 right welcome everyone to the first combat cast for Mortal Combat 1. We are so excited to be back in this room talking to y'all. We can get a lot of tweets about it. There it is. We can get a lot of tweets about this. We're super excited to be here. Before we get started, um, introduce ourselves. I'm Tyler Lansdowne, one of the community managers here at Netherrealm Studios. I'm Derek Kurtzik, one of the designers here at Netherrealm Studios. Stephanie Bromback, QA Lead. Awesome. So it's been years. It has. It feels like a long time and this is like one of my favorite things to do and I'm excited to not see everyone but we know you're out there. You know, Twitter's been saying some stuff that we're going to show something cool today. I think, I think Ed might have said that to get ready for some cool stuff. Some cool stuff? I think we have plenty of cool stuff. I think we have mega cool stuff. So before we start with the actual stream, we're going to show a world premiere exclusive exclusive for Mortal Kombat one right now. Lin Kuei is a centuries old clan dedicated to Earthrealm's defense. I will need your help. The fate of the realm may depend on it. I will emerge victorious. We settle for defending Earthrealm when we could help lead it. I am with you. We may not share blood, but we are brothers. Abandoned traditions are secrets, and you like daggers from the sky. Lin Kuei's flame is not easy to smother. That was cool. I think that's a lot of things people haven't seen before. That is. That I will say. So as we like to do, I want to go through all of us and discuss what our favorite parts were. Mine is kind of weird. I got, well, obviously, characters being shown. Yes. Always important. A lot was shown. Yes. Me. It's a small thing. It's a cinematic thing, but I love it. It's that blade melting right in front. I loved it. So it seems so minor, but it's just so cool to me. I think it's awesome. I love goofy stuff. Sure. My favorite thing is the opponent's reaction to reigns move where he goes down like a toilet bowl. He's like, that makes me giggle every dang time I see it. For me, it's easy. I love the robots sector. Let's go. Robots rule. They are back. So that's super cool. Hope you enjoy the trailer. Now remember, when you're watching on stream, there can be some compression and whatnot. So make sure you go to our YouTube and watch it in all of its glory. Maybe 4k. I don't know. I'm sure we're going to try to pick as many things as we can. Yes. A frame by frame analysis. Yeah. And just tweet us everything you're thinking. Yes. It's coming. Another thing I want to talk about real quickly before we move on is the online stress test was a huge success thanks to all of you. Loved every second. I played a lot of it, did pretty well, then I didn't. I played a lot. I went 15 and 0. I was like, people, have they never played this game before? They haven't. And then it looked like I had never played the game before. Lost my streak. I mean, it was only 15. But it was fun. It was a lot of fun. The matches were quick. And it was good to play some Mortal Kombat again. It's awesome. I love it. I got on a Friday night, was playing some, was doing really well. Then I met a couple of people including another Katana player who beat the bejesus out of me. And after like five, I was kind of trying to make excuses in my head. I'm just tired, blah, blah, blah. Then after like, it was like six to one. And I was just like, you know what? I'm old. I'm washed up. I'm done. Turned it off. Just went to bed. You're retired again. Yeah. What else can you do but just say, hey, people are better these days. It is what it is. I'm out of here. Those damn kids. I'm glad they are. Yeah, it's great to see. We're super excited though for those of you who had a chance to play it. And also we got a lot of really excellent feedback from you, especially in the terms of dashing and that sort of thing. Hashtag dash block, hashtag dashing. So just keep in mind, you know, we see all that stuff. We listen to that stuff. Nothing to say right now. But you know, we're discussing all of it. Yeah, we definitely collected a bunch of information that we got from all the people on Twitter and other medias. And yeah, we're listening for sure. Yeah. So thank you so much for that excellent feedback. It's going to help us out a lot. You know, we're obviously trying to make the best game we ever have. So we want to make the most fun game. The phone is the number one. Absolutely. Also, one more thing before we keep moving. Evo is coming up. So we hope to see you there. Some of us will be in attendance. Can't wait. I'm really excited to go. Always excited. Yeah. I've gone every year for, geez, 15 years now or something. Bring your