Highlights
- Mortal Kombat 1's story mode will be similar in length to Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11, taking around 5 to 6 hours to complete.
- The story mode in recent Mortal Kombat games has become more detailed with impressive cutscenes.
- The characters featured in Mortal Kombat 1's story will be familiar to fans, with no new characters announced so far.
Mortal Kombat 1 game director Ed Boon has confirmed that the story mode for the upcoming fighting game will be about as long as Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11. Fighting games generally aren't known for having particularly lengthy story modes, and the Mortal Kombat franchise is certainly no exception to that rule.
However, recent years have seen Mortal Kombat put a greater emphasis on its story modes with impressive cutscenes and plots featuring a wide range of characters from the Mortal Kombat universe. It's taken roughly five to six hours to get through the Mortal Kombat story modes, give or take, and it seems fans of the fighting game franchise can expect a similar length when they hop into the Mortal Kombat 1 story mode later this year.
This was confirmed by Ed Boon on Twitter, who was responding to a question from a fan about how long the Mortal Kombat 1 story mode will be. Boon didn't provide an exact number, but compared the Mortal Kombat 1 story mode length to Mortal Kombat X and Mortal Kombat 11. According to aggregate site How Long to Beat, it makes most people an average of 5.5 hours to beat the Mortal Kombat X story, while the Mortal Kombat 11 story is about six hours long. Those that also play the Aftermath expansion for Mortal Kombat 11 can expect the full story to take a few hours longer.
The Mortal Kombat 1 story takes place in the new universe created by Fire God Liu Kang after the events of the Aftermath expansion. This rebooted timeline has many similarities with the previous one, but it also differs in a great number of ways as well. This includes shaking up the relationships of various characters, tweaking their personalities and in some cases, even their identities.
The characters featured in the Mortal Kombat 1 story are so far all characters that fans of the franchise should be familiar with. No new characters have been announced for Mortal Kombat 1 at the time of this writing, discounting guest characters like Homelander, Omni-Man, and Peacemaker. With the Mortal Kombat 1 release date right around the corner, it seems the roster will consist entirely of existing fighters, but there's still time for NetherRealm to make some surprise announcements.
Mortal Kombat 1 launches September 19 for PC, PS5, Switch, and Xbox Series X.
