Hello again MK Wiki!
We had a chance last week to sit down with Brian Goodman, Marketing Game Manager at NetherRealm Studios, and ask him some of your questions about Mortal Kombat X. We also had a chance to spend some hands-on time with the game and check out the new Faction Wars mode.
The Faction Wars mode tracks the player's progress over the course of a week and awards them faction points for their accomplishments in both single and multiplayer. At the start of every week, players choose one of five factions: Special Forces, Black Dragon, White Lotus, Lin Kuei, or The Brotherhood of the Shadow. Choosing a faction reskins the game's menus in the style of that faction for the week. Factions are both region and platform agnostic, so the weekly struggle will be truly global. Should your faction win, you'll receive both temporary and permanent rewards, including faction specific fatalities. Mr. Goodman was quick to point out that the unlocks are not drastically game changing, and won't give Faction War winners an unfair advantage.
We also checked out MKX's new Living Towers feature. Akin to the Challenge Tower from MK9, the Living Towers are split into Quick Tower, Daily Tower, and Premier Tower. Quick Tower is roughly 5 fights, takes 15-20 minutes to complete, and refreshes every two hours. Daily Tower is a longer series of fights that refreshes daily, and Premier Tower is a themed tower reserved for special events and celebrating historic moments and milestones in Mortal Kombat's history.
Like the old Challenge Tower, the Living Towers present players with challenges that add special win conditions and hazards to regular kombat; Portal Kombat adds random portals to the level, Cyrax Assist adds random Cyrax Bombs to the mix, and Dark Kombat has the screen periodically go completely black. Players will need an online connection in order to participate in the Tower events.
Questions[]
We tried to ask as many of your questions as possible, but, as with any pre-release game, they tend to have careful plans for releasing new info, so getting direct answers for questions about DLC and new characters unfortunately wasn't possible.
That said, we did get some answers/clues to your questions:
- Character variations will not be customizable.
- It's "possible" that the game will feature other characters like Cassie Cage, who are the offspring of existing characters.
- The Story mode will be roughly the same length as MK9's, and will feature a similar system, where the player uses multiple characters over the course of the story.
- When asked if the story, set 25 years after MK9, would utilize flashbacks and flashforwards, Mr. Goodman said "perhaps".
- Living Towers mode will not force the player to use any one character variation, they're free to choose.
- No word yet on netcode specifics.
That's all for now! Thanks again for the questions!
