MINECON 2016 Minecraft: Story Mode – A TellTale Panel

I don’t think so hey guys how’s it going is this thing on we have a really packed panel up here today we’ve got uh let me just introduce people real quick uh we’re telltale games and we did minecraft story mode i’m laura i work for telltale as a

Communications manager and this is molly maloney she worked as a designer on story mode this is uh eric sturpy he was a writer lead writer on the season uh this is kevin boyle over here executive producer and i’m sure that these guys down the end need no introduction we’ve

Got uh stampy cad stacy plays and captain sparkles all right so we just wanted to uh give you guys a little bit of an idea about what it was like um working with these guys behind the scenes they were in episode six of story mode the one with the

Spooky mansion um and what it was like working with mojang on on the season as a whole um kevin would you be able to tell us a little bit about that it was loud enough um so i guess some of you have played story mode yeah fantastic

And it’s you know for a lot of people and maybe not for this crowd awesome a lot of people um maybe excluding this crowd when they first heard that telltale games was working with mojang on a story mode game it struck a lot of people as odd because

They didn’t really see the connection between the storytelling we do at telltale and minecraft as a game but i think you know a lot of what we see is people using minecraft as a platform for doing storytelling of their own and so we could look at examples like the

Videos sparkles was doing or you know folks like slam a cow or the role playing that stacy does or you know what i i previously couldn’t tell uh the difference between whether stampy was role-playing as stampy or whether it was just stampy but uh but there are a lot

Of people out there using minecraft to tell their own stories and telltale was really excited about doing something um interactive that would let players participate in that storytelling and as folks from telltale i think it was at a gdc a game developers conference met people from mojang kind

Of that was a shared excitement on both sides so it ended up being something we uh we were able to put together pretty quickly and and take a run at and we’re pretty happy with the results um you know for me i come at it as a fan

And as someone who plays minecraft with my kids and it was an interesting opportunity to to take something that that i’m really engaged in personally and turn it into my work and and do some storytelling in that format um so i’ll i’ll uh i’ll get through some of the high-level

Stuff pretty quickly so we can get on to the episode 6 stuff where we engaged our friends here on my left but some of the things we really wanted to do is um is to tell this story and and i should probably start by warning you people there are going to be some

Spoilers in this conversation and uh and if even even if we were to avoid them i think they would come up in the q a so apologies for that if you haven’t played yet but uh but it is interactive so not everything we have to say will necessarily remain static as you play

Through um but this idea of this group of nobodies this this group of uh what would effectively be kids in the world of minecraft who kind of rise to the occasion as a challenge is put in front of them and that maybe their heroes the people they idolized

Weren’t all they were cracked up to be and they needed to fill that gap and and step up and be the heroes or ideas like you know the leader of a group of your enemies is actually not so unlike you as the lead character and and and taking uh

A twist on on some of uh some of what you might expect or even uh and kevin let’s not forget about the pig pigs can be parents too reuben oh the pig yes ruben we love ruben probably my favorite character absolutely uh reuben spelled like the sandwich for uh for comedic purposes yes

Well i think um something that we’re really excited about is uh um i’ve been playing minecraft since about 2010 or 2011. and uh something that’s really exciting was so many people play minecraft in so many different ways and i i was really excited the team was really excited about the idea of having

These different characters they’re all represented the different ways that people play minecraft whether it was a character like olivier elegard who was really into redstone whether it was someone like axel or magnus that was really into blowing up people’s stuff uh you know there were all these different

Ways that people could play and it was really exciting to try and find ways to represent all those different play styles in the game with these different characters because i love the idea of someone be able to sit and point to a character and say that’s like how i play

Minecraft that’s that’s what i do in minecraft and so it was really fun to get to do that over the course of the season it was interesting uh even identifying those archetypes because as far as our process goes um one of the first things we did was sit down with

People at telltale who are on the creative side of like of crafting these stories and bringing mojang into the room for a couple of weeks and really kind of hammering out a core story arc for the season with mojang involved so that we’ve got these these storytelling

Tentpoles that the season’s going to be built around that we’re all really invested in and really speak to minecraft and one of the ways we did that was to key into to elements of minecraft that we could tell a story around that were um if not central ideas of the game at

Least things that had come up into the the public consciousness about it like um like uh if you think of a command block as a powerful object that has no business existing in survival mode i mean that’s kind of the central idea on the first four episodes

Or you know leaning on skyblock for the fifth one or uh redstone computers for the seventh or esports for the eighth uh and i skipped over six because that’s the one where we where we really leaned into the whole youtuber phenomenon and this idea of bringing in this community that has

Become such a big deal around minecraft and pulling in uh pulling them into an episode that’s really about really about their characters and using an agatha christie style murder mystery as the format to do that seemed like a good way to go well designing on this franchise has been really really fun and

We draw a lot of our energy from you guys watching your videos and your excitement and yeah working on like one of the episodes i was involved with was episode five which is the one where they go into the sky city and uh just watching skyblock videos and being inspired by what

Everyone was doing we thought gosh what would be like for people who just lived here you know and that’s the fun of minecraft story mode is uh we take a world that mojang has made and that’s really incredible and we use it as a stage to have amazing relationships and

