25 years later.

Jacqui is one of my favorite looking characters in the game.

The actress and the model that we used

to create the Jacqui character is just perfect.

We were casting, when we saw her, we were like,

that is Jacqui, and we knew right away

that that was the character we were gonna use.

I often do double takes thinking that

it's an actual real person in there.

She looks so real.

How about you turn yourself in?

Jax is one of our classic characters.

We introduced him in Mortal Kombat II.

In Mortal Kombat III, we kinda gave him

these kind of cybernetic arms

which really became a big part of his signature look,

his signature moves that he does in the game.

Fun fact, in Mortal Kombat II, I was the voice of Jax.

I was the guy who would say, Gotcha.

And when he would bang the guy and keep punching him,

I was the voice for a number of characters

before we actually hired professionals to do that.

I was the voice of Scorpion,

Jax, Liu Kang in the first game.

Jax is one of my favorite characters in the game

just because he's our first kind of big brawler

type of fighter, big guy, big hits,

and not super agile like Liu Kang or Sonya would be.

Have you been to Hollywood?

Johnny Cage is Mortal Kombat 11's comic relief.

I think he is the funniest character we have ever made,

especially his antics in Mortal Kombat 11.

What did you do, Johnny?

Just what you asked.

Not what I meant by the splits.

In Mortal Kombat X, we kind of introduced

this kind of magic heritage that he has

that explains the green energy that he can shoot out,

and we also explained how he'd passed that on to Cassie.

While he is very much a funny kind of comic relief

with Mortal Kombat, at the same time,

Cassie was the winner of Mortal Kombat X

and it was because of this kind of magic power that he

gave her that let her win.

So he does have a really big important role

in the Mortal Kombat story after all..

Who hired this guy?

What the [bleep].

[Crew] Deadly uppercut, take 19.

I never forget a fight.

I've always been the biggest fan of The Flash

in the DC Universe, and Kabal was kind of

my personal outlet trying to get him into one of our games.

His super speed was absolutely inspired by The Flash.

When I put that move in the game,

we had to write a story about it.

So we kind of explained how he got the super fast speed.

Kabal in MK 11, you can actually see him in his burn state

and his pre-burn state,

and he has just this variety of gear,

that is, the very different variation of hooks

that he has in the game.

It's very cool to see his character in all his renditions,

tons of hooks, with the mask, without the mask,

burnt, non-burnt, and every iteration of Kabal

is represented with Mortal Kombat.

I only need two strikes to gut you.

Kano is one of the original bad guys in Mortal Kombat I.

He has this kind of rivalry relationship with Sonya.

That was really a big part of Sonya's motivation,

was when he killed her partner.

She is obsessed with getting revenge on him,

and he is easily our dirtiest character.

He will backstab anyone.

He will do anything for money.

He has no loyalty to anyone except for himself.

But he has been hired to, a number of times

throughout the Mortal Kombat storyline,

to do somebody else's bidding

and he doesn't care as long as he gets paid.

On behalf of them, you die.

Kitana was a character that we introduced

in Mortal Kombat II.

She is the daughter of Sindel,

and she has a very complicated relationship with Sindel,

Shao Kahn, Mileena, where there is probably more deceit

in her story than in any of the Mortal Kombat characters.

And what happens to her

and her continued relationship with Sindel and Shao Kahn

is one of the biggest beats in the Mortal Kombat 11 story.

Kitana and Mileena, as far as when we introduce them,

they were kind of motivated by our desire to have

the female versions of Scorpion and Sub-Zero.

We wanted two characters who kinda look the same

but were almost the polar opposites of each other.

And so, we came up with a costume

that can, the color can change,

and it can become a different person.

There were other wins of that in terms of just

from a technology standpoint,

the amount of memory that we had in these arcade games

allowed us to make two characters out of one.

But we really wanted to have the female version

of the Scorpion and Sub-Zero kind of

parallels but conflicts at the same time.

And that's pretty much what inspired the creation

of Kitana and Mileena.

Shao Kahn demands both.

Kollector is another new character

that we are introducing in Mortal Kombat 11.

He collects basically heads and body parts and hearts

from all the opponents that he has killed.

The hardest thing about making Kollector

was the technical challenges.

These additional arms that are on his backpack

were a design and technology nightmare.

In our game, we have what we call skeletons.

And so, we have medium male, big male,

small female, big female,

and the Kollector has his own skeleton as we call it

because he has the four arms,

we have to animate those independently of him

and give him his own unique skeleton,

and that introduces a ton of problems as far as

grows, special moves, fatalities, fatal blows,

all of those we have to kind of special case for Kollector.

So in the motion capture studio,

we would have somebody standing next to the

main motion capture talent

pretending to be his upper arms.

So they would kind of work in unison

to do the special move.

And then our animators would take those,

the second guy's upper arms and attach them to

the Kollector's backpack, and that's basically how we

managed to get more arms animated at the same time.

The color is reserved for Osh-Tekk Kahns.

