To see the video interview with Hans, click here.

AusGamers: We're at Warner Bros' Booth at E3, it's the last day and we just checked out Mortal Kombat. I think the buzz around the show floor is that it's pretty awesome and what we just saw was pretty awesome.

Hans thanks for joining us.

Hans Lo: Glad to be here.

AG: What's your role on the game?

HL: I'm the senior producer on the game, so I oversee the project.

AG: Were you a Mortal Kombat fan before you landed this?

HL: Oh yeah, that game definitely ate a few of my quarters growing up, so yeah.



AG: So we saw that you've kind of gone for a refreshed look at the first three games, but there's going to be some changes in there as well. Can we talk about any of that?

HL: We as you say, it's kind of like a refresh of the game. We've gone with the name Mortal Kombat, there's nothing else to it, it's straight and simple - kind of like a new beginning - Warner Bros, a new start for us so we're really excited. You're going to see some of the more iconic characters from the past - re-imagining visions of the backgrounds as well as the look of the character, but they're still going to have very familiar things about them, like their moves -- the iceball from Sub Zero etc, you'll see that.

It's really exciting, we've got a couple of new modes in the game - one of the things we have is what we're currently calling "X-Ray" mode, which basically what happens is when you fighting and you call up this X-Ray mode, it gets in really tight and close and you actually see, like, ribs getting cracked, internal organs getting ruptured - it's just down and deep.

A lot of fans kept coming back to us and saying "we want a mature game; we want the gore; we want the fatalities" and that's what we've given them. The other thing that we've gotten are comments wanting the 2D gameplay aspect again, so what we've done is gone back to the 2D playing field. The characters and their environments are all 3D, but the way you play the game is 2D, so you get a lot quicker, faster action going on, do some really great combos that you can link together - I'm amazed at how far we've gotten this time.



AG: Are there levels in the game like in MK3 where you could punch someone through a wall or a floor and drop into a whole new level, is that returning?

HL: You know what. I'm going to let you guys wait and see on that one, but I can tell you that we do have things like "Pit Fatalities", so you remember the one where you would knock the guy off the bridge and he drops all the way down to the bottom, yeah we've got a new version of that in there, so I think people will be pretty excited to see that as well.

AG: For some throwbacks to fans, are we going to see the "Toasty" guy come back?

HL: Well that's Dan Ford. Dan's a little older now, I don't know if he can do that high pitched voice anymore to be honest, it'd be more like "Toasty" [baritone]. I don't know, we might but we haven't quite decided. We're still working out ideas on the game but we'll see.

AG: Can you talk a little bit about how online is going to work? Is there going to be a tournament mode out of the box and all that sort of stuff?

HL: We're going to have more information about it as we go along, but we're definitely going to have online in the sense that you'll have full one on one play. We're also going to have tag-team which is a new mode that you can play online and offline. So you and your buddies can get online and play some tag-team. We're going to try and make it a really robust online experience.



AG: So re-telling the first three games, is there a more cohesive story now to tie them all together?

HL: There is... but I'll say there's a twist to it, and again this is one of those things we're you going to have to wait and see and we'll reveal a bit more as we go down the road.

AG: What's your favourite fatality in the game so far?

HL: Oh my god there's so many, and the thing is there's some that aren't even in the game yet that we're working on. I just keep getting amazed. For right now, I like Kung Lao's. The one where he throws his hat on the ground and drags the guy towards the hat - that one made me squirm the first time i saw it.

AG: And you guys aren't worried at all that the game's just not going to get through the Australian censors?

HL: That's something we're working on, we're going to have a look and see what we can do. I know you guys and your ratings board down there are possibly talking about coming up with a new level of rating. We'll do what we can and work with the groups needed and try and get it down there for you guys.



AG: So is it just on PS3 and Xbox 360? Have we got other skews?

HL: No, just those two skews right now.

AG: And no plans to bring it back in the arcade?

HL: No, not really. Warner Bros isn't really known as an arcade company so I haven't heard anything at least, no one has talked to us about it.

AG: We'll thanks very much Hans, that's awesome, cheers.

HL: Thank you.