Experiences and meet different amazing types of people so yeah that’s my favorite thing so something i’m curious about in terms of in terms of process we’ll do a lot of work on design and writing and have a draft of the script and get into the studio and record with our actors and do

Revisions based on what we’re seeing in the game in the studio and do re-records of some of the stuff to come up with a final a final presentation of the game but what the actors see and are recording in the studio isn’t necessarily what’s going to end up

Coming out of the screen and in the final version so i’m curious with you guys kind of were there surprises things you weren’t expecting things that uh that went down in a different way than you had anticipated based on recording sessions and kind of what you guys saw in the script like you

Know yours well for me it’s a weird script because most scripts they have the story in what you say with this script it has every option so already it’s kind of a little bit hard to tell exactly like what the the scene’s going to be like but for me it’s the big thing

Is kind of the the animations and how that affects things like if you uh remember in story mode 6 when i say goodbye yeah i say like bye and then i assumed i’d say bye and walk away they decided to animate it so i say bye then

I wave my arms above my head and i run away like this and it’s one of the most hilarious moments and you know none of that’s from my performance or for the script that’s just kind of you know the way it’s been changed afterwards i’ll actually have you know that uh that

Animation was custom made for your character uh it was uh based on the way that you performed uh that you had your line when uh right after spoilers right after there’s a big death of someone else at the table um uh you yell panic panic panic panic panic and uh that

Animation was made for that and people loved it so much they kept trying to find ways to make your character doing your flailing and running animation it was pretty funny that’s a panic panic panic line that’s quoted so much now that’s always sent to me just just panic

Panic panic but i really i really went for it when recording it just screamed it into the mic how about you guys yeah for me um spoilers i i’m the one here who died in it um i i had no idea how that was gonna play

Out really other than it was gonna be sand and i had to make sounds that i was suffocating um and so it was uh it’s it’s always odd to watch yourself dying from uh from the third person and i don’t think that’s an experience too many people get to have watching

Their character that they’re playing themselves in a video game get killed off so it’s a bit flattering in a sense but also sad and i hope i don’t go out that way in real life so at least that one was strategic by the way one of the things we wanted to

Do with this murder mystery is you know as soon as as soon as these characters are in the house we want them to know something’s amiss but they really haven’t had any time to spend with these characters so we developed a a fake youtuber by the name of torque dog that

I think was a misinterpretation of twerk dog at some point but but tork dog was set up to be an unsavory character who um you know while while you never want to see anybody uh get uh put out by a trap when it happens to torque dog it’s

Really just there to establish that bad things are happening in this place but then you know as we get into act two and it happens to sparkles who who appears to be this character who’s going to be informative and helpful and man i’m going to team up with sparkles and solve

This mystery oh goodness no i’m not i think things have taken a tour yeah you guys you guys felt really emotionally attached to me right like we were friends and you were sad good thank you oh me what different looking at me yeah you stacy um well i mean like like

Stampy said it was interesting the process of recording our voices because there were so many different options that people could play that i really wasn’t a hundred percent clear on what exactly was gonna happen towards the end um and can i can i say i recorded a deathline can i say that

I recorded a little like when i got stabbed like i died but then i ended up not being able to die which i was very happy about um but yeah even playing it it was like it was really enjoyable because i honestly didn’t know exactly how everything was going to play out

Yeah so for for the interactive scripts what we basically do is you know there’s a there’s a chronology for the game and the scripts are formatted so that kind of they they go from start to end but within that there’s all kinds of branching and the game’s content uh

Doesn’t roll out like a tv show or a movie it’s you know the player is obviously taking a path through the game and so uh just looking at a script it can be hard to follow exactly what’s going on there well and i can tell you

As the person whose job it is to make that make sense uh even making it is impossible sometimes to follow it it becomes such a rat’s nest of conditionals and crazy things um i think it’s part of the magic actually um but i can only imagine reading them a little challenging

Yeah and then because i’d be in the uh i’d be in the voice recording sessions with these guys and i’d be explaining okay uh so stacey now you’re angry at jesse no no wait this line now you’re happy with jesse okay no no this line is

After the line where jessie said uh she hates you and so that doesn’t happen no one could hate stacey um but i was really lucky though that i got to go up to where they are in california and have like eric in the room while i was recording my voice i don’t think

Anyone else had that yeah no you were the only one it was really really helpful for me yeah sometimes we’ll do skype so that i mean we definitely always want to have a back and forth with the with the folks who are recording but uh yeah with stacy

It was good to be able to get you in and and get that first-hand context yeah um actually another one that another one was funny even though this wasn’t an impersonal one but it was just over skype was uh it was actually when we got a stamp when we got you and dan

Together um for your joint session that was a really fun time letting the two of you kind of bounce off each other in the booth that was really cool yeah it was definitely very different because when i it was me and dan recording but i was

Kind of there first and kind of doing it by myself and you know like i’m not a voice actor like i’ve never done that before it’s a little bit awkward like i speak a lot but i’ve never normally been told what to say so it’s a bit different

But then as soon as dan was there and we were having a conversation and having a back and forth and i could see how he said something then i’ll kind of like step it up or respond to it it did just make it completely different i think that’s that’s one of the things