Kotal Kahn is Shao Kahn after Shao Kahn.

Effectively, you can almost think of him as a boss,

but he's kinda like in the same vein as Shao Kahn.

And what's cool about this game is

Shao Kahn who was kinda from the past

and Kotal Kahn who's kinda like the present and the future,

with time folding, they actually meet.

And that's one of the big conflicts

that is in Mortal Kombat 11,

and they are basically battling for who is Kahn,

who is ultimately going to be the king.

So the challenge was kinda like

making him live up to the scope, the legacy,

the awesomeness that is Shao Kahn,

somebody in parallel like him

but Shao Kahn was the big boss in Mortal Kombat II and III,

Kotal Kahn we're just introducing.

How do we make him in the same league as Shao Kahn?

That was probably the biggest challenge.

My penchant for deadly headwear?

Kung Lao was one of our classic characters

that we introduced in Mortal Kombat II.

Our future, Liu Kang, it is insane.

Along with Liu Kang had the unfortunate outcome of

being killed and turned into a Revenant.

The thought of becoming you sickens me.

What was once one of our most noble characters

has become one of our villains now.

His journey along with Liu Kang's

and their kind of similar outcomes

is one of the things that is kinda revealed.

When we bring Kung Lao from the past

and he realizes that he and Liu Kang had died

and had become Revenants and are now bad guys,

the conflict that those four have together,

both Kung Laos, both Liu Kangs,

is to me one of the coolest kind of novelty moments

that you would see in our story mode

because seeing your future self having turned evil

and how you would react to that

is just such a big moment for a hero like

Kung Lao or Liu Kang.

Kronika is the boss that we are introducing

in Mortal Kombat 11.

She is the architect of every single event

that has happened in Mortal Kombat history.

This is not your destination.

We learn that she wanted everything to happen,

she knew everything was going to happen,

all the way up to the point where

Raiden cut Shinnok's head off.

It's so cool because she's the first

female boss character that we've had in the game.

She is the boss of bosses,

and I'm very excited to have people finally see

who's been running the show all along.

One of the biggest challenges with Kronika was

what she was gonna look like.

She actually started off as a male character,

and we tried a number of different concepts

that just wasn't resonating with us.

Somebody on the team suggested,

what if we make this character female,

and at that point, everything just kinda clicked together.

I am Kronika, keeper of time.

I mean, I come from the real world.

Liu Kang has been the hero of Mortal Kombat

since the very first one.

He is our protagonist.

He is the main hero.

He's the one who won the first two Mortal Kombat tournaments

and he unfortunately was killed

in the Mortal Kombat story and turned into

what we call a Revenant

and a Revenant being kind of like an undead version

of the character basically turned evil.

What's new about Liu Kang is we get to see him again

in his heroic self, and it's also even more interesting

is to see him interact with his Revenant self.

At the end of the day, Liu Kang in his current form

is still one of the bad guys,

used to be a hero and now he's a bad guy,

and that's what makes his story that much more interesting.

He's probably the sum of all of the heroes

that we've seen through our experiences with movies.

He is Bruce Lee, he is Luke Skywalker,

he is all of the kind of

martial arts and action movie heroes locked into one.

He is the ultimate good guy.

He is a Shaolin monk.

He is all about good.

He does not have ego.

I think he is the epitome of a hero

up until the point then he got killed.

Noob Saibot was one of our first hidden characters

in the Mortal Kombat arcade games.

He had no story at the time,

and then later on, we established him as Bi-Han,

who was the very first Sub-Zero.

His name Noob Saibot is actually my name

and John Tobias's name, our last names spelled backwards,

and it was something very silly

that we never anticipated to be taken seriously,

let alone become the lore of

part of the whole Mortal Kombat story, but there it is.

Mortal Kombat 11 has by far

the best visual and story representation of Noob Saibot.

In a lot of ways, he reminds me of Batman.

Mother would be so proud.

You look at him and you just go,

what is the history behind this character?

What is behind those masks?

What's the origin of this character?

And the fact that he is so shrouded in mystery

and is so cool and so many people are intrigued by it

and how he started with such a simple,

really dumb idea and a dumb name

that he's become one of our coolest characters.

Part of how interesting his story is

just from a development standpoint.

Raiden is the mentor to the Mortal Kombat characters.

From the very beginning, he was the one who was kind of like

guiding them, telling them what they need to do,

inspiring them, and he's a god,

so he can't participate in the tournament,

but he can stand on the sidelines and cheer.

But he's the thunder god,

so he commands a lot of respect.

But ultimately, he is kind of like the mentor

to all of the good guys.

Raiden is inspired by a number of action movies

that we all grew up on in the 80s and 90s.

Big Trouble in Little China had a big influence on us,

and so, there's a number of kind of

visual cues that we borrowed from

the character in that movie and applied to Raiden.

He has a lot more of a noble presence,

is less shrouded, like you can actually see his face,

but the hat and the electricity and all that

was kinda inspired, at least from the beginning,

based on that.

The Shirai Ryu embrace danger.

