*Minor spoilers ahead for Minecraft Story Mode Episode 1
I started up Minecraft: Story Mode not really knowing what to expect. I love every Telltale game I've played. From The Walking Dead, to The Wolf Among Us, all the way to Game of Thrones. Their Storytelling is top notch in my book. And Minecraft is one of my favorite time sinks of the past few years. But mixing them together seemed strange from the start. I'm happy to say that Telltale has crafted something really nice here (crafted... see what I did there).
You start out as Jessie (voiced by Patton Oswald), ready to compete in a crafting competition at Minecon. The whole thing feels like a cheesy 80s movie all the way down to a Rocky like montage scene. Eventually, Jessie gets wrapped up in a revenge scheme gone bad, and the world is threatened by a giant Wraith that is swallowing the whole Minecraft world one block at a time.
Along the way Jessie is helped by his friends Olivia, Alex, Lukas, and Petra, and his pet pig Reuben, who is a star all his own. I enjoyed the little piglet so much I even traded my only weapon to a greedy butcher about to make Reuben into a Reuben sandwich just to keep him around.
Now I will say this is very much a Telltale game, just set in the Minecraft universe. There isn't much crafting or building, and when there is, it consists of mostly quick time button presses. But that is just fine with me. When I play Telltale games, I'm really just in it for the story and dialogue choices and both are well represented here.
I know this isn't a "It Came from the Backlog" game, but I'll post a new review after each episode of Story Mode comes out. I realized I bit off more than I could chew with one backlog game every week so they may be interluded with other game reviews like this one or opinion pieces. This Wednesday post is still shifting and evolving so just bare with me while I figure it all out!
-Rory
