Previews

Minecraft: Story Mode preview - everything you need to know

Mining for drama, crafting a narrative

Minecraft: Story Mode preview - everything you need to know
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Minecraft: Story Mode is out later this week. Mark got a chance to play the first episode in a mini movie theatre in Soho. Here's everything you need to know about this episodic adventure.

What's all this then?

Minecraft: Story Mode is the latest series from Telltale - a studio that makes interactive story games based on famous licences. It's done ones on The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, Jurassic Park, and now… Minecraft.

If you've never played one of those, it's a game with a tiny bit of action and a tiny bit of puzzle solving and a tiny bit of exploration, but the main focus is on choosing dialogue responses in conversations.

Sounds booooring

Well, you'd think so, right? But that has always been something electrically fun about shaping your character's personality and seeing how your decisions will impact the outcome of the story.

You see, the game's plot is somewhat malleable, and will react to your choices. Plus, characters remember how you treat them and what you say, which can lead to divergent outcomes.

How much can you affect the story?

Well, I've only played through episode one once, so I can't say for sure, but I've played enough Telltale games to see all the usual tricks. You're never going to go to drastically different places or see massively different events. Just, slight changes here and there.

That being said, the final choice of the episode seems like it will have huge repercussions in episode two - with each choice seemingly leading you to vastly different places. Which is surprising. We'll see how that plays out.

So what's the story all about? Because Minecraft… doesn't exactly have a story

That's true. The story revolves around a guy or girl (you can choose, as well as your skin colour - a first for a Telltale game) called Jesse, and her pals as they enter a building competition.

The most impressive build will net the creators entrance to Endercon (a sort of in-game Minecon. It's weird) and a chance to meet one of the four legendary heroes. These are four Minecraft experts who killed an Enderdragon once.

Things soon go horribly wrong. It's surprisingly intense, with scary zombie and creeper fights, giant monsters, near-death situations, and characters sacrificing themselves for others. Phew!

Do I need to know about Minecraft?

It will certainly help. Everything in Story Mode is based around Minecraft proper, and the characters make references to all sorts of insider Minecraft knowledge - like the wither, the nether, command blocks, soul sand, creepers, and beacons - without proper explanation.

I don't think this is something you'll pick up (or even want to pick up) as you play, like The Wolf Among Us was to those of us who hadn't read Fables. This is for Minecraft fans only.

Otherwise, you're getting a kinda bog standard Telltale-em-up, with weird blocky graphics and loads of references you won't understand.

"Kinda bog standard"?

It's fine. It's fine. The writing is okay and there are some good jokes - spoken and visual. But it's very much made for a younger audience and the whole thing feels a bit Saturday morning cartoon.

You know what's a good comparison? It feels like those weird straight-to-DVD Lego movies where it's just this weird and kinda B-tier cartoon where everything happens to be made of Lego. Where you really want The Lego Movie, and everything that entails.

Do you at least get to mine? Or craft?

You can craft, yes. You'll have to put items down on a crafting table in the right spots to make tools and items. You can always pull up the recipe list though.

It's a puzzle… I guess? But super easy and the answer is on the screen. I dunno, it's there to remind you that this is Minecraft. You'll also do some screen-tapping to mine trees, but only as part of a funny Rocky-style montage.

When characters are building anything big, like a treehouse, you'll just watch them do it. If you want to build, go play Minecraft itself, I guess.

How's the voice acting?

As usual, very good. The male Jesse is played by Patton Oswalt, and that's great. And the voice actor for Lee in The Walking Dead (Dave Fennoy) gets a comeback once again, this time as one of the four legendary heroes.

You've also got Futurama's Billy West, Ashley Johnson from The Last of Us, and others. It's a good cast.

Will you play episode two?

I'm not sure. I like the characters - but I'm not overly invested in the story and not a big enough Minecraft fan to really care. However, I am intrigued to see how the final decision in episode one will affect episode two.

Should I play episode one?

If you like Minecraft a lot, yes. Doubly so if you're under the age of 16. If you don't like Minecraft, maybe give it a miss and check out one of Telltale's other games. I've heard Tales from the Borderlands is good.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer