At Minecraft Live, we got a glimpse of the future of Minecraft in the form of Vibrant Visuals – an upgrade that will transform the way players experience the game. Coming later this year to Minecraft: Bedrock Edition on selected platforms, Vibrant Visuals will give the game a huge visual boost, adding improved graphical elements such as directional lighting, volumetric fog, and much more – and will be available as a simple menu toggle, letting you switch between old and new looks at will.

The team at Mojang has a perfect way of summing up their intentions – Vibrant Visuals is designed to evoke how Minecraft looks in your head. This isn’t a total conversion, or a handbrake turn into a new visual style, but a deepening of Minecraft’s iconic look.

Art Director Jasper Boerstra spearheaded the project, and explained that it all began by seeing how the community approached Minecraft: “Vibrant Visuals was inspired by the streamers. When I was thinking about this project, I watched streamers build to see how people play with shaders and how they react to them. One thing I noticed is that players often turn off shaders when doing specific tasks, like building, because they want to see things more clearly. That inspired me to think about how we could create graphics that you don’t have to turn off—graphics that are comfortable to build with. That’s exactly what we aimed for: simple and impactful for players.”

I was lucky enough to visit Mojang Studios in Stockholm to see Vibrant Visuals in action, and that overriding philosophy is clear from the moment I drop into one of two maps created specially to show off the huge amount of work that’s gone into creating Vibrant Visuals. It’s one thing to see it in screenshots or trailers, but you truly can’t understand the effect of Vibrant Visuals without playing the game yourself.

On the first of these maps, I load into a cave, looking up a flight of stairs to a sunset sky. Light pours in from the outside, pooling down the edges of the stone walls, vines cutting twisting shadows through it, as hovering fireflies cast lazily dancing pools of light over water blocks around me. As I leave the cave, I’m presented with a mountainous desert, the low sun casting long shadows across the landscape. It’s an atmosphere that vanilla Minecraft has never had before.

Switching to the second map, I’m suddenly in a verdant valley at the height of the afternoon. Sunshine plays through the gaps in cherry blossom trees, and falling petals (added as part of the Spring to Life game drop) cast their own fluttering shadows around me. I dive into a nearby pool, and realize that light even plays a part down here, gold rays of sunshine spearing their way through the water. Every single block is touched by the change – you can see how light interacts on everything, even across the backs of scuttling wildlife living here.

Boerstra explained more about how Vibrant Visuals isn’t just a graphical overhaul, but a distinctly Minecraft-themed take on a modern look: “When you play, you’ll notice that the shadows in the game are pixelated. All the reflections are pixelated, too. When you drop an item and the sun casts a shadow on it, it’s also pixelated. We wanted to keep it Minecraft-y, and Vibrant Visuals is a great way to bridge familiar elements with new features. It’s about adding something to the world that feels immersive while staying true to the essence of the game.”

But perhaps the biggest testament to how successfully these enhanced visuals have been implemented is that, very quickly, I forget all about them. It’s not such an overwhelming shift that I’m constantly reminded that this is an all-new look – it feels perfectly pitched, retaining everything you know of Minecraft. In fact, the most incredible part of the demonstration was when I started using a single hotkey to shift back and forth between the old look and the new – I’d continuously find amazing looking vistas, then toggle back to the original visuals, and realise, all over again, quite how much has changed.

In the original look, mountain ranges surrounded me like the enormous chunks of blocks they are – but with Vibrant Visuals, volumetric fog effects mean that they disappear into a haze, offering a sense of depth to the map. It’s not just that it looks better, it feels bigger, adding a newfound sense of scale and mystery to the world around you.

And this is only the beginning for Vibrant Visuals. This isn’t a one-and-done moment for Mojang, but the beginning of an ongoing effort to improve what Minecraft can look like, without abandoning its signature vibe.

“Vibrant Visuals is not the end; it’s the beginning of our journey,” explains Executive Producer Ingela Garneij. “We want to keep working to add more visual updates, as our goal is to reach players across platforms with approachable graphics. We’ll continue to build on these features while staying true to what makes Minecraft’s art style so special and beloved by our community.” –

It’s also presented as an option for players – and not just in the fact that you can switch back to the original look at any time. Vibrant Visuals is planned for Minecraft: Java Edition in the future, but this doesn’t spell an end to community-created visual mods, or RTX-enabled maps. Vibrant Visuals is presented as a new way for a whole new swathe of players to upgrade the look of the game, without the more in-depth work that can take.

