Minecraft: Story Mode is the first Telltale game that lets you pick your gender

If you want to play as a woman in Minecraft: Story Mode - or if you just don't want to be pixelated Patton Oswalt - Telltale Games will let you. The studio revealed that its episodic adaptation of Minecraft will let players select their protagonist's gender, for the first time in Telltale's expansive history of character-driven adventures.

Jesse: Woman Mode will be voiced by Catherine Taber, who you may know as the voice of Cécile (y'know, the French ornithologist) from Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker. You'll also be able to choose from a variety of skin tones for either Jesse.

All good news, and a big change from what Mojang and Telltale definitively stated two months ago. GR+ news lead Louise Blain sent over this portion of her transcript from the Minecraft Story Mode Q&A panel at Minecon in July:

Fan: I was just wondering, your main character's name is Jesse - I have a female cousin whose name is Jessie. Is there any way we can play through the adventure as a girl or do you have to be a guy?

Owen Hill, Mojang director of creative communications: That is something that we considered and we thought about, but unfortunately the way that these games are cast and created it would have been super hard for us to switch through different characters.

Job Stauffer, Telltale head of creative communications: That pretty much covers it for Telltale’s games. It’s not necessarily as swappable as something like a Mass Effect. We put a lot of effort into writing one specific kind of character. And working with Patton Oswalt was a really amazing opportunity; he’s a really big fan, he plays with his daughter. But I think there are plenty of cool female characters, and I think you’re really going to like Petra a lot. She brings a lot to the table.

I've asked Telltale what brought about the change and will update this story if I find out more.

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Connor Sheridan

I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.