Game Theory - Give Me Your SOUL! (Minecraft Legends)

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

Join Game Theory Host MatPat as he discusses 3 NEW theories from Minecraft Legends! *Credits:* Writers: Matthew Patrick and Tom Robinson Editors: Dan "Cybert" Seibert, Warak, Tyler Mascola, JayskiBean and Shannon (Bomb0i) Sound Designer: Yosi Berman

Vanilla Minecraft tells us the story of a race of ancient humans who ruined the world and then tried to summon gods back to make things right again. Those gods never arrive and as a result the ancient people eventually die out. I'm sorry, did you think this was a game about mining and crafting your own fun in an open world? Think again! We have three new mini theories that are gonna shatter the bedrock of your understanding of this franchise. Ready, set, go! Winternet, welcome to game theory, where we embrace all miners, and crafters, regardless of whether you diggy-dicky holes, brandish butter swords, consider yourself hunters,

or simply hunger for some QSMP wall potatoes. Friends, after seven whole months, it's time to hop back into the blocky lore of Minecraft. Kisha didn't know about a month ago, Mojang released Minecraft 1.20, the Trails and Tales update, an update that focuses specifically on Minecraft history. Currently, the team and I are hard at work excavating our way through that one, but in the meantime, I wanted to talk to you guys about Minecraft's other big release from this year, Minecraft Legends. This game, honestly, was fascinating. Not only was it a complete shifting gameplay, but the lore was just laid out smack dab in front of us. We are a Minecraft player, summoned by these godlike beings known as hosts, all to help save the world that they built from the invading piglands. It's pretty darn

straightforward stuff, but while it certainly seems simple on the surface, what's fascinating about this game is that it's telling us the legends of the overworld. Stories that villagers pass down from generation to generation about how they were one day saved by a mysterious hero. And that's exciting because it means we're finally getting a look into the history of the Minecraft world. No longer are we just piecing together the ruins of what's left behind. We are there in person in the time that it happened walking around the ancient overworld. Now, admittedly, I know that Mojang's been shifty when it comes to confirming the game's

canonicity. And if people are asking, you know, is that fact, did that really happen? You know, we're not saying that that's exactly what happened, but maybe it did. Do you think it did? But legends are stories based on some level of history and reality, as opposed to myths, which are entirely fictional. Which means that even if there's just a tiny grain of truth within this game, it shows that we've been on the right track for the past four years.

So today, I'm going to run you through a collection of three mini theories that I found while planned through this thing, some that confirm suspicions that we've had in the past, and others that open up a whole host of new questions. So grab your legendary loot, my friends. We've got ourselves an overworld to save. Or should I say destroy, considering theory? Number 1, Ancient Builders caused the downfall of the Overworld.

The characters that we play as in Minecraft Legends are undoubtedly the first of the ancient builder civilization that we've spent the better part of four years theorizing about. We see them at the start of the game mining away, having built a settlement until they're summoned away by the hosts to save the overworld. Of course, we do what the game tells us to do and drive back the Piglin threat, but then we never really head home. The hosts don't send us back to where we came from to continue our old life. We're not needed here anymore, and that's a good thing. It is time for a new adventure for us. There are endless worlds out there waiting to be explored. Change blows in the wind, friend.

Where will it take you? Good luck. Good luck. They decide that thanks to us, they aren't needed anymore. And so they go off on a new adventure, leaving us completely stranded. First off, not a great look for these quote-unquote benevolent gods to just take a vacation and not even offer us a ride home. But secondly, I get that we save the overworld and that these mobs now think of us as a hero, but a hero is very different from a god.

These guys literally brought the overworld into being. These golems helped us shake the overworld. All I can do is bash a piglin with a sword and sketch my face into the side of a mountain. Impressive to be sure, but it is far from being a god. Leaving us behind though isn't just a bit awkward. It actually causes one of the biggest issues that we've been talking about in Minecraft from the past couple years. Over-harvesting of resources and destruction of the environment. Think about it.

