Mortal Kombat 11’s Fatalities Are Probably Going to Be Gross
Mortal Kombat 11’s art director Steve Beran has been with the series since the ’90s, which means he’s since a lot of fatalities in his lifetime. In a recent Kotaku interview, he described the team’s goal of making fatalities funny (but not too funny) and also revealed the key to a good one.
“To some degree, there’s a filter we have,” he said. “More often than not, we never do anything that’s terribly sad. I don’t think it’s ever intentional. I think we’ve just done it so long that they tend to be more funny than anything.”
In regards to the key to a great fatality, Beran said that it’s rhythm
“If there’s too much of a drag between beats, it’s like ‘Let’s tighten that up,’” he said. “It could look cool, but if there’s not this dah, dah, dah, we adjust it to make it feel right.”
Beran also touched on the work that goes into making fatalities, which involves hours upon hours of testing.
“We do a lot of testing of, like, how liquid will land on carpet, how it’ll react on dirt,” he said. “And we do tests and talk about them like ‘Does that look how you’d think it would look?’… If I get blood on my shirt, it’s gonna get dark, so it needs to react appropriately. Our tech artists dig into that and make it look very real.”
“The fatality process is awesome,” he added. “It’s some of the most fun work.”