“Guest characters are always a challenge,” says Nick Nicastro, design manager at Mortal Kombat developer NetherRealm Studios. But there’s at least one thing that’s easy about bringing Mortal Kombat 1’s newest kombatant, the Terminator T-1000, to the fighting game: a shared understanding of what the character is and what he’s capable of in terms of being a cold-blooded killer.
“We’re major fans of movies from the ’80s and ’90s, so we’re all pretty well versed in the references from [Terminator 2: Judgment Day],” Nicastro says. “We’ve all probably seen the movie multiple times, and there’s things that stick out — things that just landed in your consciousness, scenes that you’ve seen, or just certain attacks. As a design team, when we communicate to each other ideas on different things, we will tend to bring up some of these.”
In other words, when the Mortal Kombat dev team is batting around ideas, the developers will use shared knowledge of action films like Terminator 2 as shorthand. So identifying iconic moves from the T-1000, like his finger-stab and arm blades, gives the game’s designers a foundation to work from. (For MK1’s new Kameo Fighter Madam Bo, the team drew from kung fu movies, like Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle, for her meme-worthy shoe-slap attack.)
“In many ways, what we’ll do is start from the reference and come up with rough ideas for either special moves,” Nicastro says, “or in some cases, when we’re trying to capture the essence of the character or the visual presentation of the character, we’ll drop in images or videos of things that we’ve seen. We’ll start with things that are very critical or we feel are keys to the character.”
Image: NetherRealm Studios/Warner Bros. Games
While part of the T-1000’s moveset was already based on James Cameron’s movie, actually implementing the liquid-metal Terminator was a much more difficult task.
“It’s a character that we’ve always wanted to do, even going back to previous games,” Nicastro says. “We really couldn’t in the past; it was just not something that was technically feasible to do in the best possible way until MK1, where we’ve really made, like, a quantum leap with our engine, tools, and technology. That process involved weeks of concept and [months of] development time. There’s a lot of iteration between the art department and design and the gameplay teams. In the case of T-1000, [it’s] one of the most challenging characters that we’ve worked on, especially as a guest character.”
But, Nicastro says, “there was so much source material with the liquid metal that fit the gameplay plan that we had in mind for him.”
Two moves in particular that stand out as strong implementations of the T-1000’s skill set include his throw and a drop kick. When the T-1000 throws an opponent in MK1, that move is based on a trick from Terminator 2’s steel mill scene: Arnold’s T-800 throws the T-1000 against a wall, and rather than turning around, the liquid-metal machine simply reshapes his body to face his opponent. MK1’s T-1000 can also quickly transform into a big metal teardrop to “kick” his opponent, a move seen in the hospital elevator escape scene in T2.
“I think the visual presentation comes across in a very strong way with this character,” Nicastro adds. “The way that you can start a combo string, turn into liquid metal, go up in the air, knock [your opponent] down, turn into a liquid metal, and then go through the ground and pop up and then start another string — the transition from your human to liquid form when you’re pulling off combos in the game is probably, to me, one of the most impressive things.”
Image: NetherRealm Studios/Warner Bros. Games
Nicastro points out that the T-1000 “breaks a lot of the rules of the game.” Where other characters can have their bones broken or their entrails torn out, bleeding profusely and suffering greatly in the process, the T-1000 is basically a metal blob that doesn’t feel pain.
“When you hit him with a super move, he has to look like a liquid shape,” Nicastro says, “so for every character that hits him with a super, we had to go back and make separate versions of a T-1000 version that looked correct.”
Adding a special case like the T-1000, unsurprisingly, requires a lot of work. In the end, Nicastro says, hundreds of people were involved in some capacity in bringing Robert Patrick’s Terminator to Mortal Kombat 1.
“Cinema artists, mocap, a mocap actor, many animators, [and] many designers” were involved, Nicastro says. “There’s a primary designer that kind of drives that effort, and that designer, he did an incredible job, but you have also other designers that help out. And then you have the audio team, the art and effects team, the different tech teams. [The T-1000] has a lot of special cases in the game, so it kind of brought in even more resources than a normal character would [because] there are more problems to solve.”
Mortal Kombat 1 players can see the fruits of that labor in the game now. The T-1000 was released last week for owners of the game’s Khaos Reigns expansion, and is available now to purchase à la carte.