deodorant. It's going to be hot. It's going to be real hot. So we hope to see you there. That'll be awesome. Today, we're going to talk about some fun things. We're going to discuss cameos a little bit. A huge part of this game. Yes. A huge, amazingly fun part of this game, as I've gotten deeper and deeper into the game. Then we're going to walk through Scorpion. Pretty popular character. I've heard of it. I've heard of that character. He's kind of iconic. Go through one of my favorites, Johnny Cage, who has some new mechanics that are very exciting that we're excited to talk about. Still goofy and I love it. But before we do that, before we actually go to gameplay, let's talk a little bit about cameos themselves. Stephanie, what do you see cameos as? Cameos are kind of an extension of the way we've looked at player expression in the last few games. We had customizable loadouts, variations, and now this is something new where your roster character is going to be set, but then your cameo is you can go back and forth with and you could maybe shore up your weaknesses by giving yourself a projectile, or you could shore up your defense by having new mobility options, or maybe if your roster character doesn't have the best combos, you could have a combo-centric cameo. It's kind of a way to change the way you play while keeping your base roster character the same, and I would imagine some people are going to switch back and forth depending on a matchup. Some people are just going to have their favorites. Some people are going to base it off of lore. I will, absolutely. I will only do it if it sort of makes sense in my head. That's important. That's what I found about cameos, too, is that for me, it's like I as a fighting game player do have a lot of weaknesses. Yeah, yeah, they're really there to just compliment how you want to play. If you want to be a kind of zoner and have a cameo that also does additional zoning attacks, you can do that. Or like Stephanie was saying, if your character maybe has a little weakness over here, equip a cameo that will compliment it so that you have this full kit that you feel is the best for you, and everybody is going to play differently, and that's what's really, really exciting. And of course, there's a bunch of cameos that have been announced yet. They're all like that, so that you'll be very excited about. For me, it's such a cool, just extra thing to think about. And it really just multiplies the matchups. Like, oh, they're using this cameo this time. Now I have to think about this. Now I can, maybe they're not a combo centric this time. Now I have to watch out for traps. That's interesting. And they introduce a new level of just chaos, too, which is a lot of fun. They can absorb attacks. You can almost use them as like a decoy at times and things like that. It's going to be exciting to watch the community explore the cameo system. It's awesome. So I guess what we should do now, Stephanie, would you like to go through Kung Lao? Yeah, that sounds like fun. So cameo Kung Lao is one that we've shown in gameplay trailers, but he wasn't in the stress test and all that. So we haven't really got a full look at his moves. So let's go through them. For sure. One of the cool things about cameos, it's an opportunity to have like these classic versions of characters. And cameo Kung Lao is based on Mortal Kombat 2 Kung Lao. It allows them to also, they look like the classic characters and they have kind of classic moves. Exactly. Which is awesome. Like the spin. And like the effects look just like they did back then. Exactly. Like the little silver outline. Yeah. So this is your classic combo starter. Maybe you're playing a character who doesn't have great pop-ups. Kung Lao can help you out. Or like Derek said, you can also double down. Maybe combos is your thing and you can do even more. Oh yeah. So he also has low hat, which is a pretty quick projectile and you can actually combo out of it. And then lastly, he has his teleport. Let's go. And this is a great example that cameo moves are not just like combos or like offensive moves. Some could be mobility tools, buffs, e-buffs, weird stuff like that. Like it can be pretty creative. Yeah. Across all the cameos that will be coming out, you're going to see a lot of different like things you would not necessarily expect for them to do. Exactly. Like we've talked about it. It allows you to really like our biggest, the biggest thing for us that the line is, you know, player expression. Exactly. And this is going to let the player really choose what they do with their character. Yep. And the same character can be with a number of different cameos. It's just, there's so many iterations. It's awesome. It's also