When it decided to turn Minecraft into a strategy game, Mojang had some specific goals, as explained by creative director Magnus Nedfors. during an interview This week in Gamescom’s Xbox booth. Minecraft Legends It was supposed to retain the somewhat indescribable “Minecraft feel” and also worked well with the controller for console players. Mojang and development partner Blackbird Interactive managed both, Nedfors explained by turning it into a action Strategy game—a genre combo that doesn’t really have a ton of successful examples to pull off.
“Another aspect of Minecraft is that we always have a hero character,” Nedforce said. Mojang and Blackbird ended with a game that was one part hero-centric and also about controlling armies. It turned out to be an action strategy game where you traverse the battlefield on horseback, commanding armies from the ground, not a typical RTS played from above the battlefields. “It’s not common in strategy games,” he explains.
“We started to realize that ‘hey, that’s pretty new’ and as a game maker when you get something [and] You don’t think there are ten games like this, you feel like you’re doing something special.”
It is true that there are not many examples of character action games that include unit command strategy. Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord is one of the most equally successful comparisons. I miss Kingdom Under Fire 2 too that was a bit messed up But the combination of Dynasty Warriors-style action and an RTS was really cool when I played it at its last western launch in 2019.
I suspect this is the specific example that Nedforce had in mind, but he later noted that “I think you should take inspiration from things you don’t think are good,” explaining that knowing that That helps you identify when a game isn’t working and how to do it better. “It’s weird to be inspired by bad things but it’s actually true for me.”
Being informed by unsuccessful competitors is, I think, more common in game development than most big studios who like to say it out loud. Nedfors continues its fresh and clear iterative development process of turning Minecraft into a strategy romp.
“The speed of play in a strategy game is often higher than in an action game because you’re scrolling very fast, moving around with your cursor. You perform a lot of actions in a very short amount of time. Normal strategy game by form. having a hero at the center who can’t be There And There And Theresurprisingly enough, brings below The pace of a strategy game, which makes it very suitable for playing well on consoles with controllers.
“It was like a surprise. I wish I was smarter and said ‘Yeah we thought about it from the beginning’ but sometimes you need to be honest and say ‘this is something we discovered and play’ developed.
During the same interview, Nedforce and executive producer Dennis Rees also spoke a few different unit types And new mobs are being added to Legends. It was a more illuminating interview than expected from his Gamescom showfloor livestream. I was hoping to hear something about how fortifications work – the gameplay videos have so far only seen bits of players building structures – but Nedforce’s experiments in the strategy space reveal what Minecraft Legends is about. Might end up as more than just a Minecraft spinoff.
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