How The Goonies and Ghostbusters helped inspire Telltale’s Minecraft: Story Mode

Telltale has been known for the revival of point and click adventure games with the critically acclaimed, The Walking Dead. Ever since Season One of The Walking Dead, Telltale has gone on to create video game series based off other popular franchises, including The Wolf Among Us, Game of Thrones, and Tales from the Borderlands. But perhaps the most interesting project Telltale is taking on is Minecraft.

First announced in December, Minecraft: Story Mode — as the name suggests — attempts to inject narrative into the popular open-world sandbox game. Minecraft: Story Mode is set in the world of Minecraft, and features and original story, mixing new characters with familiar themes "in an entirely original Minecraft experience."

At Minecon this past weekend, Telltale and Mojang released the first trailer for Minecraft: Story Mode, giving us our first glimpse at the studio's attempt on telling us an interesting story about a game that has absolutely no story.

“That’s the thing about Minecraft. When you play there is no story. We’re aware of that. Mojang’s aware of that,” explained Telltale's Job Stauffer at Minecon. "It’s the stories that you make when you play. The experience that you’re having. The story that you’re telling to yourself or to your friends. We had to play a lot of Minecraft and make sure that we knew how to approach this. Make sure we knew the different types of players in Minecraft. The different experiences you could have."

"We wanted to work that into a story that really evokes classic film stories that we really were passionate about. The movies we grew up with. The two that we called out were Goonies and Ghostbusters. We all grew up with those. Films from 1985. Movies that they just don’t make anymore… We wanted to create a story that could be for all ages and bring generations together.”

 “We took it very seriously that we wanted the team to integrate with Telltale," confirms Mojang brand director Lydia Winters. "It’s very much a partnership game. We didn’t just say make what you want and show us at the end. We’ve been involved in every process.”