We have now been stranded alongside a few other ancient builders left to rebuild our entire civilization and livelihood. That means that we need materials and lots of them. We begin carving up the mountainside, chopping down the forests in order to make our homes. And before you know it, these exotic animals, like the brilliant beetle or the regal tiger, have lost their habitats and end up extinct by the time we get to Vanilla Minecraft. And those are just the lucky ones. We also need food. And so, just like in Vanilla, we hunt what's around us.

But instead of usual cows and pigs, we find ourselves animals like the Big Beak, and we continue to hunt them to extinction. Hence, why all these animals aren't appearing in vanilla later. And this is all before we even begin to talk about repopulating, which multiplies the issues further. More people means more housing, more resources, and if you happen to have an abundance of a certain resource in your area, it means you suddenly start to trade, leading to the harvesting of more resources to sell for profit, especially rare and valuable ones. In Minecraft legends, diamonds, iron, copper, and coal are literally everywhere, just right there up on the surface of the world, no digging required.

But when we get to Vanilla Minecraft, we gotta dig to at least Y-level 14 to find diamonds. And even then, it's pretty darn scarce until you get to the minus 50 range. We clean this place out, all in the name of trade. It works so well that even the villagers stopped just giving away their items and community chests like they do in Legends, and picked up the bartering system for themselves by the time of Vanilla. And that isn't even the worst part. Minecraft Legends is shown to be a land of peace, tranquility, balance before the piglins arrive. Everything is working together in perfect harmony.

Heck, a zombie literally gives a flower to a villager with no desire to eat its brains. When we defeat the piglin, the idea is that this balance is suddenly restored. But take a look at Vanilla Minecraft. Does this look like a world in balance to you? Mob spawning left and right and immediately trying to shoot you with an arrow, take a bite out of you, blow you up? Villages are getting raided by zombies, the exact same zombies that used to offer them flowers.

There is no peace and tranquility in this world anymore, so what happened? What changed? We did. Throughout Minecraft legends, we see the effect that our mere presence is having on the surrounding mobs. Look! How did they learn to fight? By watching our hero.

Once they've gained the desire to fight, it never leaves. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. And this is made abundantly clear thanks to one mob in particular, the Illiger's. As we've always suspected, these guys just started out as plain old villagers, minus some melanin. But we now have actual confirmation that it was us that caused them to turn into what are now known as the Illigers. Just like other mobs in the game, they see us fighting for peace and they want to join into the fight. much to the sadness of the hosts. No, others already fight to defend this world.

You don't have to. We cannot stop this. We must respect their choice. The hosts then craft for them their very first axes, so they can fight right alongside us. But when we save the day and the fighting stops, the illagers don't seem completely at peace. Their lust for violence remains.

This is what leads them to idolize the ancient builders, the ones who showed them the way. And when the ancient builders eventually disappear, they do every thing. their power to bring them back. Theory number two, Lapis is life. Lapis lazuli has always been a bit of an odd material in Minecraft. You have to dig quite deep underground to find it, and unlike iron or gold or diamonds, it can't really be used to make armor or tools. Instead, it's used to enchant other items with magical powers, but Minecraft legends actually takes it a step further. One of the major mechanics of the game is building spawners that will allow you to summon mobs to use in battle. Within this case, burn the flames of creation. The flames will call upon friends to fight. by your side. Now, spawners themselves are nothing new. We've had them in vanilla Minecraft for years. Cages with a fire in the middle that'll spawn countless

versions of a particular mob. But in Minecraft legends, we can also sacrifice raw materials like stone and wood and create golems like you see in the game. We are literally creating life from nothing. Inanimate objects, raw materials. Things that shouldn't be alive are suddenly alive because of us. And what was the price of creating that life? None other than a couple pieces of lapids. Lapis drop by the piglins can be used to Fuel your spawners. Collect the Lapis to keep your fires burning. This stuff isn't just magic. It is literally life-giving. But hold on. Did you just say that Lapis is dropped by the piglins? That's not what happens in Vanilla Minecraft.