really cool because it's allowed us this opportunity to bring back characters you haven't seen in over a decade in some cases, which is really awesome. There are definitely ones like that coming. That's for sure. But yeah, no. And of course, Kung Lao will have a classic throwback fatality, but I don't think we're going to show it. Not today. But I do also love the classic fatalities that are also accompany the cameos. It's just another way for you to, you know, finish a match. It's so cool. They are pretty much across the board exactly what you'd want to see. And they have just never looked better. Yes. I don't want to tease too much. But like, cameo Kung Lao, you can probably guess and it's just so good. Yes. Yeah. It looks, looks great. And you'll see it soon. You'll see it soon enough. Yep. So that so cameo is just generally like a huge part of this game. Yes. They are involved in your combo breaker, your fatal blow, your throws, they're just the cinematics, the intros, the victory screens, like they're integrated in the gameplay anesthetically pretty much as much as possible. Yeah. And like we talked about, like the one thing we were always talking about is player expression. This is just another way to bring your like the one thing that we've and we've seen it during the online stress test, one of the coolest things about our community is the creativity that they have. Oh yeah. I've been in this building for a while seeing stuff that I think is awesome. I mean, you know, every just awesome stuff here. And all of a sudden I'll see somebody pick up something and see on the online stress test and be like, oh, that's, that's possible. Yeah. I've still never seen that. That's the first time I'm seeing it. Yeah, absolutely. And I always kind of look at the cameo system is like, you've got your main fighter and then the cameo is kind of your teammate, like you're building almost like a loadout sort of right. And it's sort of like, how do I want to play my main character and compliment him? What's my loadout going to be my team loadout? And that's always how I've seen like the whole cameo system. One of the ways I like to look at it is my favorite thing about it is it kind of allows you to, I guess you could say break the rules of the game or the balance, like there'll be certain moves that, well, this is an armored move, but it doesn't pop up for a combo. So you have armor, but you don't do a lot of damage. There's some situations with like cameo, Sonia, where now you can combo off that like sub zeros, EX slide, you can actually get combos off of it. Or there's certain moves that you're not supposed to be able to combo off of, but you can. You can like, you can use the Sonia cameo to combo off an uppercut. Exactly. It's like for 30 years you normally can't combo off an uppercut. You just get your big hit, but with that square wave, you can, and it really feels like you're like breaking the rules. Yeah, just doing stuff that's forbidden. It's the best feeling. Real quick, just at the end of the stream today, I wanted to mention this before I forgot, we do Derek and I like to play occasionally. Yes. I don't know if our fingers are quite ready. Mine are. Yours are just old. That's accurate. That is accurate. Yeah. We did have QA, Pete, and Ryan, and Matt. They all kind of put their heads together and put together a fight between our two featured characters today. Tyler is scared. I'm scared. Tyler is scared. But the fight is awesome. We can't wait for you to see that. You're going to see how they play in real life. Way better than us. Way better than us. Like you're not going to see that high level with us. We've had two or three good matches in like 10 years. Maybe, yes. I'll give us that. So anyway, so that's that. Cool. That is cameos. What are we on to next? I think it's time to show off Scorpion. I'm excited about it. Oh, okay. All right. So Scorpion is back and like most of the returning characters in MK1, our design team kind of looked at 30 years of history. Kind of like Liu Kang reshaped the world, you know, in his vision. Right. Our design team kind of looked at the past. It was like, what are the core moves that you absolutely have to bring back? Absolutely. What are the moves that you want to kind of give a fresh coat of paint? Yeah. And then what's the new stuff that we could do? Always got to keep it fresh. Exactly. So with Scorpion, you start off, you have the spear, and you have the telek board. Basics. 