The story development in this episode brings out its appeal to older audiences. It’s fast paced and doesn’t leave a whole lot of room to think where it would be important to. Quick time events (QTEs) are important in the episode, as they have been in the previous three, making it known that you have to be ready for anything. When you aren’t interacting in a QTE, you are trying to solve a series of puzzles that can only be done so by following a set of clues. The previous episodes also had puzzles the solve but they were as easy as flipping a few switches and moving on. This episode stresses your ability to listen in order to solve the puzzles and makes it a little easier to screw up and start over again. The episode also follows in the footsteps of the previous as exploration continues to be an important aspect. Since these puzzles are a little bit more difficult, every room has more information and lore about the world that Telltale has created as you search for clues.
During the early 90’s, many of us were involved in, as coined by James Rolfe, the “bit wars,” the point where competing systems developed a brand loyalty with the consumers. It was a Genesis/SNES world and the market intended for you to pick a side. But those of us who were first exposed to video games during this time didn’t originally intend to side with either Sega or Nintendo. While there were certain characteristics of each console that we preferred, our focus was never on what games were better. The first big step for any future gamer is one devoid of partisanship in the gaming community; when you first enter the gaming world, you aren’t involved in the console wars. In fact, they did not exist to you back then. I personally chose Sonic the Hedgehog as my “gateway game” simply because I liked who he was as a character. I liked his cool blue color, his tough-guy stare, and the acrobatic nature of how he moved. Level design, physics, replay value, music, even the buzz term “blast processing” meant absolutely nothing to me. It was Sonic himself that captivated me to join the gaming world.
Many other gamers in my age group were hooked during the Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis era, while the older crowd are likely to have the original NES in their hearts. Some might even cite the original Atari 2600 as their first step into the world of gaming, with their reverence for the medium enduring even the colossal gaming crash of the 1980’s. On the other side of things, we have younger gamers who are being raised on Playstation consoles as new as the Playstation 4 and even Microsoft’s Xbox line, which didn’t appear until the new millennium. We also mustn’t forget those of us who played PC games during our childhood, even the consistently ridiculed edutainment games like Oregon Trail II . We’re all given so much history and so many options to choose from as fans within this medium, but those of us who call ourselves gamers find something truly fascinating with games as a whole.
Finally, the construction element is there. Minecraft Crafting guide ’s blocky aesthetic has constantly been compared to that of LEGO’s, and really that’s true. In fact, it’s likely that it was intended to be that way. As kids, many of us were fascinated with LEGO’s. Building castles and cars using fundamentally simple components was appealing. Even better, it breathed experimentation. It encouraged trying something new. It fed that feeling of individual creative freedom by allowing us to build something that we wanted. That idea is omnipresent in Minecraft ; it’s the crux of the construction element in the game. Simple cubes of dirt, rock or sand can be used to build everything from houses to skyscrapers to sculptures. With a little hard work, you can make your “castle of dreams.” The Creative Mode, with its free movement and ample resources, is the pinnacle of this mentality; you can create what you want. And gamers have. There are hundreds of Minecraft videos online of people building enormous, monolithic structures with the game’s basic building pieces. Minecraft has proven that this idea can be made into something massive; gamers are guaranteed to create something when given the tools to do so.
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.