A modder has created a free-camera mod for Mortal Kombat 11 on the PC that lets you take a tour of the game’s many levels.
There’s no denying that Mortal Kombat 11 is a gorgeous game, and part of that is owed to the level designs. Each one is extremely detailed right down to the pixel, but you’d never get a sense for how much time and effort when into these stages unless you unhinged the camera and actually pointed it at the walls.
Which is exactly what one enterprising modder did for the PC version of the game.
We’ve got DennisNetwork to thank for creating a mod that allows the user to control the camera so that it’s not always pointed at the two fighting Mortal Kombat characters. Instead, the user can take the camera and make it float around and browse like some sort of drone taking a stroll through a park. Only that park is filled with corpses or robot ninjas.
The first stage showcased is the Tournament stage, which is quite literally a stage. As soon as the camera pans back you get to see the light rigging with drapes hanging down and a bustling crowd cheering from the front. Except none of the people cheering Sub-Zero and Scorpion on are wearing any pants. That’s because they have no legs.
Since the camera was never designed to show this part of the map, the level designers probably just omitted the crowd’s legs to save time. This is a common tactic in game development: if the camera is fixed and you know what the player will see, there’s no reason to make parts out of view look pretty.
However, the stuff that is in view is EXCEPTIONALLY well detailed. Note the Mortal Kombat arcade boxes on stage are showing real footage from the actual historic games.
DennisNetwork also posted explorations of Shang Tsung's Island Ruins, which has an uncomfortably large number of Buddhist monk corpses, and the Black Dragon Fight Club which features one gang member urinating in a bathroom that we’re pretty sure can never be seen by the regular camera. That’s just going above and beyond.
Finally, we arrive at Cyber Lin Kuei Assembly and get to see dudes being buzz-sawed open and having their brains being removed. Which is cool.
The mod isn’t publicly available quite yet as Dennis is still working out a few bugs. But when it is released, remember to give props to NetherRealm Studios for the amount of work that goes into every stage. It’s really quite amazing.
(via Eurogamer)