That was a really pleasant surprise in this process because um i think uh casting voice actors usually it’s a pretty arduous process of listening to a lot of people uh who are you know who are professional actors and vetting them down to the you know the small few

And and working with youtubers we didn’t quite know what to expect but it was it worked out really well quickly it wasn’t an arduous or difficult process and i’m i’m always in the business of kind of looking down the rabbit hole to see how things could go wrong and as i

Was getting takes back from the studio it was like okay good this is good this is going to be great well and i think the thing that was so much fun too is because we’ve been seeing from episode one like all these guys you know and others that had been doing these

Playthrough videos of story mode and what was so much fun about it was uh then to kind of turn it around and kind of pull them into it because like because i remember we would have tons of times like watch it yeah let me tell you

I’m just gonna crowd you out let me tell you when you work really hard for many many months on one of these episodes like my the highlight is watching people play them watching you guys play them uh just the laughs and like oh will they laugh

At this joke that we put in or oh will they be surprised or will this choice be hard god i hope it’s hard you know things like that that makes our day so getting to work with the youtubers uh you guys it was really special you know

Youtubers and fan reactions as well that stuff tends to get passed around the art around the office and and people really get a kick out of that um and i was particularly impressed i got to give a shout out to there was a girl who was dressed as the white

Pumpkin in the costume contest who’s that wait that was you that that costume was fantastic well done what’s your name autumn you are awesome oh i’m sorry did i get your name totally wrong autumn okay you’re awesome well done and to all of the all of the cosplayers

Like we’ve been really enjoying all the cosplay we’ve seen while we’ve been here it’s been really fun you guys really good work so i’m curious um playing as someone else interacting with yourself is that a weird like existential kind of the whole thing with story mode was weird

The first moment when when we walk in and it’s like you know what do you want to say this or this or this to stampin it’s like that’s just such a bizarre thing and of course i just was mean to myself and i i accused myself of being the murderer and

Then things as well i had to i had to have some fun with it i accused you of being the murderer as well which i feel really badly about because you turned out to be very nice i make a good squirmer to be fair and i

Was i was acting shifty yeah you were absolutely you did a good job at like bringing that into your voice acting i think i’m just naturally shifty i just i just i was just myself okay fair enough i yeah i just like was hard on myself like who’s this guy i’ve nobody’s heard

Of him him and his subscribers no one cares oh yeah cause there’s the line isn’t there like you’ve never heard my nine million fans i’m like yeah that was that was a an odd one we wanted to get across the idea of of kind of exposure you know the idea that it’s

Weird for this minecraft character to not know about you but hopefully put it together in a way that wasn’t too uh how dare you cringe worthy how dare he not know me exactly well and i remember stamping watching your play through i think you took great

Delight in the fact that there was a choice to say uh then i don’t know who you are and did you guys just say that yeah oh i’m god i’m sorry yeah all right you’re out that’s real i think we all chose to not know you we all chose now okay

If we didn’t but you’re right i don’t know what the response was if we did know him like did you play through the episode that you were in differently to the others like because i’m normally half playing to do what i would do and what makes sense and how i’m trying to

Do what i just want to see a funny reaction to like did you kind of play like that i had see since i only got to record up to where i died and then i was out other than my outro i had no idea what was going on so i kind of just

Played through i made my you when i incriminated you that was my best guess that wasn’t even me like trying to just make a funny story out of it i actually thought you were it and that was sort of how i was trying i was legitimately trying to figure out who

The murderer was and uh i didn’t do a good job you and 25 of players didn’t do a good job to be uh to be honest i accused stampy as well but that was not because i thought he was the killer i just really wanted to see you freak out

That was the same as me that’s good stuff so one of the things a super weird thing for someone to have to do as a part of their job one of eric’s assignments was to sit down and just watch a ton of youtube videos so that he

Could write to the voice of of these people as characters and i’m curious from your perspective getting in the studio and having these lines that are supposed to be spoken in your own voice were there any points at which it was like hmm well that’s a little odd or or

I can take a different approach to this or because things like referring to zombies as googlies not a thing that someone would come up with on their own without doing a bit of research and that’s that’s one that’s definitely in there but was there anything that was that was uh caused you to

Make changes on the fly or talk about a different take on a thing did eric do his job well enough is what i’m asking i don’t know about you guys but i actually emailed with eric back and forth while he was writing the script and kind

Of told him about my character told him kind of like what biome i think i would be from or like anything to kind of help him craft it and so when i got the script i think it was you know for the most part was pretty fine and we all kind of had

Little easter eggs that we said some of them made them in some didn’t but um i don’t think there’s anything for me that was like i remember the second time i got the script i started coming up like i was like wow i’m sassier now

But i just went with it because i wanted i wanted to do it i think that for me when i kind of did the same thing with eric so there wasn’t any like stampy would never do that you know he wouldn’t sit in the chair like that way it was more there’s a

Kind of just like the over the pond kind of thing like american and british the way some things are worded and some words there’s a few things like that i just feel like like i probably wouldn’t say like that’s a stamp he wouldn’t but it’s a it’s really kind of minor things