1992, you have to have it, they're back, get over here. You get over there. But then from Deadly Alliance, Hellfire is back. Love it. And then that tracks, of course. Yes. In this game, it is a low. It is not unblockable. But if you exit, it'll be the classic unblockable version. It lights you on fire. Okay, cool. Then he has some new stuff, primarily using his rope and the hook at the end. Right. So I'm not even going to try and say what it is. I know, but I'm not going to try and say. Yeah, it's too much pressure to get it right. Fair. He has this super long range sweep, anti-air. It's used in a bunch of strings. And he has special moves with it. I call that the... That's what it's called, a new move list. And then one of the cool new moves is air spear, where he yanks them in in the air. Right. And this goes perfectly well with what I want to talk about next, which is the air combos. Air combos are back. They haven't been in a game for 20 years. 2006. Yeah. Just going on that. It's going on 20 years. Oh, and I love that combo. It's like almost classic MK3 smoke. Yes. Right. The knee to the papa. So air combos can be used to end combos, but they can also extend them. Like you'll see here, just do the one thing in the air, they bounce up and you can continue. See if you're playing today. I'll be doing this too. There's also some that end in throws, splats, all different kind of reactions. Where is a swaggy combo? We got it. Oh, I wouldn't have done that. No, no, no, no, no. And then you can also do cool stuff with your cameo. Like you were saying earlier, maybe you want to double down on your stuff you can do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Also, I think it says 3-3-3 combo also reminds me of like a classic combo too. Yes. Yeah, like the another MK3 combo, right? That's right. Oh my gosh, I love it. Just those little nods and throwbacks is some of my favorite. Air combat is one of my favorite things in this game as well. I've had so much fun just like trying to like rack my brain fear on what to do in the air and there's so many choices too. Yeah, then the number of combo routes in this game are like really extensive and it's super fun. You can also, one of the coolest things is the cameos is coming with combos on the fly. Yeah. Like while you're actually playing and you're like, oh, I can convert into this and then you do it, like stuff like that. It feels awesome. One of my things that I also really like too, is that like, you know, in previous games, you kind of get, there's a lot of air movement, air pokes, jump attacks and things like that. But now like, if I just meet you in the air with a punch, we can extend that into a combo now, right? Which hadn't been done before and it's so much fun to like get into those too. That's interesting because you have your ground footsies and now maybe you have your air footsies. Right, right. Like it's crazy. That's fun. I love it. I am so excited. Well, I think we should take a look at Johnny Cage. Oh, the Cage? Well, do you want to, do you want to, before we do that, you want to do some, oh, you, oh, yeah. So while Stephanie's setting up Johnny Cage here, I want to talk quickly, while Stephanie was walking me through Johnny Cage, I was, every single character I see in this game, I'm like, I'm going to do that character. I'll play that character. You do that every game. I know I do. You do it every game and you start with them all. Except for like one, maybe two. Wow. Your bane was good. That was all right. Johnny is a different level though. Johnny, there's something to Johnny that I'm just super excited about. And you'll see it here in a moment. We're getting it all set up. Yep. So let's talk about Johnny Cage. Goofy as always. Yes. So one of the main things about Johnny Cage is he is a mix-up and pop-up combo starter machine. Yep. Like, we're not showing it yet. Are we showing it? Let's go. Let's go do it. All right. A ton of his moves pop up for a combo. And one thing that you'll notice quickly is he doesn't have like his traditional Johnny Cage energy, right? Like, you know, he could manipulate energy when he was doing his kicks or he would throw the force balls and things like that, right? Like he doesn't use this as a more of a grounded character but still has those same attacks, right? Right. In fact, he does not have the energy balls at all. In the new era, Liu Kang has reshaped the world and Johnny Cage is strictly anti-zoning. He hates it. He can't stand it. But what a world. No magic. Yeah. To make up for that, he has excellent rushdown and unique ways to get in. Yeah. So one of the new moves we'd like to show is this command dash. He quickly goes in. You can use it to cover space. And if you're close, he can actually go through the opponent. He can also do it twice. Which helps you close in pressure, of course, too. Exactly. You know, is he vulnerable during that time? He is. Okay. Gotcha. Another new thing he has, which I think is one of the neatest thing