The benefit to us, the players, is clear – for longtime fans, this represents Minecraft evolving to match their imaginations. For new players, it helps modernize the game without ever losing what made it special in the first place. And for all of those players, accessing Vibrant Visuals is as simple as downloading the update.

We’re so used to Minecraft increasing its scope through content – new blocks, new mobs, new mechanics – that it’s fascinating to see the team take a totally different approach here. Vibrant Visuals doesn’t just feel like a new look for the game – it feels like a new dawn.

Vibrant Visuals will arrive for free in Minecraft: Bedrock Edition later this year.

Minecraft

Microsoft Studios

☆☆☆☆☆
2004

★★★★★

$19.99

$15.99

Get it now

Xbox One X Enhanced

Xbox Game Pass

CREATE
Build whatever you can imagine in your own infinite world that’s unique in every playthrough.

EXPLORE
Discover biomes, resources and mobs, and craft your way through a world filled with surprises in the ultimate sandbox game.

SURVIVE
Experience unforgettable adventures as you face mysterious foes, traverse exciting landscapes, and travel to perilous dimensions.

PLAY TOGETHER
Have a blast with friends, whether you’re sitting on the same couch in split screen or miles apart in cross-platform play for console, mobile and PC. Connect with millions of players on community servers or subscribe to Realms Plus to play with up to 10 friends on your own private server.

EXPERIENCE MORE
Get creator-made add-ons, thrilling worlds, and stylish cosmetics on Minecraft Marketplace. Subscribe to Marketplace Pass (or Realms Plus) to access 150+ worlds, skin & textures packs, and more – refreshed monthly.

Do you think there’s a villain cooler than the T-1000? Get out of here, no you don’t. The T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day stands right on the intersection of early ‘90s cool, late 20^th century technological advancements, visionary storytelling, and a perfect match of performer to role. One of the guiding lights we use to decide on which guest characters to incorporate in Mortal Kombat 1 is simply… who’s the coolest fit that we haven’t included yet? Enter the T-1000.

In contrast to the tank or trucklike brute-force-instrument qualities of the T-800, the T-1000 is a sportscar. Instead of the T-800’s towering, aloof, biker-jacketed demeanor, you get Robert Patrick’s gracile and intense police officer impersonator. The T-1000 fights, shoots, and sprints without wincing, blinking, or heaving for air. He walks and scans in a hawklike, inhuman way. But when needed, he’s a better social chameleon than his predecessor. Patrick’s T-1000 can plausibly question civilians as a friendly cop and demonstrates emotions like frustration and arrogance in places the T-800 would not. Surprisingly, extreme moments are when Patrick’s T-1000 seems most human (realizing you have a live grenade round implanted in your midsection qualifies as extreme).

That’s just talking expressions and demeanor. The kicker here is what the T-1000 is made of. While the T-800 is a solid cyborg—machine endoskeleton surrounded by living flesh—the T-1000 is an experimental android composed of a cloud of liquid metal material, described in the movie as a prototype ‘mimetic polyalloy.’ With a chrome flicker that ‘resets’ its surface to a reflective silver blank slate, it can reshape itself to mimic humanoids, objects, and simple weapons. It can pour through small openings or around obstacles like an evil molasses, it can flatten and extend its mass to blend into the floor or run along it like a live oil slick, and it can extrude and then harden portions of itself to act as improvised blades, bludgeons, or prybars depending on what the situation requires. The rule in the fiction is, if the T-1000 has touched something or someone, it has scanned for information and is now capable of impersonating appearances.

The upshot for us as developers is a faster, more flexible, and cunning infiltrator than the classic T-800 Terminator (itself a guest character in Mortal Kombat 11), with an abundance of reference material to draw from, and seemingly unlimited gameplay, special effect, and cinema potential. Spoiled for choice is the expression.

But flavor-wise, its lack of blood needed addressing. A T-1000 getting slashed up by Baraka wouldn’t send red matter everywhere. At best it would be small chrome drops of the goop it’s made of getting flung away from the main mass. And that stuff wouldn’t just sit wherever it splatted, either. After the initial shock of being scattered, pieces would dust themselves off and go looking for the main entity.

