Ed Boon Explained Why Mortal Kombat Universe Was Restarted

The Mortal Kombat 1 launch attracted attention not only from the FGC. Taj Smith, contributor for Chicago Mag, talked with Ed Boon about many topics, including the game itself.

One of the main questions asked was about the intentions behind the reboot of the Mortal Kombat universe. Here is what the co-creator of the franchise answered:

"For those who are counting, this is our 12th Mortal Kombat. And with each game, we introduced another big boss villain, who was even more powerful than the last. We came out with this character in Mortal Kombat 11 called Kronika, who was the keeper of time and pretty much the Supreme Being of the universe. We figured that after her, there are no more steps to take. It’s not like we could create someone that was even her boss.

The idea was that Liu Kang, who’s kind of like the Bruce Lee or Luke Skywalker of Mortal Kombat, ascended to godhood and decided to create a new universe entirely from scratch. The idea was to have this Big Bang event where we could take all of our original characters and give them brand new origin stories and new relationships with each other. Our naming conventions have been kind of all over the place up to this point with Mortal Kombat (2011), then going to Mortal Kombat X, and finally Mortal Kombat 11. The name Mortal Kombat 1 really demonstrates how we’re starting over from the beginning."

It seems like this decision was successful. You can watch our spoiler-free review of Mortal Kombat 1 here.