There’s one final thing we all want to know. There are fatalities, right? “We definitely want a move at the end of each match. We don’t know if we can call it a fatality. I’d love to have the ‘Finish Him!’ in there because to me that’s what Mortal Kombat is, but how far we go with it is the question. Superman doesn’t kill, so for him to do a move and ‘Fatality’ to come up wouldn’t work. But we’ll see.” Boon smiles as we leave, and we’re sure he’s thinking about ways to pitch DC the idea of Batman punching people’s noses into their brains. Because, after all, he knows that’s what people want to see. What a nice man.

Q&A: Steve Beran, Creative Director

MK’s come a long way with this game and you’ve had to change the way you work. Has it been difficult to adapt?

It’s been interesting. The first MK was five guys - now we have 100 plus. In the original game we’d go to army surplus stores or hire tailors to make Scorpion’s mask. Now we’re putting seams in the costumes for the next generation.

Have DC given you any hassle about how their characters should look?

They have a general idea of what they want. We try to stay away from the movie look because that’s a different universe. The MK look’s a bit dirtier and a bit grimier.

MK was one of the first games to use motion-capturing. Where do you get your kung fu types from?

There’s a talent agency that we’ve hooked up with. It’s one of those things that we take for granted - that we have this huge mo-cap studio. We can actually motion-capture fingers now. It’s ridiculous the subtleties you can pick up. We’re also really exploring facial animations because there are certain modes where you can really come up close to the game character.

Were any of the actors prima donnas?

They’re dangerously talented guys, but not really. Carlos, the guy who plays <censored>, is our lead animator. He’s an accomplished martial artist. He’s got a martial arts school in Chicago.

Who’s your favourite DC comics character?

I have to say Batman, still. He’s like the detective, he’s the problem solver. He’s mortal but he knows martial arts, and he’s got the techy items to help him in his perilous quests.

Who would you like to see have their head ripped off?

I can’t answer that.

Q&A: John Vogel, Story Writer

MK: Armageddon ended in a massive fight. Where does MK vs DC Universe fit in?

This isn’t a continuation from Armageddon. It’s an offshoot. It’s non-canonical. We tried to keep it as canonical as we could, but this is its own story.

How have you been getting on with DC?

DC heroes don’t kill, whereas Mortal Kombat characters do. One of the major reasons for the storyline existing is to explain how certain characters can fight each other. They didn’t care as much about our characters, they just cared about theirs. Once we had the vague stuff down, I just started writing.

Are there any things they won’t let their characters do?

They’d send the story back and Batman would say different things, or they’d say, “Superman would never do something like this”. But sometimes they’d rewrite our stuff and we’d go, “Well, that guy would never do something like this”. The script also plays off the balances and imbalances - who’s similar, and who’s the opposite of whom. One thing is that they’re concerned about what happens after they beat someone - they have to put them in jail or take care of them somehow. Their heroes are much more wholesome than ours. Their villains are just as bad as ours, but we had to be much more careful when working with the heroes.

Isn’t it a bit of a mismatch? You can’t have the DC lot refusing to kill while the Mortal Kombat gang kills them all...

We don’t want to have Superman rescuing kittens from trees. But they’re heroes at heart, so they won’t necessarily instigate a fight.

Which DC characters do you like most?

Recently I’ve been reading the Green Lantern collection, the Sinestro stuff. And I was never really into Shazam, but they’ve got a new series called the Trials of Shazam that actually manages to make the character cool. And I like Lobo.

If you had the opportunity to punch a DC character’s head off, who would it be?

Aquaman. He just doesn’t really seem to fit anymore.

Aug 8, 2008