Summary
Mortal Kombat 1was released in September to critical acclaim. The past couple of years have been something of a renaissance for fighting games, and the release ofStreet Fighter 6andMK 1have been emblematic of everything that’s going right for the genre. Both games reversed the course of their respective series' previous entries, which oversimplified the titles.Mortal Kombat 1returned to more experimental and open-ended gameplay and coupled it with strong single-player offerings and modern roll-back netcode, making online play smooth and enjoyable.
Months before the launch ofMortal Kombat 1, NetherRealm Studios had already announced the game’s first Kombat Pack. The Kombat Pack will consist of six primary Kombatants and fiveKameo Fighters. Alongside three returning characters, Ermac, Quan Chi, and Takeda, the first DLC expansion will also include three guest characters that are new to the franchise. These guests are Homelander, Omni-man, and Peacemaker. This selection aligns with previousMortal Kombatgame’s choices for guest characters, which have frequently featured villains of many varieties. What stands out from the crowd, however, is the fact that the pack seems themed around superhero media with one caveat.
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Supervillains Are Coming To Mortal Kombat 1
Mortal Kombatis no stranger to comic book villains.Mortal Kombat 11featured Batman’s nemesis,The Joker. Joker was included alongside the anti-hero Spawn, and the series has also featured a number of horror movie villains, such as Jason Voorhees.Mortal Kombat 1’s first Kombat Pack stands out, however, because it features two guest characters who are more morally complex than their third guest character counterpart.
While Omni-Man and Peacemaker have a degree of empathy to them, and it could be argued that they are not entirely villainous, no fan would claim that they are morally upstanding. That said, many players might hope that a second Kombat Pack would place these characters against morally correct heroes, but that seems unlikely.
Villains are a natural fit forMortal Kombat.The series' proclivity for extreme violence makes it so even the most morally upstanding characters in the series partake in grotesque acts of cruelty. While heroes have been guest Kombatants, they are typically characters likeRobocop, whose source material depicts him as being stripped of his humanity and is critical of the dystopic world that created him. Other heroes included in the series are Kratos and John Rambo, who are tragic anti-heroes depicted as struggling with their past actions and trauma in their respective series. Therefore,Mortal Kombathas never featured a guest character who is unambiguously a hero in the truest sense of the word.
Mortal Kombat’s Themes Makes The Inclusion of Heroes Unlikely
The inclusion of do-gooder superheroes inKombat Pack 2seems unlikely. Homelander killing someone in a grotesque manner is to be expected, and it’s hard to imagine the likes of any traditional superhero performingMortal Kombat’s fatalities. Leaks have suggested that the second Kombat Pack will include Harley Quinn and Deathstroke, and while this indicates thatMK1could include more comic book characters, NetherRealm is well aware of the tonal inconsistencies that morally upstanding characters would introduce to the series. Id Software’s demon-killing Doomslayer is also rumored to be included in this second pack, for instance.
Mortal Kombat 1shouldn’t expect any superheroes to accompany the guests of Kombat Pack 1 and this is actually for the best. Picking morally corrupt characters means NetherRealm can lean into the over-the-top violence that has defined the series' aesthetic since evil and twisted characters give the developers more freedom to create unpredictable brutalities and fatalities.
Beyond the addition of new fighters,MKgames have featured story DLC in the past.Mortal Kombat 1’s storyended on a weak note, so providing some extra narrative content could be a great fit for the game, especially for those who are not pulled in by the new single-player Invasion Mode.
Mortal Kombat 1is available now on PC, PS5, Switch, and Xbox Series X/S.
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