Mortal Kombat 11 is Game Informer’s May 2019 cover

Posted on April 2, 2019 by Brian(@NE_Brian) in News, Switch

Game Informer has revealed that its cover story for May 2019 is Mortal Kombat 11. You can see what the design looks like above.

For the new issue, Game Informer “played a near-final build of the game and talked to its developers to learn how Mortal Kombat has maintained such a massive audience, and how this entry hopes to take things even further.” The magazine pulls back the curtain on a new character and has 14 pages of coverage.

Additionally, Game Informer has already put up a few features online that detail new aspects about the game and future plans. We’ve summarized the main points below, but you can read even more at the source links.

Custom Variations

– Custom variations system lets you change the look of your character and moves they bring into battle
– The degree of customization creates some issues when it comes to ranked and especially local tournament play
– NetherRealm is planning to scale the feature back for those situations
– In local versus and casual online matches, players can use whatever custom version of a character they’ve created, including augments that provide bonuses like increased damage for certain moves, increased experience from performing fatalities, and more
– Players can choose to opt out of these augments
– Not knowing what moves your opponent has going into a match can be an issue,
– NetherRealm’s answer to this problem is to create a set of pre-built variations for ranked and tournament play, similar to Mortal Kombat X’s
– Each character will have at least two pre-built variations using the same three-slot system as custom variations
– The number of variations per character could differ
– The goal is to use as many of a character’s equippable moves across these variations as possible, but the priority will be to make sure these variations give every character a strong toolset.
– NetherRealm plans to balance custom abilities, when necessary, with these specific variations in mind, and could also change the variations themselves
– Depending on feedback from the community, they can swap moves in and out, make certain moves take up two slots instead of one, and more
– You’ll still be able to take your custom character’s look online, and will be able to use augments that don’t affect gameplay

Post-launch DLC

– NetherRealm has plans to add even more skins and gear to the game post-launch as DLC
– Custom moves are a different story, but the developer isn’t ruling them out
– More moves would require more work since motion-capture would be involved, and properly animating each move to make sure it fits in with the rest that character’s moveset
– NetherRealm also has to consider the balance implications each move would have
– NetherRealm is listening to player feedback
– If Mortal Kombat 11 does well enough to maintain a steady community, more content could be added based on that
– You won’t be able to pay for the consumable items you can use inside the Towers of Time mode, which means players won’t be able to pay extra money to top the leaderboards

Towers of Time

– This mode features various themed challenges, such as having enemy attacks coming in from offscreen, fights themed around a certain motif, and more
– Some towers and fights, will harken back to a feature that last appeared in 2011’s Mortal Kombat reboot: Tag-team battles
– The feature won’t return as a standard mode
– Some towers in Towers of Time will be themed around tag battles
– In these towers, you play as two characters you can swap between using the right stick
– The swap is quick enough to let you pull off two-character strings, which could make it a fun avenue for players who like to put elaborate, unconventional combos together
– There are also group battles
– No factions or clans this time around
– In these fights, two players take turns fighting a powerful boss
– The player who isn’t actively on the field can help their friend throwing out assist attacks
– You can also take on these bosses as a tag team, swapping in and out on the fly
– Tower of Time has a form of competitive co-op with leaderboards
– At the end of each tower, you’re given a few rewards and a score
– At the end of the week, you will earn bonus gear and items depending on how well you did across all towers versus the rest of the playerbase, which offers an incentive to keep coming back and earn high scores