The oddly disappointing Minecraft Dungeons E3 trailer.

Not disappointing to me: to my kids. I figured Minecraft Dungeons would make them ecstatic, but apparently not. Weird.

Ars Technica calls this a Diablo clone, which is fair. There are definite commonalities, but it’s also clearly a Minecraft game in its aesthetic. Which is why I’m surprised that the two people in my household who most often play the game are ‘meh’ about it. Wonder what’s obvious to them, but not to me?

5 thoughts on “The oddly disappointing Minecraft Dungeons E3 trailer.”

  1. Minecraft is and will always be about building. Those facets of the game have not meshed well with plot elements, if for no other reason that plot requires some elements of the environment that CAN’T be Mined nor Crafted.
    .
    I had a similar reaction to Teltale’s MineCraft Story Mode: This is a no-longer-sandbox genre game with a “Minecraft” skin.

    1. And yes, I get there are plenty of “game” mods and servers, but they mostly keep the original aesthetic and mechanics, with only certain elements “locked out” to guests/players. This looks like Microsoft has simply reskinned a completely different game engine.

  2. I don’t play Minecraft, but it looks like the only thing this shares with it is the blocky models. I imagine that that is not why your kids like Minecraft.

  3. This looks more like Torchlight/Torchlight II than straight Diablo, but I agree with the other posters: this is TII with a blocky skin. This is not Minecraft.
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    (Unless they’re allowing you to create your own dungeons and have other people play them? In which case: am interested. Subscribe to newsletter. Etc.)

  4. I find the no-class thing really interesting. Very few games have done that; the Final Fantasy Tactics games are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head[2]. Wanna throw magic? Equip a wand[1]. Want to also wear armor? Put some on. The game may or may not be any good but

    [1] or whatever; I don’t think they were too specific yet about that.

    [2] there were classes, but you could switch classes in between missions, class skills were learned from your weapons, and you could use two different class skills at any time. Fighter/mage was literally possible, albeit kind of dumb because you couldn’t really be great at both.

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