Until I played the first episode of Minecraft: Story Mode; Telltale’s latest episodic series, I hadn’t quite realised quite how grim everything had got with the company’s output since The Walking Dead gained prominence. That series was of course gory, foul-mouthed, littered with emotional gut punches, and the same goes for The Wolf Among Us and Game of Thrones. Even the humour-driven Tales from the Borderlands is laden with violence, brutality and skin-pizzas.
Before that the most brutal thing Telltale had put out was Jurassic Park, and that was only brutal in the sense that the company allowed anyone to play something so rancid. The likes of Sam and Max, Monkey Island and Back to the Future were what lazy writers would call ‘’charming’’. Minecraft: Story Mode starts off ever so charming (bugger), playing like a fun family film, chock full of mild peril and jovial adventure-based shenanigans. Oh, and a potentially world-ending terror that seemingly cannot be stopped, but for the record, I’ve heard it’s a really nice world-ending terror in person.
There’s no need to tell anyone what Minecraft is. Apart from an isolated civilisation in a place known as Hull, everybody has at least heard about it, usually from an over enthusiastic child. It’s a huge deal and, unsurprisingly, Telltale found room in their near infinite development team to make this story-led spinoff to the immensely popular (sometimes digging, sometimes making stuff) simulator because clearly the company felt like a challenge. How do you go about creating an episodic narrative adventure from a game with near zero story focus? The answer is to create new lore to fit the existing rules of the game’s universe and make story the star.
In Minecraft: Story Mode Episode One you are charged with playing as Jesse (female or male); part of a team of competitive builders hoping to finally beat their rivals The Ocelots to the top prize at this year’s EnderCon and the opportunity to meet his hero, the legendary Gabriel of The Order of the Stone. Unfortunately, a mishap in the competition sees Jesse wind up in a shady situation that eventually escalates to a bitter wizard unleashing a terrible evil into the world. As I wrote before, there’s a real family film feel to proceedings. There aren’t any harrowing life or death decisions that permeate Telltale’s recent series, but Story Mode still deals with social issues such as bullying, lying and stereotyping, things better suited to a series that’s target audience is mainly children. Jesse is a fine conduit for this, coming across as a slightly awkward character with a strong sense of loyalty and belief that makes for one of Telltale’s most likeable protagonists whichever gender you choose.
The supporting cast are a bit of a mixed bag however. Petra (voiced by The Last of Us’ Ashley Johnson) is the next strongest character, providing the love of danger that drives the episode’s plot to each destination. Then there’s Paul Reubens’ Ivor, which sees Reubens revelling in the hammy, blundering villain role while still managing to be ever so slightly sympathetic as the episode goes on. After that, the rest of the gang feel a tad underwritten at this stage, merely reacting to Jesse’s adventure than participating. Even Telltale’s talisman Dave Fennoy gets the lackluster end of the stick as his Gabriel carries little weight for a character built up to be a legendary hero. On the plus side, no one performance is worse than the lowest example seen in TT’s Game of Thrones.
Where Story Mode works best is in how it weaves its tale into the Minecraft universe’s little quirks and details, which provides some fun fan service. The integration of the way Minecraft looks, feels and works is admirably done. Bar a few alterations for the sake of storytelling, Story Mode captures the spirit of Minecraft perfectly. Making wholesome fun of some of the sillier aspects of its mechanics such as the jerky, slow movement of lava and punching trees to get wood. I had initially thought that a meta component to the plot of this series would be the way to go if it was to work, and it truly does so without ever being in your face about it. The game also shows off just how enchantingly beautiful Mojang’s game can look when complex structures are built. The settings of episode one are great examples of that.
The inclusion of a variation of Minecraft’s famous crafting system means we get some actual puzzles in a Telltale game again too. Just as it looked like the emphasis for the future would make any new series effectively a visual novel, Order of the Stone features some simple puzzling that gives some hope Telltale is listening to feedback on the direction of its adventure game model. There still needs to be revision and evolution of it though, as this is still very much another Telltale series through and through. While the tone is refreshingly different and there’s some clawing back towards the puzzles of early Telltale titles, the core of this series is identical to the rest. Other developers are pushing this genre in new and exciting directions, it would be a shame if Telltale got left behind after making it so popular again.Still, there’s no denying Minecraft:Story Mode is looking like it’ll succeed at the seemingly impossible, and make a decent story out of nothing.