about him, is the hype meter. I got to hype it up. This is it. This is the thing. This is what sold you. So in the corner, you can see the little star. Yeah. As he does special moves and certain taunts, he'll start to build it up. Right. So what are the taunts? Well, if you hold L2 after doing some of his special moves, he will hold a pose and look really cool. And notice the star is filling up. Yes. Yeah. I'll do some other stuff so you can see. So for example, he has his nut punch, but he can actually hold it and do a talent version. Then once it's full, you're fully charged. And when you're ready, Sounded well out. You activate it. So this gives you the ability to special cancel special moves in the other special moves. That's a lot of special and canceling. Oh, so you do double nut punch. That's right. Yeah. And can't you do like multiple kicks in a row and just be like, Now, if that's not the top of fun, I don't know what is. This is what excited me the most. And also like, I think we talked about it. Some of the information got out during our event in Los Angeles that you have, if you go down, down, down, down, it's a taunt now. You got a tea bag. That will also give you height meter. So there's something else the height meter does that's really neat. It allows him to get an ex move without the cost of a bar. So for example, ex rising uppercut combos. So let me build it up. Once you're in height, come on. You can hold the button down and get a free version of it. So once per combo, a free ex move. That's awesome. So you can use this to do simple stuff like you could do a shadow kick. They try to punish it, use special cancel in a nut punch, then special cancel into uppercut, and then for free without using a bar, you can get an air combo, then bringing your cameo to extend it, maybe Jack's backbreaker and then finish your combo. So big, big damage if you've got the height thing up. And it's just fun to do. It's also incredibly fun to do and it's super fun to hear the crowd. We will see some amazing versions of it in the fight at the end of the show today. Lastly, there's one more mechanic I wanted to show. Johnny Cage is a unique mechanic where he can actually break a throw, use one bar a meter to break your arm and then disable your throws for limited time. So if you can neutral jump and do a throw, I'll show you. Oh. That was not a neutral throw. What? Oh, sorry, it was. I just missed time. Oh, good. So there you go. Now I am pounding on the throw button and nothing happened and I cannot throw. Yeah, that is so cool. So it does take a bar, but it's a pretty neat mechanic. So a little bit of time. Yeah. That's awesome. That's what I love. I just I love the little the just the little bits of new Yes. New energy coming into the game is super fun to see. You always got to keep them fresh. That mechanic is just super neat. Like, because I love throwing. Yes. My throw punishers are broken. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's awesome. You don't really throw up on them. Okay. All right, we'll see. Yeah, we're good. All right. So that is Johnny Cage. Super excited. I'll take the glasses off of you and do a little. Yeah. No, it really can't. They have this. Yeah. Yeah. So very, very cool. Two very, two very different characters. Yes. Both look awesome. Rumi Baud has some work to do, honestly, on the stage over there. Rumi Baud is the real star. He really is. He's going to keep Cage's mansion clean. I'm so excited to see people like it. Again, our players love, love to show off sometimes and it's defining the times to use those taunts and not get blown up by doing it. Yeah. I think you'll see in the upcoming fight that we're going to show the kind of trade-off where you want to do the shadow kick and then hold the kick and all that. But then you open yourself up, but you did get height meters. So maybe it's worth it. It's a really neat mechanic. That's awesome. Johnny Cage, definitely looking super cool. And remember, Kick-Aged. Remember what we always say, work in progress still. Yes. Things might change. I'm sure there might be some frames in your brain that you're working on. Things might change. Some combos might not work the same launch, which happy last time we all remember. Design likes to tinker and yeah, we're still working for our turn the dials. So just keep that in mind, obviously. So Derek. Hi. Listen, there it is. Derek has some birthday shout-outs to do. I do. I do. I do. It's been a while. It's been two years. So we have two years worth. You have to go fast for these. Okay. No, I'm just joking. I'm just joking. All right. Happy birthday. We've got Ryan Tori, Jandy, Dan Weiland, Chris Chapman, Brian Fox, Andrew Richmond, Vince Wilder, Antonio de