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 going to shatter the bedrock of your understanding of this franchise. Ready, set, go.
Hello Internet! Welcome to Game Theory, where we embrace all miners and crafters. Regardless
of whether you diggy diggy 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. In case you didn't know about a month ago,
Mojang released Minecraft 1.20 The Trails and Trails 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 shift in 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 piglins. 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 passed
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 has been shifty when it comes to confirming the game's canonicity.
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 playing through this thing.
Some of that confirms suspicions that we've had in the past and others that
open up a whole host of new questions. So grab your legendary lute my friends, we've
got ourselves an overworld to save. Or should I say destroy. Considering theory number one:
ancient builders caused the downfall of the overworld. The characters that we play as
in Minecraft Legends are undoubtedly the first of the ancient builders 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.
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 saved 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.
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 of years: overharvesting 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 the 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 -50 range. We clean this place out all in the name of trade.
It works so well that even the villagers stop just giving away their items in 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? Mobs 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.
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 Illagers.
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 Illegers. 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.
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 everything in their power to bring them back. So us saving the overworld ends
up feeling more like conquering it for our own gain. And while that is very clearly a
bad thing in this game. That's not always the case, especially when you're talking about
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me in taking down my YouTube rival. But for now, back to Minecraft Legends and 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.
Now spawners themselves are nothing new, we've had them in vanilla minecraft for years;
cages with a fire in the middle that will 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 of pieces of lapis.
This stuff isn't just magic it is literally life giving. But hold on, did he 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 vanilla, it's a resource that can be gathered.
We don't actually have lapis ore just lying around the world like we do with
iron and diamond. Instead, our primary method of collecting lapis is killing piglins. In Legend,
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 Lapis housed 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 Illigers and their ties to the magic of life and death. Their use of Lapis
block inside the head of an Illeger statue, their gathering of Steve colored wool blocks,
the mansion's 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 overall 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 fates designed 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 lapis, 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 monument.
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 piglins and put it inside these monuments as an offering to these gods, just like I talked
about in one of my earliest Minecraft theories. 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 stories 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.
And if you want even more Minecraft lore, you can always go back and watch
the entire playlist that's just full of this stuff. Or if you fancy yourself some
strange minecraft food science there’s our episode over on Food Theory to figure out
whether Dream could have actually killed Tommyinnit using a potato. As always,
my friends, don't forget to subscribe because I want to see you next week.