Lapis is usually just a resource underground. This change has to mean something important, and I believe that it does. I believe it tells us exactly what gives Lapis its life-giving powers. Unlike most other resources in Minecraft legends, Lapis is actually scarce. Well, you can certainly get some from the villagers' community chests, implying that just like in In vanilla, it's a resource that can be gathered, we don't actually have lapis or just lying around the world like we do with iron and diamond. Instead, our primary method of collecting lapis is killing piglins. In legends, piglins are the only mob to drop Lapis, and that's notable because they're

the only mob that we are actively going out of our way to kill. It cannot be just a coincidence that when you kill these mobs, you gain an item that allows you to bring life into the world. Even in real history, ancient Sumerians believed Lapus howls the souls of gods. That is what I believe Minecraft Legends is trying to tell us about. lapis. It's not just magical, it is powered by the souls of the monsters you slay, now able to be recycled to bring new life into the world. It's a vicious cycle of life and death. We kill piglins, we get lapis, we use lapis to summon more mobs

to kill more piglins, and it goes on and on and on. And this would also confirm some of our past theories about the Illiger's and their ties to the magic of life and death. Their use of lapis block inside the head of an Illiger statue, their gathering of Steve-colored wool blocks, the mansions being filled with zombies, they're trying to bring back the ancient builders that are no longer around. They're trying to use the lapis that they saw us use on inanimate objects to try and create their own versions of the people they now worship. However, the illagers aren't the only ones trying to bring back people they've lost because theory number three, ancient builders were trying to bring back the hosts. After we

save the overworld, the hosts peace on out, leaving us behind to inadvertently destroy the overworld. We've already talked about that. However, I don't believe that the ancient builders were entirely oblivious to the damage that they were causing as the overworld became more and more dangerous, with mobs that were once called allies turning violent on them, it appears that the ancient builders felt like their only chance of survival was to beg for help from the ones that brought them here in the first place, the hosts, the gods of this world. But how does one go about summoning gods back that have been gone for so long?

The well of fate, where the hosts used to reside, isn't in vanilla Minecraft or Minecraft Dungeons. At some point, it was clearly lost to time, and so I think that the ancient builders began building their own. Take a look at the well of fate's design from Minecraft Legends. It's a four-pillared Prismarine tower on top of a Prismarine pyramid. Prismarine has always been a special block. Not necessarily through anything it does,

but it's the only block that shifts in color from blue to turquoise. It, like Lappus, seems to have itself some magical connotation. Now, where is the only place that you can find Prismarine in Vanilla Minecraft? Deep underwater in the ocean monuments. In fact, if you take a look at their design, doesn't it begin to look a bit familiar? A four-pillared tower on top of a pyramid made entirely of Prismarine. You've even got other little structures around the

pyramid, just like the improvement towers that you can build out of Prismarine in Minecraft legends. I suspect that the ancient builders took the Prismarine that they were holding on to for years and built monuments to these long-gone gods, where they could pray, they could worship, they could call on them for salvation. These gods came from a tower of Prismarine. It was intrinsically connected to them, so surely building an entire temple monument to them out of the exact same stuff would get their attention. They even took some of the gold that they'd kept as the spoils of their war against the piglands and put it inside these monuments, as an offering to these gods. Ultimately, though, their plan failed.

The hosts didn't hear their cries for help. They never returned, and things only got worse and worse from there. The ocean monuments would eventually be swallowed up by the sea. And so as a final line of defense, they built the guardians out of the same supernatural prismarine the monument itself was built from in order to protect these now abandoned houses for the gods in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, the hosts would be able to come back and use them as a portal

to one day come and rescue them from all the dangerous mobs that had conquered the overworld. But that day, it never came. Slowly but surely, the ancient builders died out, leaving behind only fragments of their history in the ruins that we can find in Vanilla, and the story is told by villagers of an ancient race that once upon a time were considered to be the heroes of that story. But hey, that's just a theory.

Three game theories! Thanks for watching!