As you probably know if you’ve been reading my reviews of Telltale’s Minecraft: Story Mode Season 2 (Free), I haven’t been too excited with the first three episodes. My primary problem with the game so far has been that the developers have been trying to turn Minecraft into a sword-swinging adventure, and given the limitations of the game’s engine, it hasn’t worked well at all. Today, we are getting Episode 4, Below the Bedrock, and I’m really hoping the series shifts away from its emphasis on violence and on swinging swords and goes back to focusing on the game’s characters and on the many facets of the Minecraft universe. I’m still interested to see where Jesse’s story goes in this episode (besides going literally below the bedrock) and seeing how the whole Admin story continues to play out.

Now, if you are a Twitter user, you’ll know that the biggest Telltale news of the day weren’t about Minecraft but, unfortunately, about the layoffs at Telltale Games. The company has reduced its staff by 25% in an effort to restructure and to focus on producing fewer, better quality games. Telltale CEO, Pete Hawley, said that the layoffs will not impact any previously announced projects. The news caught most by surprise because Telltale has been pretty successful translating popular IPs into adventure games. Personally, I’ve been wondering whether recent games have been as successful as earlier ones given how many players would complain about the formula becoming stale and about the dated game engine. Hopefully better games will come out of this sad news.