For those of you who have never heard of Minecraft or it's Story Mode miniseries, Minecraft is not only a open-world sandbox game, it was THE open-world sandbox game. While the genre did exist before Minecraft was released by Swedish developer Mojang in 2009, this game almost singlehandedly popularized the genre, being a massive hit with children and adults alike, thanks to a fun, but simple combat system, randomly generated terrain, towns and dungeons that made sure that no two adventures would be the same, and of course, the ability to build almost anything you can possibly imagine, like a bunny rabbit riding a turtle that, in turn, is riding a dinosaur, or the world's most technologically advanced mansion. Minecraft was such a huge success that there's tons of merchandise literally everywhere. It was even so famous that several other games drew inspiration from Minecraft's characteristics. And then in 2015, Telltale Games, who are most well-known for making the Walking Dead video games and Wolf Among Us, decided to make a seemingly impossible spin-off for the block-busting (geddit?) titan; A narrative driven point-and-click adventure where your moral choices will permanently change the course of the story set in the same universe as the original Minecraft. The spin-off, titled Minecraft Story Mode, was surprisingly well-made, with likable, but somewhat cliche characters and providing plenty of in-jokes that only people who play Minecraft extensively will understand (raise your hand if you know what a Mob Grinder is). It also stands out for being Telltale Games's first ever family friendly video game, as all their other games are rated M for Mature.
Minecraft Story Mode Season 2 is a direct sequel to the original game, but has the same business model, drip-feeding the audience several "episodes" which serve as several full games in their own right, each being 3-4 hours long a piece and being charged for no more than $5. They normally stop after five episodes, but some of Telltale's other games (including the original Story Mode) can have as many as eight episodes (it depends on how successful episodes 1-5 were in terms of financial gain and audience popularity to determine if the game gets extra episodes) . Did I mention that Telltale uses this payment method for literally every game they make? Anyway, the cool thing about Season 2 is that you do not need to play the first game to understand the second game's story, as they provide a quick, one-minute-thirty-something-seconds long recap of the first game. But if that recap isn't enough, the gist is that you play as either a male or female hero named Jesse (you get to decide Jesse's gender at the beginning of both this game and the original) who used to be an average teenager living in a tree house with his/her friends Axel, Olivia, Petra, and Lukas (who are all based off of various player archetypes for Minecraft proper) and a pig named Reuben and after a run-in with an alchemist named Ivor who has become embittered by a combination of lack of respect and his own childhood friends telling a bold faced lie to become famous, Jess and his/her friends are sent on a massive adventure to save the world when Ivor's plan to earn his long overdue respect backfires horribly. That's literally the entire plot of episodes 1-4, while episodes 5-8 are self-contained one off stories where Jesse, Petra, Lukas, and a newly reformed Ivor explore several alternate dimensions, each with their own rules and gimmicks (a world with floating islands, a world with a murderous computer, and a world that is literally a blockier, less violent version of The Hunger Games are the highlights of these one-off adventures).
Anyway, this is a review of Episode 1 of Season 2, titled Hero in Residence. The basic premise of the episode is after what is implied to be a few years since Jesse and friend's latest adventure, they all have settled down and almost the entire cast are now running the various towns and cities that somehow miraculously survived the various catastrophes that have befallen the Story Mode universe.
Jesse and Friends' new home, Beacontown, is
filled to the brim with with beautifully built but
horrifically mismatched structures, as one can see
here.
This creates an interesting dynamic, because Petra the Warrior (the only one of the main five main characters that hasn't settled down) has a strained relationship with the rest of the cast. Because they are now the only form of government shown in the series, their political responsibilities means they don't have time to go adventuring with Petra, causing her to feel neglected. Meanwhile, Petra refuses to accept the fact that the world is changing whether she likes it or not, and the result is a very irritated and saddeningly lonely swordmaster/thrill seeker. This right here is arguably the greatest form of character development in the series (one could make the argument that Ivor's transition from bitter and vengeful anti-villain to childishly eccentric mad scientist is better though), which is doubly impressive given that Petra is supposed to represent the kind of Minecraft player who prefers to fight enemies/other players in open combat (a PvPer, as I like to call it).
Of course, seeing as how a point-and-click adventure needs an adventure to go adventuring on, the call to adventure rears it's head once more (that might be the most redundant thing I have ever written), when Jesse and Friends uncover an ancient cursed gauntlet and a vortex of death and destruction which Petra nicknames the "Heck Mouth", which after a quick detour to a neighboring city whose leader has conned one of Jesse's closest friends, spirals into Jesse's first ever underwater mission to a watery Temple of Doom and coming face to face with this season's main villain, the Admin, which without giving away spoilers, can be best described as a literal God in Minecraft form. The story is straightforward but engaging thanks to the surprisingly compelling cast, and has much better pacing than I was expecting. I mean, the first season had four whole episodes devoted to what in retrospect is nothing more than a prologue because of a terrible, drawn-out pacing. This episode has the team already making massive amounts of progress within minutes and that is including the detour.
