WHAT’S THE MYSTERY BEHIND THE ENDER DRAGON? | The Story of the Ender Dragon

WHAT’S THE MYSTERY BEHIND THE ENDER DRAGON? | The Story of the Ender Dragon

There’s a monster waiting for us all in the End. A terrifying sky beast that defies description. But if I don’t describe it, I don’t get paid, so let’s give it a go. It’s a purple-eyed, fire-breathing… -It’s a dragon. -Well, yes, that’s a simpler way of putting it.

But the actions of the creature are truly epic. -It growls, it flies… -Oh, okay. Great, yeah… We’ll just call the episode “The Story of How We Made the Growly Fly”, shall we? What are the origins of this dragon? Obviously it’s not based on a real animal,

Because as we all know, all the real-world dragons went extinct in the late ’90s. So, what are its defining characteristics? I would say aggressive, lonely, but eternal. A big mob. It’s like nothing you’ve seen before in Minecraft. And also one of the most detailed mobs.

It has like 20 segments in its tail and stuff on top of that. -And as for its sounds… -Growl, wing flap and growl again. You’d sound pretty angry too if you had to live in a vast empty dimension with no one but endermen for company.

No offense to our millions of endermen viewers, but you lot are boring. The ender dragon and endermen are fighting each other. They don’t like each other. -Wait, what?! -It’s a mystery. Solve the mystery! Tell us why! I know the secret and why there are so many endermen in the End,

But I’m not gonna tell you. You’re bluffing. It could be because the ender dragon is guarding something. Is it guarding something? I think that’s a question. You lot do understand that the point of this show is to give us exclusive facts about the mobs, right?

Oh, very well. Let’s go back to where it all began. The year was 2011. Minecraft had just turned two, and like all proud parents we were starting to get bored of its company. So we introduced an update that changed everything. Before the Adventure Update and after it, the game had changed a lot.

We had taken a step towards giving a little bit more of an RPG feeling. Such as potions, enchantments, oh, and a new dimension in the making that contained the first ever boss mob in Minecraft. During that time, Markus, or Notch, was experimenting with a new world generator style

That was kind of like a sky island. Together with all the adventure-style features, Markus really wanted to make a dragon. This new sky island, now known as the End, was planned to be very different from the Overworld. This dimension wouldn’t even have a sun. Therefore, the End would have no concept of time.

A nothingness or an empty space, like a void or something like that. -No… No, my head is empty. -Just like the End. By the way, what inspired that name? It plays on “endermen” and “ender dragon”, but it also symbolizes the end of the game.

So you could say that the End has become the ender dragon’s world? -It kind of became the endermen’s world. -Or you could say that. Thanks. The enderman was added slightly based on a meme at that time that was called the Slenderman, and it became the enderman in Minecraft.

And then, to pair it up with the endermen, the dragon would also become the ender dragon. Oh, I see! So, to summarize, the look of the enderman inspired the End, and that inspired the design of the ender dragon. Yeah, that’s right. I haven’t thought about it earlier, but…

While the developer team, seen here in this archive footage, worked on the design of the ender dragon, Jens focused on tying the mechanics of the End dimension, end portal, enderman and ender dragon together until… There was like a thread you could follow from start to the end, literally,

With a boss fight, and then actually defeat or win the game. Finally, Minecraft had an end goal. One that was essential to the Minecraft experience. Reaching the dragon and defeating it is not a requirement for playing Minecraft. -It’s something you choose to do. -It’s very much an aspirational feature.

It is a nice book-ending of an adventure, but then you can start a new adventure about something else. Oh, that’s nice! Now, here’s a shocking revelation for you. Making a mob in Minecraft is tricky. Especially a boss mob. And the first designs and gameplay mechanics were… Well…

-No, that wasn’t in the game. -It’s just a sketch… …but you’re meant to be the expert here. I think they came to a really great conclusion by making it enderman black and purple, because it gave birth to this really cool universe. But there were never any problems with the final ender dragon battle.

That was perfect from day one and admirably complex. It was very simple. The dragon was just flying around and you had to shoot arrows at it. It was not very dynamic. So, making the fight with the ender dragon more interesting became the developers number one priority. Luckily we had lots of ideas.

Even more luckily, we also had some good ideas. The end crystals that heal the dragon also became harder to remove, because some of them are encased in these iron cages. And, also, the dragon would sometimes swoop down and land on the empty end portal to make you change your behavior a little bit.

Essentially, the dragon could now charge at you, throw fire balls and use its dragon breath. Most of these design choices, textures and sounds are from the 2011 Adventure Update. My favorite sound for the ender dragon is when you defeat it and you get the…

That kind of crackle, and the screen sort of distorts and you see these cool effects. I really, really enjoy the poem. Minecraft creates a lot of precious memories, and that’s one strong memory for me. Beautifully put! Now we had a dragon with a name, a color scheme, sounds,

Sound track and even its own dimension full of creepy weirdos. Did I say creepy weirdos? I meant handsome weirdos. Only when we were perfectly happy with the ender dragon, were we willing to release it into the Minecraft wilds. -We didn’t just put it in the game because… -The deadline arrived.

Anyways, there you have it.

Ever wondered how the Ender Dragon came to be? Journey with us to a dimension called the past as a group of long-standing Mojangers desperately try and remember what happened back in 2011. Why are the Ender Dragon and Endermen fighting? Why are there so many Endermen in the End? Is the Ender Dragon guarding something? These are all questions and we’re asking them. Don’t miss it!

More about Minecraft: https://minecraft.net