Scorpion is my favorite character

in the Mortal Kombat universe for a number of reasons.

Not only his look and his moves,

but he was the first character that we got in the game

that really set the tone of

how Mortal Kombat was gonna play.

We always wanted more outrageous moves

than the other fighting games that were out at the time,

so Scorpion, he teleports, he has this awesome spear

that's hooked to a chain that pulls the opponent in,

gives him a free hit.

He became a spectre because that voice was kind of like

a little hellish.

His infamous fatality, taking his mask off

and breathing fire on the opponent.

He was also, him and Sub-Zero were kinda like

the first rivalry that was in Mortal Kombat.

That really established a lot of the story

between those two that has extended

some 20 something years later.

He just represents so much to me

in terms of us starting Mortal Kombat

and where it's gone since then.

He will always be my favorite Mortal Kombat character.

I will open your veins.

Skarlet was one of the first DLC characters

in Mortal Kombat 9.

She's like the blood character.

She was created by Shao Kahn

from the blood of dead warriors.

Even though she was a DLC character in Mortal Kombat 9,

she was one of the most requested to come back

in Mortal Kombat 11, so when we had started this game,

we knew from the very beginning

that Skarlet was gonna be one of the characters

who was gonna come back with a completely different look,

a completely more sophisticated costume,

and we're very happy with how players have attached to her.

A few pints of blood is all I ask.

That's exciting for us because it's always a big challenge

to introduce a character when we have so many

and to have them stick and players want to see more of them.

The biggest challenge with Skarlet was probably

just how far we wanted to take the blood content.

Blood is kinda a queasy visual,

and her fatalities in Mortal Kombat 9

probably crossed a line a little bit

in terms of her kind of bathing in her opponent's blood.

I think we toned that down a tiny bit with Mortal Kombat 11

but where that line was was probably the toughest thing

with her, making her unique and cool and dangerous

but not getting too nauseous about it.

Trust me, I'm not your type.

Sonya Blade is one of the original

Mortal Kombat characters from the first game.

What's interesting is the first Mortal Kombat that we tested

did not have Sonya in it.

It was just six characters.

We put it in an arcade, and it was a huge, huge hit.

And at that point, we realized that

we needed more than six characters,

so we decided to add a female character.

We didn't have any female characters in the game,

and Sonya Blade was the result of that.

She was kind of like the military, special forces

component to the Mortal Kombat story.

Everything was kind of like a bunch of magic.

Johnny Cage was kinda Hollywood,

and Sonya was military,

so we really wanted to kinda represent

all these kind of walks of life

and she filled that void in real nicely.

Sonya is one of the few characters

who does not run into her former self.

I can't tell you why, but it's a big deal.

You'll have to play the game to see.

Savagery is no match for skill.

Sub-Zero like Scorpion is visually

the most recognizable character in the Mortal Kombat cast.

He has a very deep, soap opera-like

history and story and relationship

with a number of the Mortal Kombat characters.

The main adversary is Scorpion,

but visually, if you were to put any Mortal Kombat character

in front of people, I think Scorpion and Sub-Zero

would be the most recognizable.

In Mortal Kombat 11, I can't give away too much.

You will be surprised to see him working with Scorpion

in Mortal Kombat 11 after all the history

of their more adversarial relationship.

Shao Khan was introduced in Mortal Kombat II.

He was kinda like where we took our first step

to expanding the Mortal Kombat universe.

It wasn't just this tournament.

All of a sudden, it was for bigger stakes,

and Shao Kahn was kinda the head of all that.

His big hammer is very iconic to him.

You see him standing there with a big hammer,

you know who he is.

His helmet is very identifiable.

We got his shoulder charging swing with the hammer

function in the game.

We knew that there was something really special

about this character.

He was one of our most difficult to defeat

boss monster characters because of his,

that shoulder charge and that hammer.

But probably the hardest thing was toning him down

to the point where he was actually beatable.

He was just so ridiculously powerful in the arcades.

We had to kinda dial that down a bit.

Welcome traveler.

I am Shang Tsung.

Shang Tsung is the original

bad guy in the first Mortal Kombat game.

As far as the arcade game was concerned,

his powers were inspired by our lack of memory.

We had very little memory left for Shang Tsung's images,

and so, to make the most of what we can,

we said okay let's just make him

morph into the other characters

and use their moves.

And so, that really just inspired his ability

to turn into the other characters.

It was way more of a technical limitations that we had,

and so, that really gave him a mystique to him.

It was something that was carried into the movies

and other forms of media for Mortal Kombat,

and that's really what he's associated with right now.

People expect Shang Tsung to morph into other people

all because that first game didn't have enough memory to

give him a full move set.

Take what you want within reason.

You'll find the time spent here is well-rewarded.

Well, that's every character in Mortal Kombat 11.

I want to say thank you to all the Mortal Kombat fans,

both old and new.

And we can't wait for you to get your hands on

Mortal Kombat 11.

[Announcer] Finish him.

[Scorpion] Get over here.