To be honest yeah i was really impressed when i got the script i thought it was pretty good eric did a good job at sticking within my character we did go back and forth a little bit beforehand um trying to give some info which i probably wasn’t very helpful at because

I’m really terrible at describing myself and i don’t really have catchphrases so i don’t know if that helped at all but uh i think he did a great job and there wasn’t anything that stood out as i would never i would never say that um i just went

With it and i think it turned out it’s it’s interesting along those same lines there was a brief period we’re looking at this killer who’s got this cat and thinking what if milk toast was i wish but you know what it seemed like uh of all the implausible things we do setting

Up stacy as a murderer seemed like it was just beyond the pale so that was that was not one that stuck so i’m i’m curious uh looking at episode six in particular and having these uh these characters that you all are familiar with of the people who have played that episode

Is there anybody who does the mean play through for entertainment value who wants to call out these guys as much as you can just a few hands okay we’re uh we’re a rare few so uh we actually have a little time for q a as well if you guys have some questions

For us or for the youtubers all right okay there are a whole bunch of people all right that’s awesome hang on we’re going to we’re going to send this microphone into into the audience and we’re going to come around to as many of you as we can

Have the slides just been going yeah that’s been uh um did any of you choose to um throw winslow to cassie um i i didn’t i don’t think i did but i only didn’t because i was expecting that i would get to keep winslow and i really wanted to keep winslow oh

That’s even meaner excuse me they’re taking your cats yeah well i mean she killed people i was i was real mad at her and i was like nah you stay there you don’t get your cat sorry see you later i wasn’t trying to be mean to her i

Didn’t want to be mean to winslow’s like it’s not winslow’s fault like she’s got her face leave the cat out always leave the cat out of it did you throw him back to her no no no oh okay okay winslow’s a free cat he can do as he pleases but

The part where it was like help dig for cassie or stand with stacy remember uh it would like it seems so mean like stand with stacy and not dig for cassie but she killed people she killed him that’s all that’s all i wanted to say i want a long time to say that

Actually uh stacy just as eight and uh just as a quick aside i remember i remember you noticing that uh well because something i noticed in the first four episodes of your playthrough was that you had been um you were not a lucas fan like you and lucas never got like

You you never got along with lucas and so and so it’s in that first draft of the script there were a couple of moments where whereby lucas would like try and say something to you in the game and you’d be like get out of here i know

I’m not listening to you i’m accusing you of murder and a lot of that did come from the fact that you just for whatever reason did not care for lucas in like your first four or five episodes but yeah i was never like in my own play through i never trusted lucas

And some and everyone in the comments is like no lucas is nice and every time i see him like i literally would call him like blonde guy nice um i in episode a i heard a few easter eggs i was just wondering if you put them in for fun or for a reason

Uh which ones um it’s from a different video game like if you wait too long while you’re standing in front of the painting of um the guy with the armor that wasn’t real tim tim and if you wait too long a girl says that stare fills me with determination

Are you implying you might be an undertale fan yes i have no idea what you’re talking about did you put them in for a reason maybe so that people like you would notice them nice will story mode season 2 come out ever do you think there should be a story mode season two

I mean we’re we’re not here to make an announcement about anything like that that’s a pretty good interesting information for us to have thank you i appreciate that uh so sauron made it like his name it made an appearance well he come back like it in episodes six through eight there were

A couple books by soren is that like an easter egg for upcoming episodes uh i obviously i don’t know anything about upcoming episodes um but you know i sworn was a character that i really really loved and wanted even though he we didn’t have a place to fit

Him into those last couple episodes i really wanted to at least keep him in the story just because he was so interesting and so fun that i wanted to at least have implications that he was still out there in the world oh real quick before the next question i

See jeff parrott in the audience jeff parrott is our uh was our lead environment artist on minecraft story mode and did a lot of the amazing artwork that you guys have been looking at on these slides good to see you are you gonna do any more episodes with youtubers

Well i think i think right now we can’t uh we don’t we can’t announce any plans to do additional episodes so so we couldn’t speak to whether or not there’d be youtubers but i have to say the episode we did do with the youtubers is probably my favorite and we had a lot

Of fun doing it so it’s it’s an interesting idea hi i’m lindsay and when the white pumpkin kind of episode there was in the intro if you didn’t do anything then i wore would have done everything for you so i was just in the easter egg that i just wanted to

Share yeah that’s and that’s something um so we have a lot of a lot of the interactions in the game uh in action sequences some of them if you fail them uh will cause you to basically die and respawn like the you have died screen from minecraft some of them are what we

In telltale refer to as soft fails which are like if you miss a button press and you stumble and you trip and you do something a little embarrassing but that doesn’t quite stop your progress so the game’s usually a mix of those two things with that one too um ivor is just such

An incredibly fun and capable person that i know brian who helped make that possible uh i think he wanted eyeboard time to shine yeah and i think the thing there that’s really fun too is there are a lot of people who do the like you know do nothing play throughs and that’s

Something we really started seeing over time like that and they’re they’re youtubers who will just do videos of nothing but here’s what happens if you do nothing and so i think that was a great excuse for us to start sneaking those things in like i wore saving the

Day if you don’t do anything i’ve lost nathan she’s nothing are you gonna oh that sounds like too loud are you gonna re-live ruben in episode eight oh well i would i would love to tell you yes but uh a part of the plan a part of the plan with reuben