An even bigger issue: Mortal Kombat 1 is filled with dozens upon dozens of signature Fatalities, Animalities, Brutalities, Fatal Blows, etc., and each one of these finishing moves is a bone crushing cinematic moment with various unpleasant things happening in detailed X-ray and cross-sectioned ultra-HD views. Well, the T-1000 is a liquid metal android so you can imagine how pulling or slicing the machine apart might be sort of like ballistics tests through dense fluids. Dedicated attention was paid to every cinema to convey the T-1000’s unique viscous characteristics when meeting grisly ends as a losing kombatant.

Then there’s the limb and form morphing. It was decided early on gameplay-wise what the T-1000 would be about, broadly—as not just a Terminator but the most advanced Terminator, he should seem implacable, always steadily forward moving, and feature an arsenal brimming with every direct movie reference we can cram in, alongside fun extrapolations we can add.

Direct film references include numerous attacks where some or all of the T-1000 reforms. For example, forearms reshaping into large blades or hooks and fingers extending into thin needles, which you’ll see throughout most of the character’s arsenal of moves. And as a police officer imposter, it’s clear the T-1000 has acquired service pistols that provide a kinetic way to stand off at range or to slowly advance. A particularly strong enhanced special move combines the two, with the T-1000 sprinting while shooting, before lunging with extended spear-arms, just like in the hospital corridor scene in the 1991 movie. A couple normal combo chains feature bladed finger extensions that skewer like little spears or the T-1000 extending a portion of itself to use as a rebar-like bludgeon mid-combo, both callbacks to the iconic steel mill setting towards the end of the film.

Some moves take creative license, embellishing to open new gameplay avenues and display more of the T-1000’s capabilities. Taking inspiration from the character dropping through the ceiling of a ruined elevator in a poured-liquid form, it can quickly reform in midair and fall to the ground as a dense fluid droplet. And like after being frozen, shattered and thawed, the T-1000 can dive into a surging blob form low to the ground, closing distance before emerging with bladed attacks. For a move that’s in between a mid-range poke and a long-range projectile attack, it can melt halfway into the floor to send out a spiny tendril of liquid metal, quickly forming the base for a rising stalagmite-like spear. The most whimsy is displayed within the T-1000’s moveset that clues eagle-eyed fans it has faced familiar Outworld kombatants before, picking up a duplication trick or two along the way.

Implementing a character design isn’t always straightforward, depending on the nature of the fighter. Of course, most characters are complicated with different moves, animations, and FX, and T-1000 has just about every complication possible. Throw animations—anything where a grappler and their victim need to be synced up—are trickier to design, motion-capture, animate, and implement than typical strikes. Moving, warping, and morphing options set up all kinds of potential variables to account for. FX themselves can be complex, involving cross-discipline efforts to solve lighting, physics, and model issues that get in the way of coordinating the intended look and feel.

Doing justice to the T-1000 was a full-team effort, and we couldn’t be more excited to add this amazing guest fighter to the Mortal Kombat 1 roster. The T-1000 Terminator is available today on Xbox Series X|S as part of the Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns Expansion, or a la carte via separate purchase.

Mortal Kombat 1: Khaos Reigns Kollection

Warner Bros. Games

☆☆☆☆☆
582

★★★★★

$89.99

$29.69

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New to Mortal Kombat 1? Get started with the Kollection Edition! Mortal Kombat 1 ushers in a New Era of the iconic franchise with a New fighting system, game modes, and fatalities.

Includes instant access to the Base Game, Kombat Pack, and Dragon Krystals. Gain access to the upcoming Story Expansion, Kombat Pack 2 and more!

Khaos Reigns Story Expansion

Kombat Pack 2*
Khaos Reigns Fighters Available At Launch:
Noob Saibot
Cyrax
Sektor
Guest Fighters Available Post-Launch (includes 1 week early access)
Ghostface (Scream Franchise)
T-1000 (Terminator 2)
Conan the Barbarian

Kombat Pack (Available Now):
Omni-Man (Invincible)
Quan Chi
Peacemaker (DC’s Peacemaker)
Ermac
Homelander (The Boys)
Takeda Takahashi

Kameo Fighters (Available Now):
Tremor
Khameleon
Janet Cage
Mavado
Ferra

Jean-Claude Van Damme Skin for Johnny Cage (Available Now)
1250 Dragon Krystals (Available Now)

*Separate Kombat Pack 2 character bundle not available

MK1: T-1000

Warner Bros. Games

☆☆☆☆☆

★★★★★

Get it now

The T-1000 embodies the ultimate evolution of assassination technology. This pack includes playable character the T-1000, including all new move-sets based on Terminator 2