NetherRealm Studios and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment’s Mortal Kombat 11 has finally released for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. The Mortal Kombat 11 story mode clocks in at four hours. For those of you who want want a quick breakdown of the story and the endings, you’ve come to the right place.
The game starts at the end of Mortal Kombat X, after Cassie Cage defeated Shinnok and saved Johnny Cage from D’Vorah. Raiden captures Shinnok and tortures him in a tower after using the power of Shinnok’s amulet, which has corrupted him.
Raiden beheads Shinnok to deliver a warning to Liu Kang and Kitana – both of whom are revenants, corrupted by Shinnok and Quan’Chi’s magic.
However, Raiden isn’t convinced that he can trust Liu Kang and Kitana to stay in Netherrealm, so he seeks the help of Sonya Blade, Cassie Cage, Jacqui Briggs, and the rest of the special forces to secretly invade Netherrealm and destroy the power feeding Liu Kang’s power source for his revenant army.
Sonya and her team manage to plant the C4 explosives in the bone temple, but Liu Kang and Kitana figure out Raiden’s plan and proceed to attack Cassie and Jacqui. Liu Kang uses his fire power to blow up part of the temple, which crushes Sonya; before she dies she detonates the C4 destroying the Cathedral of Power.
Without their army of revenants, Liu Kang and Kitana are rendered vulnerable. However, Kronica appears and restores their castle. She recruits them into her plan, which involves bringing back many of the defeated warriors from past games from an earlier time period after Mortal Kombat 4.
This results in the corrupted Raiden completely disappearing, while Shao Kahn, past Raiden, past Liu Kang, past Kitana, Erron Black, Jade, Baraka, D’Vorah, and Kung Lao appear in Outworld, where Kotal Kahn is the new ruler.
A royal rumble of sorts takes place, and in the ensuing chaos D’Vorah comes to the aid of Shao Kahn and the other villains where she brings them to Kronika. The villains are recruited into their plan, which includes capturing the past versions of Kung Lao and Liu Kang.
The Earthrealm squad attempt to track down and stop Kronika’s army, which consists of the Cyber Lin-Kuei, the Outworld army, and the Netherrealm army.
Sub-Zero and Scorpion team up and take down Sector and the Cyber Lin-Kuei facility with the help of Cyrax.
Kano, both from the past and present, work together to restore Sektor after his defeat.
Meanwhile Kitana is tasked with enlisting the help of Sheeva on behalf of Kotal Kahn.
Both Kotal and Jade attempt to track down Shao Kahn in the Tarkatan camp, but when Kotal attempts to behead the Tarkatans for not giving up Shao Kahn’s position, Jade intercedes and beats up Kotal Kahn, which makes him seem like a complete weakling. While he’s knocked out Shao Kahn captures Kotal.
The two Kanos manage to restore Sektor and have him join the Black Dragon, becoming Black Dragon Sektor.
They raid the special forces base and defeat most of the marines while capturing Sonya. The Black Dragons blow up the Earthrealm special forces base by sacrificing Sektor, who doubles as a bomb, but Raiden saves the main heroes from the blast and takes them to Scorpion’s Fire Garden for safekeeping.
Raiden attempts to seek help from the elder gods but in the process of the time manipulation taking place by Kronika, the elder gods disappear. Only Cetrion is left, Kronika’s daughter.
Kitana manages to recruit the Tarkatans, and Sheeva – who looks hideous like Charles Barkley in cosplay pretending to be an ugly woman – and they go to rescue Kotal Kahn, who ends up getting his back broken during his fight with Shao Kahn. Kotal is a total pussy-pushover and is only concerned about Jade, who says she’ll still stay with him even though he’s a cripple from the waist down. Talk about getting cucked.
Kitana single-handedly manages to defeat Shao Kahn and slice his face up, which makes no freaking sense at all as far as continuity is concerned given that even Raiden had difficulty defeating Shao Kahn and he’s a freaking god!
Anyway, Cassie tracks down and goes to save young Johnny cage and young Sonya. Cassie gets shot by Kano in the process, but Sonya manages to shoot young Kano in the eye, blowing out his brains, which also kills present day Kano.
The heroes defeat the Black Dragon, along with Shao Kahn’s army, and the Cyber Lin-Kuei, finishing off most of Kronika’s armies.
