Another issue that impacted the episode as a whole were the amount of times that the members of the Order backtracked into flashbacks that told of the argument that disbanded them. While I understand that it’s crucial to the story, it took away completely from the decision making and the story that revolves around Jessie and the Wither Storm. The characters, minus a scene with Petra, receive almost no depth and leave it to the environments and the little bit of dialogue to develop them. With the environments being the main reason to play the episode, the lack of exploration doesn’t help its case. For a game that is meant to develop according to character choices, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of decision-making going to develop the story further. Hopefully, the cliffhanger ending will pose as an entryway to further Jessie and his friend’s role in all of this instead of being focused on the Order.
Still, it is the girl that Nintendo has brought to the dance. As such, it’s highly unlikely they will be replacing it with an entirely new console anytime soon. After all, they’re not a company on the verge of bankruptcy whose entire future relies on the Wii U becoming the dominant selling system. Not to mention that the 3DS is actually doing quite well, giving them a hardware buoy should they need it.
The episode relies prettily on QTE (Quick Time Events) and gives you something next to decision making to worry about. While a lot of the QTE are really to avoid taking damage, some are just used for the sake of being there, like to build things, but they also add to your situation and count as something else to watch out for. You are given a set of ten hearts to have throughout the episode (and most likely throughout the series) and damage gets taken away every time you are either attacked by an enemy or fail to do a QTE. The QTE also acts as its own decision as some events can change how a person sees you. It isn’t as effective as a regular decision, but something like which group of people you want to run with or how long it takes you to do something might have a much more of an impact in the future.
(eyes widen and laughs) I was a big fan of The Sims and also did terrible things to them. (We go off on a tangent discussing the terrible atrocities we committed on our Sims, none of which is fit to print here)
They’re unwilling to go out of their way to adapt major third party releases. They are painfully slow to adopt an indie market that could actually make good use of the Wii U’s unique capabilities. They seem, at times, to be woefully oblivious to the current state of the game industry, and determined to turn the Wii U into a time machine that will make it 1987 again. They seemingly have a hero complex that drives them to be the only ones who make a game that turns it all around.
Let me begin by saying that this episode is particularly short, like a little over an hour short. I guess that’s what happens when the first two episodes are only separated by a few weeks, but the fact that to get the entire experience you have to play through it twice sort of pans out well because it then makes the episode about two hours long. Still, a much longer playthrough for the sequel was expected considering the complication of the events taking place. That being said, the episode covers the areas following either Elligaard or Magnus and each path allows you to follow and understand more of the world of Minecraft. There are a few inconsistencies that don’t make sense and some new events that don’t necessarily pertain to Jessie or his/her friends, but that doesn’t label the episode as terrible. By inconsistencies, I mean there were points in the game where I thought, “why can’t they just do this/that in order to progress?” One moment that comes to mind is when a character falls into a hole and can’t seem to get out when they could have built their way out as they were able to in the first episode. The rest of the episode is littered with little things like that that make you scratch your head and ask those questions.
Clocking in at roughly two hours, this episode is one of the longer Telltale episodes right behind the first episode of Tales from the Borderlands. Even though it’s generally long for an episode, it doesn’t mean that time was wasted. With every passing second, new lore is learned about this rendition of the Minecraft building guide world and how characters perceive the strange world around them. Who knew that people were pretty used to the idea of killing a dragon from another dimension and hosting a convention in honor of the heroes who slew it?
The episode in itself offers a lot of promise for the rest of the announced episode, but it also cuts them short. The next slew of episodes will be adding new story arcs to the new Order of the Stone as they go on new adventures to build up their legacy. That being said, in the two hours it took to finish the episode to its completion, it made the entire premise feel very unimportant. SO much had happened and so much story and character development was involved that Telltale could have made the entire plot itself into a single season if they wanted to. The entirety of Sky City itself has so much more that could have been explored and so many more characters could have been introduced, but the story was limited to a couple of hours of gameplay. It creates a new kind of gameplay that forces you to pay attention and actually play the game rather than just putting your controller down and making a decision every once in a while.