Throwing it out there: NetherRealm Studios' writing team doesn't get anywhere near the respect they deserve. Played a bit of Mortal Kombat 11 over the weekend and damn. Thread I guess.

I'm not an MK guy.. my mates all played Tekken when I was a kid, and I'm not really a fighting game person as an adult. Played Injustice 2 for the comic book stuff and had a fun time, but all this movie discourse made me wanna check out the MK franchise.

So my knowledge was about three character names, the fact that it's a tournament.. and... not a lot else.

So how the hell did the singleplayer campaign bring me up to speed on an ensemble cast, make zero assumptions of my knowledge, and keep me entertained?

In fairness, the humour and arch dialogue goes a long way to letting in a lot of exposition... it doesn't feel (too) silly to have a monologue or ten, but yeah, lots of clever choices from a pacing and structure perspective to get me in. Generations ahead of a lot of AAA.

Credit too to the studio, because writing with that level of coherence is impossible without buy-in from those in charge (insert graph mapping narrative success of games to seniority of writers in the company structure).

So yeah. Weird. I think maybe Mortal Kombat 11 is the best written thing I've played in a while. Fun plot twist.

(cannot express how hard I laughed when @TroyBakerVA inevitably appeared... the man is inescapable)