Since its very first version, published in 1992, the Mortal Kombat video game series has always been notorious for its over-the-top graphical brutality, never shying away from showing the most egregious and brutal ways to maim your opponent. Cutting people in half, ripping their arms or head off, ripping their insides out, impaling them or beating them to a pulp... anything goes, in all gory detail.
Rather than toning this down over the years, if anything, the game series has only emphasized it. The "modern gen" of sorts installments of the series, starting with the 9th game in the main series (named merely "Mortal Kombat" without a number, although subsequent games did start using Roman numerals again) took the graphical violence to the next level, by not only showing the brutality of the finishers in high-definition modern 3D graphics, but introducing even more gory detail by, among other things, using a gratuitous "X-ray vision" in the finishers, showing bones and internal organs being broken, smashed and pulverized, all in great detail.
So the game series isn't really what you would consider a kids' game (although good luck trying to stop your kids from playing it). It's mature to the extreme, very much intended for an adult audience, with a typical age rating in most countries of 16+ or even 18+.
It is, thus, strange to the utmost degree that the current developers of the series, NetherRealm Studios, decided to engage in some good old puritanism in the latest version of the series, Mortal Kombat 11.
In your typical fighting game fashion all previous versions had scantily clad characters (of both sexes), showing lots of bare skin, some of them barely covering the critical body parts. No more. In MK 11 all female characters are fully covered up, with minimal amount of exposed skin showing.
All female characters. Male characters are still as exposed as ever. You know, because consistency.
The developers argued that this is because it's not "realistic" to go to a fight in a bikini. Yeah, in a game where you can rip off someone's spine from their body and raise it to the air like a gruesome blood-dripping trophy. Because that's so realistic compared to a fantasy female fighter going to a fight in a bikini. And of course men can go to the fight wearing barely anything, because the same rule of "logic" doesn't apply to them.
People have also noticed other subtle changes. For example, one of the finishers of the (male) character Kabal is for some strange reason subtly different depending on whether the opponent is male or female. If the opponent he's brutally maiming is male, he has an angrier and more determined facial expression, but if the opponent is female, he has a much more neutral and muted facial expression, and his face is more in the shadow.
Because that apparently makes a huge difference when he's crushing his opponent's head into a pulp. We wouldn't want to show him being angry at a woman, now would we?
This is possibly the most ridiculous instance of social justice puritanism I have ever seen. It's one thing when they censor games like visual novels or more realistic dramatic story-based games (I don't approve of that either, but at the very least it's more rational). But censoring Mortal Kombat in this manner makes absolutely no sense. Showing all that gore in graphical close-up detail, with the most imaginative (and unrealistic) brutal ways to maim your opponents is A-ok... but heaven forbid we show some exposed skin on female characters! (With male characters it's of course A-ok.)
And yep, I'm not buying this game. Out of pure principle.
Rather than toning this down over the years, if anything, the game series has only emphasized it. The "modern gen" of sorts installments of the series, starting with the 9th game in the main series (named merely "Mortal Kombat" without a number, although subsequent games did start using Roman numerals again) took the graphical violence to the next level, by not only showing the brutality of the finishers in high-definition modern 3D graphics, but introducing even more gory detail by, among other things, using a gratuitous "X-ray vision" in the finishers, showing bones and internal organs being broken, smashed and pulverized, all in great detail.
So the game series isn't really what you would consider a kids' game (although good luck trying to stop your kids from playing it). It's mature to the extreme, very much intended for an adult audience, with a typical age rating in most countries of 16+ or even 18+.
It is, thus, strange to the utmost degree that the current developers of the series, NetherRealm Studios, decided to engage in some good old puritanism in the latest version of the series, Mortal Kombat 11.
In your typical fighting game fashion all previous versions had scantily clad characters (of both sexes), showing lots of bare skin, some of them barely covering the critical body parts. No more. In MK 11 all female characters are fully covered up, with minimal amount of exposed skin showing.
All female characters. Male characters are still as exposed as ever. You know, because consistency.
The developers argued that this is because it's not "realistic" to go to a fight in a bikini. Yeah, in a game where you can rip off someone's spine from their body and raise it to the air like a gruesome blood-dripping trophy. Because that's so realistic compared to a fantasy female fighter going to a fight in a bikini. And of course men can go to the fight wearing barely anything, because the same rule of "logic" doesn't apply to them.
People have also noticed other subtle changes. For example, one of the finishers of the (male) character Kabal is for some strange reason subtly different depending on whether the opponent is male or female. If the opponent he's brutally maiming is male, he has an angrier and more determined facial expression, but if the opponent is female, he has a much more neutral and muted facial expression, and his face is more in the shadow.
Because that apparently makes a huge difference when he's crushing his opponent's head into a pulp. We wouldn't want to show him being angry at a woman, now would we?
This is possibly the most ridiculous instance of social justice puritanism I have ever seen. It's one thing when they censor games like visual novels or more realistic dramatic story-based games (I don't approve of that either, but at the very least it's more rational). But censoring Mortal Kombat in this manner makes absolutely no sense. Showing all that gore in graphical close-up detail, with the most imaginative (and unrealistic) brutal ways to maim your opponents is A-ok... but heaven forbid we show some exposed skin on female characters! (With male characters it's of course A-ok.)
And yep, I'm not buying this game. Out of pure principle.
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