Ripping design answers out of the skull of John Edwards, lead designer of Mortal Kombat X

When I played an early build of Mortal Kombat X last month, I was most intrigued by NetherRealm Studios’ decision to run with a variable character-select system. This enables a player to not only select a character but also choose between one of three “styles” of that character as well. Similar to the “ism” select in Street Fighter Alpha 3 or the “Groove” system in Capcom vs. SNK 2.

I latched onto this element because it not only triples the amount of work it will take to balance the roster but also could considerably tweak each character’s gameplay identity.