Telltale Games·Released Oct 13, 2015·Single player
As Jesse, you’ll embark on a perilous adventure across the Overworld, through the Nether, to the End, and beyond. While at EnderCon in hopes of meeting Gabriel the Warrior, you and your friends discover that something is wrong… something dreadful.
Minecraft: Story Mode - Episode 1: Order of the Stone is a lacklustre start to Telltale's latest series. While it's certainly not bad, it's not exactly good either. A great performance from Patton Oswalt and some fun sequences aren't enough to cancel out the wonky pacing and bland narrative, while the ensemble cast mostly falls flat. This instalment is inoffensive enough, but it never really provides enough for you to latch on to. There's still plenty more to come, of course, but the jury's still out.
Mechanically you are left with a feeling that there was room for Telltale to - finally - stretch its template a little further than its standard 'side with one character or the other' choices. And if it didn't do so here, with the most open-ended licence going, then it may never. Like all recipes, if you have tried the end result too often then its taste may wear a little thin. But for lapsed Telltale fans or young Minecraft aficionados, Story Mode's opener is an enjoyable first bite.
Sparse interactivity and a lack of commitment to explaining this world and its inhabitants hold Episode 1 back, but I'm still absorbed in my story, and eager to find out what happens next.
A Telltale experience through and through, the first episode is enjoyable and whets your appetite just enough to leave you wanting more
Minecraft: Story Mode doesn't deviate from the well-established Telltale formula much, keeping both what works (the storytelling) and what often doesn't work (combat). Even so, it accomplishes something impressive. I was skeptical of Telltale's ability to tell a story in the Minecraft universe that would be interesting to people who weren't already fans of the game, but so far, the studio is pulling it off with aplomb.
It's a slow start, but a pleasant one, for Telltale's narrative take on one of the world's most popular games.
