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.
The world is currently in a tough place with most everybody being told to stay indoors and keep away from others in an attempt to combat the rapid spread of COVID-19. With many beginning to feel the the negative emotional affects of social distancing, it may be a good opportunity to turn to video games to participate in a new or beloved video game ripe with social interaction. As such, we've compiled a short list of titles that could help gamers come together during this temporary new world. Note that the intention of the article is not to make light of the pandemic, but instead provide a resource for those feeling the effects of Social Distancing to find a community to embrace.
Minecraft has been around so long that it's easy to take it for granted. The decade of its existence has seen it explode from an indie project to financial juggernaut, but at the heart of all the licensing has been a game that's never stopped growing its list of features. One of the biggest parts of Minecraft story guide's longevity has been its multiplayer options with endless servers available almost since the beginning. The reason for this is simple -- it's fun to build things with friends. Whether or not that means everyone works together on a massive project or people go off and do their own thing in a communal area doesn't matter, so long as there's something new to see. Working with a group where everyone's online, working alone or just tooling around the world sightseeing, it's all better when doing it in a shared world. The thing about Minecraft, though, is that it's become so generic it's easy to forget how entertaining it is. Over the years I've obsessed over Minecraft, walked away for extended periods of time, come back, then left again. I've explored single-player worlds and gotten involved in multiplayer servers, and the one constant is that each time I play there's something new to do. There are endless worlds stretching on forever made of giant blocks that, despite their size, are still enough to suggest the shape of almost anything you want to create, and the nice thing about Minecraft's ubiquitous nature is just about everyone is already familiar with it. Now may be the best time to dig out an old log-in and see what huge, inspiring, strange, ridiculous, epic creations you and a group of friends can come up with.
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.
Chivalry may have lifted much of its design from the standard FPS multiplayer, but cleverly uses that established context as a foundation that allows the developers to instead focus on the things the game can do that no others can. In that pursuit, it is a success that may have similar company, but no true equal.
Telltale Games has a way of making games based off of characters or stories that already have impressive stories and making them better. With Minecraft: Story Mode, however, they managed to create an entire universe and story based off of a game that didn't necessarily have either of those. We've seen our hero, who is meant to play the role of your average Minecraft player, traverse the overworld with his friends, each who represent different types of players, in order to meet his favorite band of heroes. Of course, not everything goes as planned as chaos ensues and Jessie and his friends are put in a position as the only ones capable of saving the world from the Wither Storm. This episode, though, is much after those events with Jessie being in charge of the new Order of the Stone, fighting monsters and searching dungeons for loot. They've become what the old Order used to be and are loved by the common folks but hated by other adventurers who do the same thing but aren't as well known as them.