The really strange part of the whole scene is that in the middle of the mourning (when I have a full pout on my face), Story Mode lets loose a visual gag referencing the source material. While we’ll have to wait for the fifth episode, my sneaking suspicion is the only reason this death was written in was a cynical attempt at eliciting emotion.
Death in children’s entertainment is nothing new (see: Bambi, The Land Before Time, Transformers ), but it generally comes with a purpose. This loss feels more important than the one in the third episode, since it’s a likable character. Then, almost as if checking off all the Telltale boxes, we get another character death. Perhaps if I had led the life Jesse did, it would have been more impactful. It’s always a little awkward when a story treats something like an earth-shattering reveal when most would see it coming from the hints in previous episodes. The full story about The Order of the Stone is revealed, and it plays out as foreshadowed. Once the action finally does pick up at the end, it still treads a questionable path. There’s a horse travel montage near the beginning illustrating just how far it is to get to the Farlands, and protagonist Jesse has the option of the classic whine “Are we there yet?” Even with the cuts of the montage, I felt the same. On the other hand, the plodding of the first half of this episode is as dull as can be. If it’s always high energy, then it’s all the same. Also, without lulls in the action, it could be bombastic to the point of grating. It opens up the gameplay to include actual (albeit easy) puzzles along with the standard dialogue trees and quick-time events. On the one hand, the more deliberate progression of this episode can be a good thing. For every beat Minecraft: Story Mode hits well, it stumbles once or twice. It’s a fine distinction: I was struggling to care about Jesse and his friends at first now I care enough but find myself disappointed with the final result. Where the first two episodes in the season induced apathy, this one causes ambivalence. Rig: AMD Phenom II X2 555 3.2 GHz, with 4GB of RAM, ATI Radeon HD 5700, Windows 7 64-bit Minecraft: Story Mode: A Block and a Hard Place (iOS, Mac, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One) It might be better if this were just a four-episode series. It’s hard to fault Telltale for switching up the formula a bit, but it feels like the first season is essentially complete at this point, and anything that could happen during the final episode will just be a lead-in to the next season.
But then, there’s still another episode after this. After the high energy of The Last Place You Look, this one slows down the action shortly into it, and it doesn’t really pick back up until the very end, which feels like the end of a season.
0 kommentar(er)
