System of a Down multi-instrumentalist and video director Shavo Odadjian is joining the team behind Mortal Kombat X to compose a special launch trailer debuting April 6th! Enter the editing suite in the special sneak peek below:

Mokap won't be coming back in Mortal Kombat X -- but the art of motion capture continues to fuel escalating next generation technology that brings the action to life! Following their Kombat Kast spotlight - NetherRealm Studios offer a glimpse behind the wireframes of Chapter 1.

This year's Game Developers Conference saw the unveiling of Mortal Kombat X's all new Story Mode, and the fighting return of Johnny Cage! The Earthrealm Champion features in a slew of new screenshots coming out of the event.

The Mortal Kombat X story has been on show over the past few weeks. Be prepared to learn more when NetherRealm Studios go live later today on Twitch! The stream is scheduled to begin at 3:00PM CST and will feature more plot from the 25 year epic! Be on Mortal Kombat Online to immortalize all your reactions to all the action on the forum:

During last week's Game Developers Conference, various press members were granted a hands-on preview with Mortal Kombat X and the first chapter of its exciting new Story Mode! Early word revealed Kenshi & Johnny Cage's playable involvement but with embargoes lifted, new details are flooding in from all sides!

Character speculation will be one of the last topics to die, especially with downloadable content beyond the horizon! Polygon has one of the best previews, revealing the ambitious scope of the game that awaits: "There are battles with hundreds of non-player characters and Mortal Kombat cameos, Urbano said, on a scale that NetherRealm just couldn't pull off before."

Among the "hundreds" of cameos are some expected returns. Johnny Cage, Sonya Blade, Kenshi, Raiden & Fujin reportedly lead the fight for the home team, while undead revenants of Jax, Sindel, Stryker, Kabal & Smoke battle under the control of Quan Chi. This continues the plot initiated during the last game, where the defeated warriors' souls were seized in the Netherrealm. IGN notes an appearance by Nightwolf, who was also among the dead fighters, as well.

It's the Netherrealm's invasion that is the subject of story mode's opening chapter. This refers to the expected continuation of the new timeline, revisiting the original plot of MK4. We saw glimpses of invading villain Shinnok and his struggle with the heroes in the Story Mode Trailer and again in the Cage Family Trailer. According to IGN, Shinnok is the final battle of Chapter 1.

No one has been able to distinguish the playable roster from the story mode cameos. Shinnok and Jax both appeared in one-on-one fights - each with 3 variations, according to Hardcore Gamers. IGN notes, "We have no idea yet, but there are a bunch more slots on the character select screen that need to be filled..." Polygon adds, "... we did see a couple of unannounced playable fighters, including Erron Black, in the game's attract mode."

Migrating from challenge modes in Mortal Kombat (2011) and Injustice: Gods Among Us into the story are "quick time events". Simple inputs determine the outcome of conflict that doesn't fit into traditional side-to-side kombat. GameInformer have a particularly evocative description of their experience, which explains the continuing sequence involving Johnny Cage and a notably heroic Kenshi:

"They’re en route to Raiden’s Sky Temple, where the lightning god is making a last stand against Shinnok’s forces. Whirring over the on-the-ground action sounds like a pretty great plan until the windshield is pierced by another familiar sight: Scorpion’s chain-blade. The soldiers in the back of the helicopter look around frantically, when Scorpion surprises the crew by appearing in the rear of the aircraft. There’s a battle, of course, and I’m paying such close attention to it all that I miss an unexpected quick-time event. It doesn’t kick me out to a game-over screen, but the action immediately shifts to show Johnny Cage blowing a series of blocks and taking damage. I do a better job of keeping up over the next few sequences, and Johnny reverses the course of the fight. He more than holds his own until Sub-Zero joins the party, freezing a couple of attackers’ heads and shattering them against each other."

The plot thickens Friday, March 13th when NetherRealm Studios hosts a story centric edition of the Mortal Kombat X Kombat Kast live stream!

Taking place 25 years after the events of Mortal Kombat (2011), the new generation of characters will discover that Outworld is not the only threat they face. Fans will get a first look at the newest fighters to join Cassie Cage, including Jacqueline Briggs, daughter of Jax, Takashi Takeda, son of Kenshi, and Kung Jin, descendant of Kung Lao.

Electronics giant Sony are in the throes of celebrating the 20th anniversary of the PlayStation Experience - and they're holding an event of the same name to mark the occasion! Mortal Kombat X is adding some sizzle to sin city this winter, with the demo build on the Las Vegas floor at PSX. Joining it is Executive Producer Shaun Himmerick, who spoke to GameInformer about the game.

With no new content reveals scheduled for the event, fresh details are becoming scarce, but the producer assures production is "coming along well". The 2015 fighter is in testing phase - Himmerick citing an army of around 300 testers spread across the games' many functions and modes! That's with 150 people at NetherRealm Studios -- including a quoted 30 temporary staff, and 15 outsourcing companies -- working diligently to create high quality material for cutting edge hardware. "I think it's been harder on art than anything because look at the number of polygons used to create any character and it could have been done in a couple of weeks. Now it's like a six week process."

The more things the change, the more some things stay the same. Despite a massive increase in visual fidelity of character models and the strains that places on creation - the art of creating fatalities is still the domain of series co-creator Ed Boon and his famed stick figures. "Yup. He is. He gets really fancy now. They used to be on paper, but now he's using his tablet. He can drag his stick figure characters around and reposition them."

On meatier issues; GameInformer attacked the longstanding mystery of the game's plot, where some of the juiciest material came from:

[Game Informer]: How are you going to explain the game taking place in the future in story mode?
At the beginning of the game we do one of those 'Hey, remember what happened and then jump to the future" kind of moments. A lot of people die. I always joke that I think one of the reasons Ed wanted to do Quan Chi is because he's the guy from Hell who can resurrect people, but they are not always the same. Quan Chi obviously lets us do that. The nice thing: We have a whole new generation of people to play with, not just the one age. We can kind of have different tiers from different ages.

Ed Boon and the team from NetherRealm are in Cologne, Germany to show-off Mortal Kombat X at what is shaping up to be a memorable trade fair! IGN have spoken to Boon about the 2015 fighter in one of the first interviews to come out of 2014's Gamescom and they've uncovered a couple of interesting details!

While no details have come from Gamescom just yet - we've again been teased with the introduction of a new "-Ality" that will be revealed sometime in the near future. That's just the tip of an iceberg that gave us new story and character beats, as well as a bombshell about expected crossovers. Read on:

This year's E3 was dominated by developments in the newly revealed Mortal Kombat X! Though the Expo may be over, the highlights continue! Back safe from the trip to LA, long running Mortal Kombat fan-site TRMK has posted an interview conducted with NetherRealm Studios Creative Director Ed Boon -- and it contains some compelling new details!