From left to right: Olivia, Axel, Lukas, Male!Jesse,
and brand new character Radar.
Sadly, neither Axel or Olivia receive character development of the scale Petra got from the transition from Season 1 to Season 2, which is unfortunately a side-effect of the fact that they are the least popular of the five main heroes (because most people find their flaws annoying/off-putting) and as such neither of them showed up at all during the one-off adventures except right at the very end of the final episode, because the entire reason the one-off adventures exist is to give the four most popular characters in the game (Petra, Lukas, Ivor, and Jesse) a chance to be in the spotlight. I personally don't mind Axel or Olivia's flaws, in fact I wished they had more screen time and (hopefully) some more character development, because quite frankly, these two characters have so much potential to be fun and memorable, but are being heavily underused. Lukas, on the other hand, is by far the most popular character in the Story Mode series, and for good reason. He's a well-mannered teen (which in itself should be impossible lol) who gains an absurd amount of character development in the span of three episodes, and despite having the least amount of screen time out of the five main characters, he has grown and matured the most, going from likable, but easily frightened kid who spent his time competing in building contests, to a lovable author who not only became a master sharpshot, but also managed to turn Jesse and Friends's exploits into a very popular novel series, that I honestly wish existed in real life because I would totally read that. The brand new character Radar is... curious to say the least. He serves as Jesse's intern/secretary, since Jesse is so busy thanks to his/her political responsibilities s/he has to hire an intern to keep his/her schedule straight. Radar acts basically how you would imagine an intern working for a hero who, at this time, has accomplished dozens of heroic feats like saving the world from a vengeful alchemist's monster, solving a murder mystery, battling a supercomputer, and teaching an entire civilization how to survive in the wilderness would act. In other words, he's a total fanboy who starts hyperventilating the moment Jesse and Friends talk to him. I have no idea how important Radar is to the overall story, and I honestly can't wait to see what becomes of Radar in the future. Also I just now learned that Radar is voiced by Yuri Lowenthal, one of my all time favorite voice actors ever.
As for Jesse's character development, it really depends on how you play the game. Minecraft Story Mode is a game franchise where you can literally choose what kind of personality Jesse has thanks to the literal thousands of branching dialogue choices. These choices will make Jesse act like either a pompous jerk, an all-loving goody two shoes who believes very strongly in the Power of Friendship, or my personal favorite option, a well-meaning, but very sarcastic sassball. Or you can mix and match these choices to make your version of Jesse unique. My only real gripe with Jesse as a character is that there are way too many times where if you look at the dialogue options, you pick the one that sounds like the desired personality on paper, but Jesse's actual delivery makes it have a completely different meaning. The most grating example of this is early on in the episode, Jesse arrives late for a mining expedition with Petra who is understandably annoyed because of the whole "neglected and lonely thrill seeker" thing, and Jesse has to explain why s/he was late. One of the options reads "The people needed me". Sounds nice and humble on paper, but when you click on it, Jesse says with a cocky grin on his/her face; "What can I say, my public adores me!". And I hate moments like those, and believe me there are plenty of moments like this one, because it breaks the immersion and if you're trying to pick only choices that match a specific personality, it makes playing playing through the episode somewhat of a headache. And while there were poorly worded choices in the first season, most infamously the *"Save the Machine vs Save the Piggy" choice from the very first episode, but those moments were few and far between, hence the Machine vs Piggy choice's infamy. But here, there are more poorly worded choices in this one episode than there were in the entire first season. That's how bad it is.
But seeing as how this is a brand new adventure, there are of course new friends and foes, most prominent of which is the dynamic duo Jack and Nurm, a seasoned treasure hunter suffering from what is implied to be PTSD thanks to a sea adventure gone wrong, and a hyper-intelligent map-maker who can only speak in a strange foreign language that only Jack understands, respectively At first, I figured they would be minor characters at best, because I play all my games almost completely blind with as little knowledge going in as possible and as such never noticed how prominent Jack and Nurm are in Season 2's marketing. But no, they become major players shortly after Jesse meets them. They both are likable, and Jack's reputation as a legend versus the broken, half-blind man that bears an uncanny resemblance to Chuck Norris creates a rather compelling character. He tries hard to live up to his reputation as a fearless adventurer and frequently reminisces and boasts about his previous adventures (which sound like something straight out of Lord of the Rings), but his fears and guilt over that disastrous expedition constantly hold him back. During my first playthrough, I thought this dynamic was because he was a fraud who was all bark and no bite, but after a couple more playthroughs (and remembering that if Jack really was a fraud, it would literally be repeating a certain plot twist from Season 1 and I know better than to expect Telltale to use the same plot twist twice) I realized that Jack is 100% legit, and in fact, Jack's depth to his character is one of the best things about this episode. Nurm isn't that compelling simply because he exists to serve as the Chewbacca to Jack's Han Solo, and the only info we can really understand concerning Nurm is that he's a hyper-intelligent map-maker who can decipher dead languages, but his dialogue is in a fictional language that captions refuse to translate, resulting in a running joke where Nurm says something but only Jack understands what Nurm said.