Is this idea of uh being able to solve the big problem that’s going on and yet having a loss and things never being the same from that point so like like in lord of the rings when uh when sam and frodo return to the shire it’s

Not the same as when they left and it never will be and you know i have a history of of not treating pigs particularly well in the game i’ve seen a lot of pork chops and uh and we we set out to to to basically do something that’s going

To have an emotional impact that matters to jesse and to players uh that’s that’s real loss but in the face of overcoming this terrible obstacle so so i can tell you that from very early on um we knew that uh that things weren’t going to go particularly well for reuben and that he

Was not coming back was there ever any talk of giving jessie another pet or was it just like she’s she’s just or he or she is sad for reuben are you trying to replace reuben well and so they replaced reuben i i just wanted i wanted a wolf okay

Well actually so especially something’s really funny is you guys represent the two camps of i remember watching videos where jordan there’d be videos where where like an animal would show up and you’d be like you’re not trying to get me to replace reuben are you and then

Stacy on the flip side would see that same animal and be like is this gonna be my new pet is this me right my replacement pet and so it was really funny how any time an animal would appear on screen there’ll be the two camps of replacement you better not be

Trying to replace ruben it wouldn’t replace reuben it sounds like that’s what you’re going for honestly wow do you want a wolf is that what it is i wanted a wolf and then the wolf will probably eat reuben you can’t do that reuben’s already gone way to remind me

Um there’s always like one set person to be the murderer every time you play but did you ever consider making like one of the youtubers the murderer like perhaps sparkles killed everyone in the original draft i can i can tell you it’s it it has definitely been a topic of conversation

Um and the main reason uh we steered clear of that is we wanted players to be able to uh piece together the evidence that built to a particular culprit and not to have that that character be interchangeable like uh cassie rose and sparkles do not like live in the same space they don’t

Have the same role and to basically devise a series of clues in an episode that builds to almost anyone as the killer it would be it would be a separate development almost like a different story to be told for each of those so that’s that’s one of the reasons we stuck with one

Although it was really funny uh lizzie ld shadow lady the entire time we’re in the booth she’s like have you considered making me the murderer i could be the murderer and we were like no no we’ve already got a murderer lizzy she wanted to be the murderer so bad i didn’t know

That speaking speaking of ld shadow lady if you all haven’t seen her her let’s play of episode six there’s a point at which she’s watching herself ld shadow lady character fighting a spider and thinks she’s got this she’s fine i’m gonna fight the white pumpkin and when she sees that spider take out

Herself her mouth is open for a good five to eight seconds while she’s watching it’s it’s my favorite uh play through moment of the episode um do you know if my mojing is ever going to add like the minecraft bosses from minecraft story mode like the weather storm or the white pumpkin to

Vanilla minecraft i don’t i can say we don’t know of any plans for that that’d be super cool though i i will say though there’s there’s a um there’s an xbox on xbox there’s a story mode skin pack it does not include the white pumpkin but there are definitely

Story mode characters available for play uh in minecraft i wondered for the longest time if they were gonna make command blocks craftable because i was like paying attention to the recipe in the videos and everything was like a block of emerald and redstone we try to stay as close to the rules as

Possible but we we had to fudge a little on that one because that’s uh not a thing in survival mode like when when you’re talking about staying close to minecraft rules like how much do you let that kind of make the story do you kind

Of feel restricted by that or is it kind of fun then when do you just choose to ignore it just to tell the story well um that’s a great question and we always try to be as we call it legal we try to stay legal um and that is 100

Of the time our goal sometimes we do fudge it a little bit uh and we always talk to mojang about it but we usually try to find a way in which even if it is not strictly legal it is something you could make one of the great examples i cite is in episode

Two we have this mech that wanders off into the ocean and uh technically uh we we struggled with how to make that mech work but eric who did you say it was it was yes so then it’s just yeah it’s something that’s really funny is uh in episode two there’s this giant

Walking robot this giant mech and we’ve been really inspired by uh there’s an amazing youtuber who goes the name cube hamster makes these amazing slime block max and so and so we were inspired by that to make our own mac and what was really funny is we really tried to make

It work and in the end what the version that went in there almost but didn’t quite work and then cubehamster uh actually put up a youtube video like two days later being like guys here’s how you would have made it work it took us to school yeah

So the short answer is we always really try but uh but we admit it when we go wrong there are definitely some aspects of minecraft though that we had to start from a place of knowing we wouldn’t be we wouldn’t be sticking with like for example uh your ability to just punch

Your way out of any situation we did things like starting with a presumption that obsidian is indestructible and that’s not actually the case but you know unless you have a diamond pickaxe in minecraft story mode it is an obstacle you can’t overcome and some rules like that that aren’t quite you know

By the book but you know for storytelling we needed some ability to kind of restrict the freedom that that minecraft allows okay i was wondering how captain sparkle’s character was able to traverse the great beyond reappear at the end of the episode with the white pumpkin oh i

Love that question well i mean in in the last oh well uh in the last episode um they they did explain that you don’t die you actually just respawn now it’s all a bit of a blur in my head as to where i i respawned at after i suffocated in the sand

