After working at NetherRealm Studios for more than 10 years, I have experienced my fair share of memorable days as part of the design department, but the day we all learned we would be designing Peacemaker for Mortal Kombat 1 was certainly one of the best. The only concern I had was the possibility of designers fighting each other on who would take the coveted role of point person. In all seriousness though, when we heard this news, we immediately started sharing clips from the show and brainstorming ideas.

The reason for all the excitement speaks to how much we love the character and series. The humor resonates with our own, and I think if we were to design our own superhero, it would be heavily inspired by elements of Peacemaker.

From day one, it was clear to us that translating Peacemaker into Mortal Kombat 1 was going to be exciting. The first part was to craft a gameplay design around a core set of attacks and special moves while then layering in reference after reference and adding very specific details to the way the attacks look and feel. This meant watching and re-watching scenes of show while meticulously noting details that stuck out to us.

One of our favorite scenes from the show was the first time we get to see Peacemaker use the Sonic Boom helmet. The butterfly girl he had been fighting leapt into the air to attack, but Peacemaker was able to activate Sonic Boom in time to vaporize her. It was a shocking moment as we are left with a shot of Peacemaker sitting on the ground completely stunned at what just transpired.

When we went to create Peacemaker’s Brutality with the Sonic Boom, we wanted to mimic very specific details that stood out to us like capturing that last shot of Peacemaker sitting on ground in total shock. Additionally, we created a Brutality from the scene in the show where he made a homemade grenade using a tank shell. We even created new blood splats with bigger spreads and longer meteors of meat bits to better mimic those on the show. In all, this is the part of the design process that we have a lot of fun with.

As we were developing Peacemaker in Mortal Kombat 1, we believed it was critical to showcase his over-the-top personality everywhere possible. This becomes a summation of nuances, voiceover, dialog, motions, and mannerisms that are keys to how we wanted to convey Peacemaker’s unique personality to the audience. This is always important but especially in this case because of how familiar players are with this character, and anything slightly off will be noticed right away.

Fortunately, we had the pleasure of working directly with John Cena who delivered an impeccable performance (no surprise) as Peacemaker in the game, adding the ultimate level of credibility to the voice capture and dialog. In the mocap studio, we closely studied Peacemaker’s mannerisms, oftentimes bringing up clips from the show on the big screen and comparing them with the actor’s performance as we captured the motions to ensure they were reading like Peacemaker. As you might expect, there were a lot of laughs in between takes as some of the more the comedic moments were shining through.

Gameplay-wise, Peacemaker was designed to have a straight-forward and accessible playstyle. We wanted to prominently feature both his helmet attacks and coordination with Eagley, the character’s loyal bald eagle sidekick. For the helmet attacks, we needed to design special moves that supported both his gameplay design and references we felt were important from the show. For his helmet-centric moves, he will employ his torpedo attack and anti-gravity abilities that allows him to float up and slam down over opponents, with the enhanced version of this move acting as an evade with additional options to cancel out.

For Eagley’s attacks, we were looking to design meaningful special moves that would be helpful in certain situations. For instance, Eagley can attack an opponent’s Kameo Fighter, mauling them and shutting down their use. For a few of us, the funniest move Peacemaker has is his blow dart special move, which fans should recognize from The Suicide Squad(2021)movie. In-game, he is in the same sneaking stance and can move forward and back while holding the blow dart, which can be released at any time and is designed to hit opponents out of the air.

It would be an understatement to say it was a privilege for us to design and develop Peacemaker in Mortal Kombat 1. This was one of the most collaborative and fun experiences we’ve had as a design group so far. We feel that Peacemaker is a great fit for the Mortal Kombat Universe, and we can’t wait for players to get their hands on him. Peacemaker will be available on Feb. 28 as part of the early access period for Mortal Kombat 1 Kombat Pack owners, followed by wide availability on March 6. A trial version of Mortal Kombat 1 will be available to play for all Game Pass Core and Game Pass Ultimate subscribers as part of Xbox Free Play Days from March 7-10, with access to all multiplayer game modes, the first two chapters of the cinematic Story mode, the base roster of iconic characters, and more.