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Watch the First Trailer for the New Minecraft: Story Mode

2 minute read

When Minecraft developer Mojang weirdly joined hands with Telltale Games to metamorphose the sandbox blockbuster into a choose-your-own-adventure in December 2014, I wasn’t sure what to think. Okay, I suppose “Is nothing sacred?” probably went through my head once or twice. Minecraft is about our stories after all, the ones we make up as we play. Foisting a narrative structure on a sprawling toy box makes as much sense as putting Taylor Kitsch and Alexander Skarsgård on a Navy boat fighting aliens and calling it Battleship.

That’s if you’re a cynic, anyway. Better things can and do happen — like The Lego Movie, or most of Telltales Games’ oeuvre to date, notably its takes on The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and Back to the Future.

So here’s our first trailer for Minecraft: Story Mode, unveiled this weekend at Minecon in London. Make of it what you will; the voice list’s pretty A-caliber. That’s Patton Oswalt playing Jesse, the game’s de facto blockhead savior, joined by Ashley Johnson (Ellie in The Last of Us). The game also stars Corey Feldman, Dave Fennoy, Martha Plimpton, Scott Porter, Brian Posehn, Paul Reubens and Billy West.

The choice-driven Minecraft yarn will unfurl over five episodes and includes locations familiar to Minecraft buffs, like the Nether, Farlands and the End. The first episode should be out later this year for PC and Mac, current and last-gen consoles (excluding Nintendo), iOS and Android.

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Write to Matt Peckham at matt.peckham@time.com