But slowly but surely i worked my way through that portal network and then i made it just in time to be able to talk during the end credits scene so that’s how it happened and it and it is uh we we bring them back in a way that um that we

Consciously don’t fully explain just to not put a a final note on the presence of captain sparkles in the story mode universe that’s that’s part of it and i like to kind of imagine that uh sparkles is kind of now forever wandering the portal network just telling people his story

And about how he got crushed by sand sorry jordan it’s okay i forgive you all right so this one’s for captain sparkles do you think you’ll ever play through it again with different decisions hmm if i if i could figure out a way to differentiate it enough than possibly

But i know that my death is inevitable um so i don’t know how much i would be able to change but i’ll investigate it for the youtubers what was the weirdest part of seeing yourself in the story mode the greatest part of seeing ourselves um you say the greatest was that sorry is

That weirdest weirdest um i think i think the weirdest thing is just when the voice comes out because we all played through it while doing a let’s play so we’re they’re going hello okay i’m going through and then someone walks in and goes oh hi there like oh like i’m

Just talking to myself it’s just the same voice kind of back and forth so that was kind of a strange moment for me it was really funny to actually see myself do more motions than a minecraft character does because in minecraft i mean you can nod your head

And you can wave and punch and run but you can’t actually like you don’t have facial expressions ever so uh it was really fun to see those actually happen and when i was recording i actually would like move around like a lot in the booth to try to like make it

Sound really animated weirdest part um either just the fact that like like stampy said i was talking to myself back and forth in the game or just watching yourself die is a little bit weird so we can go with either one of those hey um kit is there any possible way

That you could have a secret hello i’m over here um is there any possible way that you guys could have a secret episode like saying oh follow follow those people who followed um spoilers um who followed uh which called at the end uh the very last episode um

Oh following ivor at the end yes is there any way like also and let him be and then and then like a tiny little recap of like going through the village or following him through the portal network i think we wanted to we wanted to close eight on you know potentially alluding

To further adventure but really having eight stand as a as a capper on a you know five season um a five episode season arc plus the three uh adventure pass episodes we wanted to kind of close the story jesse and company have you know well big spoilers

Have made it home their friends are there um it’s it’s largely resolved but you know ivor running off is kind of an implication that the adventure doesn’t stop so um but what happens when you do follow him because i didn’t so i wouldn’t know what what does happen

Oh this there’s an easy way to find that out it’s it is it’s you know it’s it’s pretty much at the end of the episode so you can imagine it’s not it’s not the kickoff of a chasing ivor adventure it’s more like does he go back to harper

Did who who shipped ivor and harper she’s just very intriguing um the ivor harper arc was funny why did you choose the youtuber in the episode with the um white pumpkin i didn’t catch that why did you cut like why did you choose the um the youtubers that were used in episodes

I think you know well definitely a part of it was um we you know for myself personally i have a a uh a 10 and a 12 year old in my house and there are a lot of youtube videos playing on a close to constant basis so there was a

Lot of familiarity on my part but also you know getting a mix of people from um from europe and from the united states and guys and girls and also a part of it was within the studio part of our process is to take the voices of the people we’re

Casting and make sure they play well against each other because sometimes you’ll have a couple of people that you’re interested in working with and they’ll be in in such a similar tonal space that it can be confusing when they’re not uh shown on screen and the

Voice is coming out so so with our mix of youtubers that we that we ended up working with it was a really great variety and people were we were really excited about and some very different personalities that we were thrilled to bring to the game also episode six is a murder mystery

Which is a lot of fun but it’s way more fun to suspect people that you like and are interested by but having an influx of new people was a really fun opportunity so we figured you wouldn’t suspect your friends of murder but we thought you’d all really enjoy the

Opportunity to interrogate some of the people you enjoy watching so all right this question is for the development team is there any reason as to why the river story arc lasted for four episodes instead of the usual five uh yes there is um so we intended from the

Get-go to uh tell the story of this you know this group of kids in their treehouse who need to kind of rise to the occasion and deal with this problem that threatens their whole world and the idea is that by the time they’ve they’ve reached the end of the fourth episode

They have become this new order of the stone we wanted to cap that off with a fifth episode with them in that role as the heroes they’ve become over the first five so it’s basically i mean it is a there is a four episode um story arc in dealing with the wither

Storm but in terms of uh the development of that group into a group of heroes it’s really five is the first opportunity you have to kind of to to play with them in that role in see if you have season two do you have any plan of having cassie rose return um

So i can tell you that we we’ve had a lot of fun with cassie rose but that we um we’re not announcing any plans about a second season so there’s there’s not really there’s not a whole lot i can say on that and unless she’s been down there eating silver fish or

Was it ender mites or both are those are those edible are you saying she’s dead no i’m just saying that she’s had to get resourceful what happened to uh gabriel and slash or magnus nelly guard yeah you know uh it’s funny they um they were characters uh they didn’t fit into

The portal story arc but in my mind they uh uh after the wither storm they are probably traveling and helping to rebuild places you know magnus and elega they had their own homes to go back to and gabriel has always been kind of a little bit of a wanderer and helper of

