In a recent discussion with Game Informer, head honcho of the series Ed Boon reveals some exciting new details about the upcoming game, plus a rough guess at when we will be seeing the game. Don’t get excited, it’s closer to 2009 than 2007.

Unfortunately Boon says the game will definitely be late 2008, maybe November if we are lucky, which guarantees nothing sadly. However he reveals that the game will be using the Unreal Engine 3, just as Gears of War does. There is also going to be a lot of change to what fans of the series are all used to.

GameInformer: Let’s talk about next-gen. You talked a little bit about the arcade concept that you’ve been mulling around in your head. Is that something that you guys are fleshing out?

Boon: Yeah. I always thought that the standard lobby approach of hooking people up online seemed kind of obvious to do. I’d love to incorporate that into gameplay. We have some really crazy ideas that are really kind of extreme, and I’d be hesitant to mention them because people would assume that they’re in the next game. But we’re definitely looking into different interfaces to the player for a lobby. For a way to get players hooked up and playing online, an ongoing thing like a ranking system or whatnot. I’ve always wanted to have sort of a virtual arcade. It’s weird, because I can picture it in my head and I can see walking through the arcade and putting your quarter up, but I wonder how many people have experienced that part. It’s been so long—the early ‘90s—before some people were born, and they say, “What the hell is an arcade?” We’re trying a bunch of stuff right now.

GI: How far into development is it?

Boon: The main thing we’re doing right now is the core technology. We’re using the Unreal 3 engine, and we’re getting our base, “How do display a character, normal-mapping, bump-mapping, shadows” all the things that are expected of the game. I have a bunch of ideas on paper in terms of things that I’d like to theoretically try, but it’s not like it’s in a playable state yet.

GI: How has the experience been with the next-gen, and what are some of the nuances that you’re finding with the Xbox 360 and PS3?

Boon: Our goal, graphically, with this game is to be as gritty and—I don’t like to use the word “dirty,” because I don’t want to imply not-cool graphics—but a very dark, serious Mortal Kombat. Not vibrant, saturated colors, but more of a really down and dirty Mortal Kombat game. To me, when I saw Gears of War, I was like, “Holy s___! That’s the look that we’ve been talking about.” Visually, that’s what we want to do. Gameplay-wise, I kind of attribute it to what we did with Deadly Alliance, where everything is thrown out. We’re not going to have three fighting styles, we’re not going to have the same punches and kicks and the same kind of control scheme. Everything is getting trashed. We’re reinventing everything from the ground up. We really think that’s needed—you know, we’re on Mortal Kombat 8, in a sense—to kind of wipe the slate clean every once in a while, and I kind of feel that now is the time. Our visual presentation and our game presentation and our thing that you’ll hear about very soon are all going to be new to this game. It’s going to be nothing like you’ve ever seen before.

GI: What’s it like to flush it all and start over?

Boon: It’s really scary. There’s some stuff that I thought really worked well in the previous three games, but I really feel that we can’t do any more of it. We can’t do the new fighting-style stuff. We need to do something different. A lot of people say, “How do they keep selling well?” And we really believe that’s one of the reasons. We’re not afraid to say, “That’s working, but it’s time to do something new because it’s been five years.”

GI: Hypothetical time-frame for release. Are we talking ’08?

Boon: Yeah. I would guess—and I wouldn’t promise—it would be around the fall, Novemberish time of 2008.

GI: Across all three platforms?

Boon: We’re talking about that.

So it is certainly going to be a revolutionary game for the series then, removing the fighting styles that featured in the previous release which I personally thought worked well. A gritty look will be interesting, considering how violent it is. We have already seen the gore possible with the engine in Gears of War, so it should look even better since it will be two years on from Gears by the time MK8 is released.

Hopefully we will see something about the game soon, whether it be a screenshot or trailer, I’m sure no-one minds, we just want to see it in bloody action!