Advancements
Suggested accompaniment, from the Minecraft Wiki:
In 2017, Minecraft’s 1.12 update added advancements to the game. Advancements are a way to guide players through the game’s progression; starting at your first crafting table and culminating in elytra and end-game challenges. As befitting the game with an, “As seen on TV!” splash screen, most advancements are references or otherwise tongue-in-cheek. E.g. “Ice Bucket Challenge” With one notable exception. “Those Were the Days” This advancement triggers the first time a player encounters a bastion remnant and for me evokes a deep sense of melancholy. The game, the voice that had until this point been a wry commentator on the player’s actions, breaks character and reflects on times long past. “Those were the days.”
Minecraft doesn’t have a story. There is no text for the player to read and there are no cutscenes for the player to watch. What Minecraft does have is its world, its structures. The desert temple implies a people that you never see. The creeper face cut in to sandstone suggests a mythos or lifestyle unknown to you. Somebody must have built this structure. The player is left to wonder and to fill in the gaps for themselves on who those people might be. The same is true for the bastion remnant. Even its name, “remnant” suggests another time, another age. It stands to reason that a player seeing a remnant for the first time is asking themselves, “What is that? Who built it?” but the voice in that player’s ear, their constant companion, doesn’t share in their curiosity. That voice knows what a remnant is, what it represents, and mourns its passing, saying,