People so that’s kind of how i always imagined where they were is it going to be in episode nine i think that would be under the the will there be a season two uh questions which i think we have some some interesting information from you guys i suspect there’s an appetite for an

Episode nine but um but it’s not something it’s not something i can speak to but i do love that question did you guys get a kick out of the fact that uh endermen were on the backpacks here at minecon it’s kind of like endercon it’s so good yeah good stuff oh i didn’t

Think about that um this is a question for everybody what was your favorite youtuber death from episode six oh i like that no pressure so i’ll i’ll give you uh i’ll give you a fake answer and then a correct answer so my fake answer is i’ve i’ve always loved

Um how torquedawg goes out uh because it’s just so ridiculous but he’s not actually a youtuber so that’s not that’s not for real uh but my my favorite death has got to be and this isn’t just because of how it plays out in the game but this is because of ld’s shadow

Ladies response in her let’s play it’s got to be when when she got taken out by the spiders which isn’t something that has to happen that’s one of the things in the game that may or may not happen based on how you play but her reaction she was so

Shocked and just did not see it coming i just i found that hilarious um i actually for similar reasons uh when when we were in the booth when we were in the booth with uh um with dan tdm uh when we got somewhere in the script where he died his reaction was

Astounded because he he just couldn’t believe that he was recording a death and i remember i think he turned to you joe and he was like did you did you die and you’re like no i didn’t he’s like but i’m dying i was like not always not

Always you can be saved he’s like okay i just don’t want to always die it was pretty great oh i just i loved jordan’s death thank you i just loved it it was the best wait are you saying you like watching me die i can’t win i can’t win thanks i appreciate it

Okay um i have two questions about um small seven and seven eight at full seven what was that creepy guy hiding behind the pillar and kept on popping out but it when she came closer he went behind the pillar is that seven or five

Um i say i think it’s five yeah i think so well i didn’t put the creepy guy in um but i know who did and they were having a lot of fun um i think when you wander around a space in one of our games one

Of the biggest challenges is we try to make the area feel really alive and for those of you who played episode 5 which where you go to sky city there’s a an underground subversive element at play in the town with milo and his friends and i believe that was a seed

Towards them that was kind of a nod that not all was as you expected it to be but actually that little guy is like one of my favorite parts of episode five so i’m glad you noticed him um oh hi mom anyway um so when you create any of your

New charac um monsters how long does it take for that though like um like the first season with that wither monster how long did it take for that how to do which part uh i’m sorry was it that was question how long did it take to come up

With them highlight it like to create it uh yeah so actually uh let me see if we can pull up here on the screen we’ve we’ve actually got some really fun concept art of when the when the weather storm was first being developed because uh for season one um we knew that we

Wanted to do a really cool version of the wither and uh is that oh that was not up there yet uh it’s on the tv right in front of us it’s fine it’s up now oh there you go but it’s that was one that we spent a good

Bit of time on because we knew we didn’t want to do like a giant man or you know a bipedal or even a quadruped we wanted something weird and and you know otherworldly and almost to you know to give it a a tentacled horror kind of quality

And so that one took a lot of a lot of concept work to come up with something that still felt like it was made of blocks and and and rooted in minecraft and had elements of the wither that that showed through but still could you know uh destroy much more than than the

Standard where there ever could um the other monsters in game i think are a little more along our normal pipeline of creating characters and rigging them for animation and that that process uh for us ended up being pretty quick but the wither storm was uh quite an undertaking

Is it easier or harder animating kind of things like spiders when they’re they’re blocky compared to you know other telltale games where it might be slightly more realistic oh that’s that’s a great question uh and i think with the spiders it’s it’s probably similar but when it comes to um

Character performance a lot of what we do at telltale has to do with you know storytelling and and convincing performances from these actors and uh by its nature minecraft is is low fidelity which is one of the great things about it because you can do a lot with with little detail

But it really took a lot of work for our character artists our animators our cinematic artists to really uh get convincing emotional performance out of such low poly characters um yes i was wondering if there is a limit to the power of the atlas a limit yeah uh

You know uh it’s interesting the atlas is one of those mysterious items that kind of like the command block was something where a lot of where a lot of the rules we kind of determined that our characters probably couldn’t comprehend all of those rules and so they

Definitely are some kind of fuzzy edges the idea behind the atlas is it’s something that i think the way harper describes it is it’s a map slash compass navigator and uh and it’s essentially a way you can tell that was where you want to go and it can point you towards that portal

So yes i guess it’s kind of limitless maybe ish um on uh it was i think episode five with the portal network when jesse and the gang first like found the portal network the the portal that they went to it did not lead to the portal network like all

The other portals do in the game like if you find a portal in a normal world then it leads to the portal network but that one portal leads to a different world why is that absolutely true um uh for narrative narrative purposes part of the reason is we wanted to fling you

Right into the adventure but it is definitely something you know we acknowledge that portal in jesse’s home world isn’t of the same stuff as what the builders have in the portal hallway uh was cassie based on anyone uh so cassie wasn’t based on anyone in particular uh um her uh

Uh her uh voice actress was ashley birch who was just wonderful and she did a really great job and so working with her as an actress helped kind of inform the personality a little bit uh her name uh though was actually based on my sister my sister’s name is cassie rose and uh

