Boasting a brand-new genre for the Minecraft franchise, there was plenty to be inferred about Legends from its relatively short time in the showcase spotlight. With its story, core gameplay, art style, availability, and release window already being known, Minecraft Legends looks like a very interesting addition to the wider franchise.
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The Basics of Minecraft Legends
Thanks to the Xbox and Bethesda Games Showcase, it is known that Minecraft Legends is set to be a strategy adventure game set within the iconic and illustrious block-based world of Minecraft. Due to its nature as a strategy game, Legends will be significantly less open-ended than Minecraft itself, instead taking place within a world that necessitates strategic thought and map control.
Minecraft Legends will be inherently tied to Xbox, due to the gaming giant buying Minecraft developer Mojang for $2.5 billion in 2014, in what was the first of many recent high-profile acquisitions for Xbox. This link is conveyed well in the fact that Minecraft Legends was additionally confirmed to be a day-one release for Xbox Game Pass on Console and PC, with the title also coming to other platforms such as PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. While still quite vague, Minecraft Legends has been officially confirmed to have a 2023 release window.
The Story of Minecraft Legends
As is the case with most, if not all, Minecraft spin-offs titles, Legends is set to boast its own gripping narrative to compliment and inform the strategy-based gameplay. From what is currently known of the story, Legends will see the player take the role of a unifying hero fighting against invading armies of Piglins from the Nether that are threatening to corrupt the relatively peaceful Overworld of Minecraft.
These relentless invaders are easily able to overthrow the fractured enclaves of species within the Overworld, so it is the job of the hero to unify the different mobs and factions of the Overworld in a bid to quell the comparatively greater threat of the Piglin invaders. In this way, the game will see players working alongside and controlling the likes of creepers, skeletons, and zombies, in what is a fantastic twist on the classic Minecraft formula that generally pits players against creatures like these.
The Gameplay of Minecraft Legends
Fans were able to get a fair amount of insight into the gameplay of Minecraft Legends as a part of the showcase. Adopting a third-person perspective, players will be able to traverse a series of diverse maps on horseback to gather resources, make unlikely allegiances, and push back the Piglin threat. Predictably, the game seems to be contingent upon rallying the correct units for specific combat situations, and utilizing them at the perfect time to strike.
The pre-release gameplay additionally showed base-building mechanics and the ability to rally certain mob types before sending them into battle. It appears that the stages for battle within Legends will concern the Overworld as well as the Nether itself, with the player and their allies eventually taking the fight to the enemy home world. With the intense success of other Minecraft spin-offs such as the dungeon crawler Minecraft Dungeons, it is clear that Mojang is becoming increasingly confident with expanding the scope of gameplay that can be found under the Minecraft name, and rightfully so.
Minecraft Legends releases in 2023 for the Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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