Francesco. I hope I didn't mess that up. I'm going to mess some of these up. Cole Krivosky, Bob Perry, Carly Gemel. I got that one wrong. I'm sorry. Molly, Stephanie's cat, Calvin Milligan, Matt Erickson, Hector Sanchez, John Vogel, Kara Zara, you know you, Rocco Marquise, Royce Wood, Peter Benson, Josh Gutierrez, my gooey, Joe Berger, we all love him, Jerry Guarnicki, Kelly, and Cassidy Payhan. They're my family. And most importantly, Grimace. Happy birthday, Grimace. There we go. Everyone, thank you so much. That was a fun one. We, Mortal Kombat, no date in particular right now, but follow us on, follow the Mortal Kombat social. That is where we will announce any of that. But before we do go, again, special thanks to the QA team, Ryan, Pete, Matt for putting this together. We have a fight now that we're going to show you between Johnny Cage and Scorpion showing how they actually work in a real fight. Take a look. Cool. All right, that's classic. I've used that move before. Well, you do act like a 12 year old. That is accurate. And Johnny Cage clearly has the home advantage. Yeah, that's true. Although, I mean, you could make the case that he's going to be more tentative while fighting because he doesn't want to break everything in the past. Oh yeah, he definitely would not like him growing up. Right. Some really nice looking art in that home and an indoor pool in the front room. There's a giant picture of himself in there as well, which I absolutely love. I need to get one of those, of me. There he goes through the hold. Oh, that's a perfect example. He risked it to get that meter up and totally lost because of it. But one of the little meta things there is maybe he felt it was a losing round anyway. It's worth it to have it for the next round. Fun fact, during development, the flamingo back there, like there are multiple times where if you did like a big hit or something, it would just go fly out of the pool. I hope they didn't fix it. Ooh, good punish on that. Back three row. The breakers look so cool in this. I love it because again, with cameos, they're all different. Yes. Good punish. Oh, and it's swagging. Wow. Losing the teleport in a combo. Very, very cool. Oh, and that overhead kick gets me all the time. I love the cameras on the throws too. They're very, very cool. Oh, Kano came in. You cancelled out of it. Yep. He just wanted to check it out. All right. One more. If you need me, I'm here if you need me. Now, he's been sitting on hype. He has not activated the whole time. Oh, excellent use of Kano's cameo there too. Here we go. Very smart from Scorpion. He was ready for it. The hype mode is active. Here we go. Oh, my God. How many times is he going to hit the person in the crotch? Wow. A 50% combo with hype. Way to possibly the last round. Yeah. Excellent with Scorpion there. I almost forgot how rounds work there. I love this throw. He's sitting back there taking frame of it. Oh, that Johnny Cage. Oh, he almost taught him right there. He would have gotten the uppercut brutality if that was the case. Scorpion wants nothing to do with this. Oh, so do you want to explain that? His fatal blow, the attack into it is actually a parry that he can hold. And it catches you. Yeah. Give him some likes. Give him some major likes here. We're going to save that for next time. For another time. Not next time. Okay. Nice. Love it. Well, big things to QA. That was an awesome fight. Yes. That was fantastic. When they first sent it to me, I was like, Oh, that's exactly what I wanted. Yep. Just amazing. So we will have some more of those throughout the, throughout our combat cast. Yeah. Because we want to show off that level of play and not. It's a balance theme because some people really enjoy watching us fight. Some people really hate watching us fight. So we have to give it to both people. But we would actually like to be good at characters. I mean, I would still destroy you today. I'm sure. Yeah. That said, I think that's it. Thank you. You said when the next one was? We have not yet. I know. Just follow our, follow our Mortal Kombat Twitter and all of our social for that. Everything is still a work in progress. And be sure you pre-order to make sure you get Shang Tsung, right? Make sure you do that. Again, so excited to be back and see everybody again. It's, it's just been, we've been, we've been working on this and so excited to get back on the stream and we have Mortal Kombat and so many cool things to show you. Remember, after you get off of this, go on to YouTube and watch the trailer again, watch it and all of its glory. Five times in a row. Yeah. So make it 50. Somewhere between that. Somewhere between that. So thank you all so much. We will see you next time. Bye. Bye.