Her dog was named winslow so uh that she was uh so i uh well no there’s so so cassie rose in in story mode has it so you made your sister a murderer is that what you’re saying no i didn’t make my sister my sister’s not a murderer i

Should make that very clear i’m going to give the mic to someone else now is your is your sister aware of this uh yes no so so it was really funny we went through a lot of stuff trying to figure out how to name cassie rose because you know obviously we need to

Name her in a way that wouldn’t stand out immediately and so i mean so we were going through all these different names and i put cassie rose on a list and i i just kind of threw that one on there and then that was one that started to get

Traction and it looks like that was the name we were going to go with and so actually i texted my sister i was like are you okay if i name a blocky murderer after you and uh and she texts me back she’s like i don’t understand you but sure

It’s interesting visually though the cassie rose character looks a whole lot like someone who works at telltale who happened to spawn three withers on the telltale server so not a direct reference to shannon but there’s some there are some similarities there wait is there a telltale server that you guys play on

Did i say that no i want to know about that well wait tell tell her where you built your house okay so my house is actually built under his house uh because uh because so that we have we have this big telltale server actually jeff parrot the guy we shouted

Out before who wouldn’t stand up um uh so uh jeff and the art team actually on this server would make all of these sorts of like half like experimental versions of the sets and the environments and the puzzles and things like that and so and so you go on

The server and it’s just full of all of these like half finished versions of things that went in the final game and other people like me that would go on there just kind of mess around we all sort of have our houses now kevin since he’s the boss person has a huge

Castle and uh and so we were running out of space they couldn’t figure out where to put my house so i just went into his basement and i put my own little house down there i feel like there’s a metaphor there but i don’t know exactly what it is i

Wouldn’t rate into it too much so for designing the the sets for story mode then is that kind of the process do you kind of draw it then build it in minecraft and then kind of take it into your engine i’d say that’s that’s true

For a lot of it and some of it um you know we took advantage of the fact that we had a lot of minecraft enthusiasts uh like jeff over here on the team um who would sometimes uh build out in minecraft to kind of prove the legality of something complex or sometimes build

Something on minecraft and export those assets and you know bring them into the telltale tool as a as a basis for some of the environments so it’s it’s a bit of both i will tell you though um the art team is really fun to work with and the joy

That they experience when they find a new way to use a piston or a flower pot to make a piece of furniture like they have cracked the code in terms of set dressing and it’s really fun to watch that creativity you know when they find how to make something new so they’re

Really cool guys all right guys sorry i think uh i think we’re running out of time i just wanted to let you know we have time for probably three more questions so making good ones what was a sad moment in minecraft story mode easily reuben reuben

Sorry captain spark who’s not oh no i don’t know how many people look at it’s absolutely reuben not me no one cried for me um why did you kill off jordan and how much did you enjoy it so the the reason the main reason we killed off jordan is because

Uh it would be it really set the stakes it seemed like the last thing we would do and we really wanted to shock people because it seemed like um everything was building up to a murder mystery with jordan as a partner um and you know we did that

Intentionally to um basically to yeah to establish that nobody’s safe to um you know when torque dog dies it’s he dies and it’s bad but it’s torque dog and nobody likes tork dog and we set him up for that purpose but everybody loves sparkles so we wanted it to be you know

That’s when things get real that’s when oh my goodness we have a problem we need to solve here will there ever be a way to customize what animal room is uh no reuben started as a pig from day one when we were breaking story using little cards on on a

On windows in the office there with mojang and he’s been a pig all along and we wanted it to be specific we wanted to be able to to give the writers something they could really grab hold of and make personal to jesse and i feel like um unlike with with the jesse character

Customizing ruben i think might have watered that down whereas with jesse being able to make a jesse that looks like you and that is a boy like you or a girl like you we felt like that would strengthen the experience but with ruben it was never really a

Consideration was there any backstory to reuben like how he came to be with jesse or like did you guys ever have anything like that well we always thought it would be cool for jesse to have a sidekick of some kind and you know so many everybody has a pet and uh like kevin

Was saying the cool thing about having reuben especially being a pig is when you’re starting with a new character you know so little you know about you a lot of the first episode is spent getting to know yourself and uh the fact that jesse

Is the kind of kid who has a pet pig we felt that that would tell you a lot about the kind of jessie that you’re gonna be so for the youtubers what was your first reaction when they asked you to be in a video game that you have been playing

For a long time before that okay um so i mean for me like i never had ambitions necessary to be a voice actor but i’ve always been a gamer and the idea to be a character in a game is always a dream i’m sure it’s a dream

That a lot of other people you know if they could be a character in a game is amazing and then on top of that the fact that i’m kind of pretty much playing myself and it’s a minecraft game it was kind of like this amazing dream come

True blend so i was i was very excited when i found out that i had a chance to be in the game yeah i freaked out it was a it was an email from lydia and i think i read it like what what and then i called my

Mom yeah i was i was flattered and then i was nervous because i didn’t think that i would do well at voice acting um and i was very nervous up until actually playing the game and then i was relieved that it turned out okay but it was it

Was an honor to have been invited thank you guys really appreciate it and thanks for having us on this panel as well