• Posted November 10th, 2008 at 09:55 EDT by Steven Williamson
• 3,056 views
• 4 Comments

(continued from previous page) ...then had to look at how it would affect their character, for example, the joker is not much a fighter, but in the story he discovers that he can kick ass because he’s forced to fight to help save the Universe. He still has the same mentality as the joker does and he still pulls pranks, like the boxing glove out of the box, but he’s now more powerful so that he can counteract other character’s fighting skills.

Generally, we’ve fine-tuned the gameplay. We’ve spent weeks and weeks making characters a little stronger or a little weaker, a little faster or a little slower, trying to reach this point.

PSU: How have you managed to balance accessibility for those new to the fighting genre with depth for the hardcore players?

Lo: I’m glad you’ve brought that point up. I like to say that it’s easy to learn, but tough to master. Anybody can pick up the game, pull off a couple of easy combos and do a few special moves, but the more experienced guys can come in and link them together, get their timing down to a tee and do some crazy combos.

The ranked system online will also find people of the same skill. We like to think that the game is built for everybody to enjoy.

PSU: What can we expect from the online component? Are there some creative game modes or will it simply be a 1 vs. 1 straightforward fight to the death?

Lo: It’s pretty much a straightforward fighting game. You have ranked matches, or you can just play with your friends. This game was looked upon by the team as a re-set, starting over and stripping it down to the bare minimum of what makes a fighting game great. We just wanted to focus on the fighting, go back and look at the games we’ve done in the past and see what worked, what didn’t work and build from there.

PSU: We’re really looking forward to seeing how you’ve merged these two worlds together and the story behind how they managed to collide. What can we expect from the story mode? Will there be a branching storyline for each character?

Lo: There are basically two aspects of the story mode. You can choose MK or DC Universe. When you start out you choose which side you want to play as and then each chapter in that story is named after a particular character. It all ties in and you’ll find out along the way why heroes and villains are teaming up together. Essentially, they’ve all got the common goal of trying to save the universe.

When you reach the end, depending on which side you’ve chosen, you’ll witness the same result, but from two different perspectives.

PSU: We’ve heard plenty today about the new Freefall and Klose Kombat mechanic (hands-on preview coming soon!), but there are also some entertaining taunts that you’ve thrown into the mix, right? Can you tell us more?

Lo: Some of the characters have taunts, but not all of them do. Joker is one who does, he jumps around waves his hands and laughs, but the main focus is to keep it as simple as we could. There are more taunts, but I’ll leave you to find out the rest. I can’t give everything away.

PSU: Whilst playing MK vs. DC Universe we noticed that the booming soundtrack and the audio in general, specifically the voice acting, is of cinematic quality. You’ve obviously upped production levels from previous Mortal Kombat games.

Lo: We stepped up the production level and music is part of that. In previous Mortal Kombat games we would have done some of the stuff in-house, but we went out and contracted people to orchestrate the music so that it builds up to a crescendo; elements are very DC-ish.

The actors we used for story mode were all auditioned and DC were involved in the process, so there’s a unique sound to each character. They sound like what you’d expect them to sound like.

The same goes for the motion capture. We had several actors do the motion capture and all went through a rigid auditioning process. When a guy walked in with the joker's ... (continued on next page)

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