Telltale making Minecraft: Story Mode

And now for your daily dose of “Wait, what?” courtesy of Telltale Games, Mojang, and Minecraft: Story Mode.

So, uh, you know Telltale? They made things like Sam & Max, The Walking Dead, and The Wolf Among Us, and are currently working on Tales from the Borderlands and Game of Thrones. Remember them? Yeah, they’re working on a Minecraft game. That, or this is a really well-assembled joke.

Titled Minecraft: Story Mode, it’s… it’s an episodic, narrative-driven game about Minecraft. It’s apparently not going to create an “official story for Steve” or explain the world in detail, but it will be fiction in that world. Or… look, I don’t know. If your first reaction was “That’s a joke, surely” or “That sounds unbelievably stupid” or “How are they going to make a narrative-driven game about a non-linear sandbox with no characters, or dialogue, or plot or story, or anything except for the ability to explore, build whatever you like, and hit stuff”, then you’ve basically just cycled through the same thoughts I did.

The fact that it’s Telltale is about the only reason I’m not holding my head in my hands and groaning, honestly. Maybe I’m missing something, or maybe they’re only telling us half of the story! Either way, if anyone can somehow make this much, much better than it sounds, it’s Telltale, so I guess I’ll hold out some faint hope for now.

The first episode of Minecraft: Story Mode is due out “some time in 2015.” You can get some faint details on it by playing Info Quest 2, a tiny little game thing that is actually a sneaky press release.