Mortal Kombat 1’s Ed Boon Says Door Not Closed On Injustice 3

Mortal Kombat 1’s Ed Boon has confirmed the door is not closed on Injustice 3.

IGN had the chance to speak with Boon and ask him about NetherRealm’s decision to go with another Mortal Kombat game after Mortal Kombat 11, given the studio has alternated between Mortal Kombat and Injustice since the 2013 release of Injustice: Gods Among Us.

“There were a number of factors, some of which I can talk about, some of which I probably shouldn’t,” Boon said.

Two reasons Boon was willing to discuss were the unfortunate onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the team’s choice to switch to a newer version of the Unreal game engine (Mortal Kombat 11 runs on Unreal Engine 3, whereas Mortal Kombat 1 runs on Unreal Engine 4).

“But we did go to a new graphics engine, Unreal,” Boon said. “We really wanted to be careful with COVID and all that stuff and everybody staying safe. So there were a bunch of variables involved that eventually we realised, ‘Okay, let’s do another Mortal Kombat game and hopefully we’ll get back to the Injustice games.’ ”

Just to be sure, we wanted to confirm with him directly that the door was not closed on the Injustice franchise.

“Not at all,” Boon answered.

Injustice: Gods Among Us was released in 2013 and its sequel, Injustice 2, arrived in 2017. In our Injustice 2 review, we said: “Faster, deeper action, and a wealth of content make this DC heroes fighting game feel super.”

As for Mortal Kombat 1, which is set to launch on September 19, 2023, we got a brutal new look at the game in action and the new Kameo system at Summer Game Fest. We also got a chance to get hands-on with Mortal Kombat 1, and we thought there were some exciting differences from Mortal Kombat 11 even though the gameplay felt pretty familiar.

Adam Bankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.