As a backup plan, Kronika decides to draw power from Shang Tsung’s soul of wells from the original Mortal Kombat 1.
Young Jax and Jacqui attempt to thwart Kronika’s plan, taking her crown, which is filled with Shang Tsung’s well of souls. Old Jax, who was convinced to join Kronika in order to rewrite history and spare Jacqui and his wife from suffering, gets beat by young Jax and Jacqui. Cetrion interjects, forcing them to hand over the crown.
Kronika has Cetrion bring the remaining Netherrealm revenants and Cyber Lin-Kuei to the keep while D’Vorah is tasked with subduing Kharon in the Netherrealm. Scorpion goes to the Netherrealm to free Kharon and enlist his help to use his ferries to bring the Earthrealm warriors to Kronika’s keep. However, present day Scorpion (Hasashi) is poisoned by D’Vorah while he attempts to persuade young Scorpion to join him and restore the honor of the Shirai Ryu, which young Scorpion does reluctantly. Young Scorpion defeats D’Vorah while Hasashi dies in his arms.
Scorpion proceeds to the Fire Garden only to get beat up by by everybody, but finally convinces them he’s there to help. This triggers a series of flashbacks in Raiden who realizes that across multiple timelines Kronika has pitted him against Liu Kang.
When Raiden refuses to fight Liu Kang and recognizes the pattern, Kronika intercedes and steals away Liu Kang since Raiden refuses to kill him.
Revenant Liu Kang uses Shinnok’s magic to steal young Liu Kang’s soul to get strong enough to fight Raiden. Meanwhile Raiden and the rest of Earthrealm heroes and Outworld’s armies take Kharon’s ferries to Kronika’s island of time, which sits outside the realms, but only Kharon can take them there since he also sits outside the boundaries of time itself.
While on the the ferry, Kronika sends the remaining Cyber Lin-Kuei to intercept Raiden’s fleet. However, Raiden manages to defeat them, including Geras, Kronika’s protector. Even though Geras is revived every time he dies, Raiden chains him to an anchor and drops him into the bottomless sea of blood.
Raiden also completely destroys the remaining Cyber Lin-Kuei by disabling Frost, who was put in command of the army.
When revenant Liu Kang goes to fight Raiden, he’s soundly defeated and Raiden proceeds to fuse with young Liu Kang and revenant Liu Kang, creating Fire God Liu Kang.
Liu Kang leads the other realm armies to Kronika’s keep after defeating the Netherrealm armies, along with the present day Jax, who is convinced to fight to help his daughter Jacqui instead of with Kronika.
Liu Kang proceeds to defeat revenant Kung Lao, revenant Kitana, and revenant Jade. He then makes short work of Cetrion.
Cetrion gives her remaining power to Kronika, who proceeds to fight and lose to Liu Kang, but not before completely resetting all of time.
Raiden becomes mortal after separating from Liu Kang. He explains that Liu Kang is now in charge of shaping time, but he will need a partner to do so, at which point Liu Kang chooses Kitana to help shape time by his side.
In the extended ending for Liu Kang in the Tower Mode, it’s revealed that he also appoints Bo Rai’Cho, Kitana, Raiden, and Kung Lao as the elder gods of the realms, but laments his duty as an overseer of time due to his yearning for a simpler life with Kitana
It’s also revealed in Sonya and Scorpion’s Tower Mode endings that the elder gods and keeper of time are not the only gods of the realms.
We learn from Scorpion’s ending that there are other gods that help influence the sands of time, known as titans. Scorpion discovers this when he realizes that no matter how often time is reset, his wife and child always die. He realizes that something greater is influencing the sands of time, and ventures outside of the realms to hunt down the titans and destroy them.
It turns out that there are also cosmic creatures even greater than the titans, which appears in Sonya’s ending, revealing that there are realms far beyond the knowledge of man. She manages to venture to the farthest reaches beyond time and space itself to an “unpronounciably-named” realm to hunt down an omni-deity, which looks like a cosmic horror from Lovecraft’s lore.
This gives the impression that even though Liu Kang has become an elder god and the keeper of time, along with Kitana, there are still forces greater than him outside the known realms that can shape and effect the sands of time, which some speculate may be the starting point for Mortal Kombat 12.