Season 2 also introduces Stella, a minor antagonist that fills mostly the same role that Aiden filled back in Season 1. That is, a minor villain that Jesse and Friends consider an annoyance at worst, but if my hunch is correct, she will wind up becoming one of Jesse's deadliest foes yet (because the exact same thing happened to Aiden). Stella, however, is a much more interesting version of Aiden. Initially acting like a genuinely nice person, Stella's good natured mannerisms are just a facade to hide her insatiable greed, and has swindled many an adventurer into handing over their most valuable belongings to her, and manipulates the victims of her cons into working for her until they pay off the debt they owe her, only to swindle them again and again, and eventually her pawns are trapped in an endless cycle of swindles until Stella's pawns have literally nothing of value to their name. Something else that's rather interesting is that she seems to have (an admittedly comical take on) Joker Syndrome for Jesse, declaring herself to be Jesse's rival, despite the fact they have never met prior to this episode, and insisting that they are bound together by destiny.
And that covers everything concerning the story. I know, that was a lot to talk about, but I had to get that out there to properly explain why I like Season 2. Now for the gameplay! Minecraft Story Mode Season 2 uses basically the same style the first game did, dividing the game into three sections. First and most common, interactive cinematics where you can pick the aforementioned dialogue choices, classic point-and-click exploration sections where you can examine objects, craft items to help you later, and solve puzzles, and a simplistic combat system where Jesse has to use his/her sword and his/her wits to battle enemies. Between these sections are quick-time events and I know some people hate how extensively this franchise uses Quick-Time Events due to how easy they are (as long as you press the button displayed on screen you will be perfectly fine), but I personally like them, for this franchise in particular. It's very difficult to convey a sense of urgency or action in a point-and-click adventure game, but Quick Time Events do a decent job instilling some much needed action. However, if they put Quick Time Events in say, Horizon: Zero Dawn, then that would be annoying. The Combat system also got revamped with the addition of a Stamina Gauge making combat slightly more challenging as well as being a nice way to integrate the combat revamp from Minecraft proper (the one that added a cooldown timer to melee attacks). But the weakest part of Season 2 is that as far as challenge goes, it's really easy, and I understand that it's a family friendly story driven game, which means it has to be easy enough to make sure young children can complete the game without any problem, but it still would be nice to have a decent challenge.
As far as visuals go, Minecraft Story Mode has the trademark blocky aesthetic that made Minecraft proper so beloved. The locations all look nice, from the mind bogglingly asymmetric Beacontown to the futuristic Champion City to the Indiana Jones-esque Sea Temple. The character designs are also nice to look at. The quality of the animation is also much better this time around, though whether that's because of a jump in quality on the developer's part or because I played this game on my PS4, which is much more powerful than the PS3 I used when playing Season 1, is up for debate. The sound is also nice, as it has cleaner versions of the music and sound effects from Minecraft proper in addition to some new songs. And finally, the Voice Acting. Well they got an all-star cast for a reason. The voice acting is really good, even if the dialogue gets campy at times, but the actors do a great job with the material they have to work with. They have most of the previous actors/actresses return to reprise their original roles, such as Patton Oswalt as Male!Jesse, Ashley Johnson as Petra, and Mathew Porter as Lukas. Also, YURI LOWENTHAL AS RADAR!!! The only real thing that strikes me as odd is that Olivia's voice actress sounds completely different, but it's not as grating as it could have been due to Oliva being underused and having hardly any screen time in this episode.
Overall, I honestly enjoyed this one episode more than most of the entire first season. My only real gripes are with the poorly worded dialogue choices. I give Minecraft Story Mode Season 2: Hero in Residence a 9/10. I think that's actually higher than the ratings I normally give this franchise lol.
*- For those not in-the-know, the choice I am referring to is a early choice in Minecraft Story Mode: Order of Stone, the original episode that started it all. Basically, after someone sabotages a building contest, Reuben the pig runs off in terror into a forest while at the same time, that saboteur sets Jesse's build on fire, you are given two choices that clearly read; "Save the Machine" or "Save Reuben". Many people, myself included, thought it meant choosing what to make Jesse do. Nope! What the choices really meant was "Tell Jesse's friends to stay and save the Machine" or "Send Jesse's friends to save Reuben". Jesse leaves to save Reuben regardless of which choice you make. Because of this, many players were infuriated at this, because now that they know the true meaning and consequences of this choice, it's obvious the better choice is "Save the Machine" as Jesse will save Reuben anyway and making this choice will let you win the building contest.
EDIT: Almost forgot to mention a tiny thing, but when you make a choice that impacts the story in a major way, you will get a message in the top-left corner reading "Your Story is Changing". It's nice to know when you have impacted the story in major way and not have to wait until after you beat the episode to know which choices will have a lasting impact on the adventure.
Nice analysis of characters' development between Seasons 👍
ReplyDelete