Some interesting news today from the Twittersphere in may have revealed progress of the much-rumored Mortal Kombat XI. Are we much closer than anyone thought?
A quick recap for the uninitiated – a lot of people assumed that we would see Mortal Kombat XI announced at E3 this year. Based on NetherRealm Studios’ normal release schedule (a Mortal Kombat, a year break, an Injustice game, a year break, etc.) we were on schedule for the next Mortal Kombat installment to happen. Obviously, that didn’t happen and the internet went right into speculation city. One of the prevailing thoughts was that it was more likely that MK would come back once the new console cycle started up since we are very close to the end of our current cycle. After all, the PlayStation 5 (or whatever it ends up being called) has been confirmed to be in development by Sony.
We’re left waiting for any noise from NeatherRealm, but on November 15, 2018, something interesting happened. Eduardo Garza, a Latin American voice actor who has been involved in the localization of many popular franchises including Dragon Ball Z (Krillin), Bleach (Ichigo), Naruto (Gaara), Overwatch (Lucio), and most relevant to this story, Mortal Kombat X (Kung Lao and Reptile).
He took to Twitter today to announce that Pink Noise Studios, a game localization company, has removed his characters, the aforementioned Kung Lao and Reptile, from Mortal Kombat XI, even using the specific hashtag #MortalKombatXI. You can check out the tweet below:
Pues finalmente confirmo que los “profesionales” de @PINKNOISEloc decidieron quitarme mis personajes de #MortalKombatXI. Que triste que una empresa que quise mucho termine tomando decisiones que los afectan tanto a ustedes, los consumidores. Adiós Kung Lao y Reptile.
— Lalo Garza (@LaloGarx) November 15, 2018
Roughly translated to English the tweet says “I finally confirmed that the “pros” @PINKNOISEloc decided to remove my characters from #MortalKombatXI. How sad that a company that I wanted to end up making decisions that affect both you, consumers. Goodbye Kung Lao and Reptile.” Naturally, people picked up on this fairly quickly, and Garza sent a follow-up tweet the next day saying:
Amigos, desconozco si es MKXI, MK10.5, MKXYZ o qué sea; el punto es que para el material nuevo ya no fui convocado, pero no pasa nada, en esta carrera he aprendido que los personajes llegan y se van así. Gracias por sus mensajes, yo sigo trabajando en lo que amo. El doblaje.
— Lalo Garza (@LaloGarx) November 15, 2018
Again, the translation comes out to “Friends, I do not know if it is MKXI, Mk 10.5, MKXYZ or whatever; The point is that for the new material and I was not summoned, but nothing happens, in this race I learned that the characters come and go like this. Thanks for your messages, I’m still working on what I love. Dubbing.”
Whatever the cause of the follow-up, it’s still intriguing when you consider that the tweet used the specific “MortalKombatXI” hashtag, and there is no “MK 10.5”. If anything, Mortal Kombat XL would be considered “MK 10.5” since it is the game-of-the-year style follow up that NetherRealm usually makes once their main game has been out for about a year. The only other MK project that would require voice acting would be a game or some sort of animation. MK hasn’t had an animation adaptation since the early 90’s (and the less spoken of that MK animated incident the better) so I highly doubt that NetherRealm wants to dip their toe in that arena again.
The other thing to consider is that, if NRS is already talking about localization, they must be pretty far along the development process, as that is something usually handled near the end of development. The game has to be made first after all. One would think if this were the case that an announcement would be made soon, but this brings up a big problem with this theory, namely where such an announcement would be made. EVO is over, the Injustice 2 Pro Series was aired on Disney XD so no MK there, and PSX was canceled by Sony so nothing there either. Unless they make an announcement on a random day of the week, there are no big events befitting the announcement of the next entry in a huge series like MK.
There is evidence for a number of possibilities, and it is ultimately all speculation and rumor in the end. Personally, I feel that NRS would wait until a new console cycle before bringing out their next big title, but again, this is all speculation and rumor. If anything does happen though, you can be sure that Daily Esports will have you covered.
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