“History is told by the victors”, I love how this quote can also be canonically tied to Minecraft story mode

Also, this would make sense why the Ender men hate the ender mights in the base game, it's because they were essentially a plague for them, forcing all of their neighbors and friends to starve.

That’s why the piglins attack you, they recognize you as a ancient builder, and by putting on gold armor they think your own their side.

I wonder if Matt will make a big Minecraft retrospective theory of sorts someday. Linking together all the previous theories, and figuring out what fits, what doesn't, and what they may have missed initially.

I like the idea that Legends is an older villager telling a story to a kid. The kid sees a ruined portal, asks about it, and to just keep the kid entertained the older villager makes up a story. "But piglins turn into zombies when they go through portals!" "They do NOW, as a curse for losing the war" and other nonsense that makes just enough sense to believe, even if it doesnt all add up

I love that matpat makes his videos in a way that you can listen, not watching the actual visuals, and still go along and understand whats happening. Like hes just descriptive enough to tell you what something looks like, but not so much that it ruins the video for ppl watching it too

One thing he didnt mention: the difference in portal size in the original game vs legends, legends shows a massive scary portal that infects the land around it, while in minecraft its just a small lowly construct with a small amount of the ground changed, whatever was left of the piglins when the builders came through wasnt some mighty army, it was probably a small remnant of resistance that the builders slaughtered.

A small, very simple detail in Minecraft gameplay could further prove this theory. And it's depending how much you love building. One word: saplings. In the overworld, you can get a sapling of any tree, bring it to your base and grow it there. However, for wood from the nether, it's different. Once you chopped down a “tree” for its crimson or warped logs, it's never gonna come back. It doesn't drop a sapling or a seed to grow a new one, it's a one-use object. Which means if you are farming them on mass, you are destroying entire ecosystems, erasing forests from existence for a couple of stacks of wood.

In vanilla minecraft, endermen will hunt endermite that are nearby. Probably because the endermen know that endermite will destroy any species it comes into contact with.

Someone needs to make a mod that allows you to play in this mattpat theory timeline. It’d be wild to play minecraft like a full fledged rpg with story

The Piglins even brought their children to war... This shows how tough the situation really is.

This story idea would absolutely tie in to some of the dev’s mindsets, namely them trying their best to make sure that any tweaks they make don’t end up breaking player-built resource farms. The ancients never came up with resource farms. They always took from the natural environments. That left two dimensions as wastelands. Of course the Devs would support the building of creative, infinite resource farms, since the story they’ve crafted shows the ramifications of exploitation instead of cultivation.

the fact MatPat can just keep pulling these theories out of what seems like nowhere baffles me, hats off 👏

I think that, y’know, Piglins becoming zombified when they go to the overworld/end is a pretty solid case they weren’t the ones invading.

Fun fact: piglins and hoglins in newer updates are scared of nether portals and respawn anchors and will keep their distance for both

Ender mites also are very similar to the silverfish in the over world. If the silverfish happened to get through the portal and had to eat native resources to survive it could have changed them too. It’s seems very continent that there is always a silverfish spawner right outside the portal, a little too convenient.

To quote Minecraft Story Mode “Until all that remains are myths, half truths, to put it simply, lies.” I feel this fits here.

When Matpat said "once great society" it reminded me of the achievement that you get when first entering a bastion "Those were the days"

Hey, So I have been watching all your theories about Minecraft, and it has started me to wonder about the person we play as in the game after all these events have gone down. As of right now, there are currently nine default skins in the game and are named as follows. Steve, Alex, Zuri, Sunny, Noor, Makena, Kai, Efe and Ari. If we take these skins to mean they are the official characters of Minecraft, then the obvious question becomes where did they come from. You seem to imply with your theories that Steven and the other eight characters are descendants of the ancient builders, but I have a bit of a problem with that, for there is nothing in the game showing where we as the player comes from. Now this could be something that Mojang is planning to add later, like a village full of builder descendants that you came from, but I have two ideas that might actually be more in line to the lore you have presented thus far for Minecraft. Now idea number one is rather basic, that being that Steve and the others are all children of villagers who for whatever reason are born with both the resemblance and the gifts of the ancient builders, and thus they were sent off on a grand adventure to discover the secrets of their peoples long lost past. This idea though I admit is weak, as one it would have to be an extremely rare chance for such a thing to happen, but not so unlikely that you didn't run into others like yourself in the world. Idea number two is where I'm putting my money, for this idea involves the Illigers, and the theory you presented that the Illigers are trying to bring back the ancient Builders via dark magic, for I think that they succeeded in bringing a builder back to life, and that builder is your player character. Now two questions of course arise from this idea, one being that if you are a builder resurrected by the Illagers, why do they attack you, followed by why are there not more of you out in the world. Both questions are actually easy to answer, for I think that not only were the Illigers wanting to bring builders back to life, but given the fact that they hold sway over the other creations they have at their disposal, I think they also wanted to control these resurrected builders. But for whatever reason, they couldn't control you, and later you were somehow able to escape from their clutches before they could kill you and start over with their experiments, explaining why Illagers would want to kill you on sight, while also explaining why there are no others like you, because they are afraid that like with you, the others they might create will not be able to be controlled, thus escaping and later messing with their plans just like you inevitably do if you survive long enough in Minecraft, after all, only you seem capable of repelling a Illager raid on the Villagers. But its all just speculation on my part at this point, though I would love to see you tackle this idea in one of your videos if it holds merit.

11:50 That is an actual historical thing. When countries/servers were attacked or at war, they were short on resources and started invading other lands to replenish. We see it in Hermitcraft too, they mine giant craters just to get more ores to trade bc they trade and craft so much. Civilization is complicated. Here, invasive Piglins were once the oppressed.

I love how all the hostile mobs suddenly just go "yeah let's help the humans". It's like the story is a fairy tale.

I swear, MatPat is gonna be the only person in the world that will not be disappointed by this game once it comes out. It's gonna be so fun to watch

I love this theory. As a Dungeon Master, I love the conflict of legend vs truth and ideal vs reality. But as a sidenote... Can we appreciate how amazing animations and Minecraft parody songs made by the community clearly influenced the direction Mojang took the game? The animations remind me so much of some of the biggest names from back in the day. Any issues aside... it's just very cool as a person who's played Minecraft since its debut to see how far it's come and how true to itself it's stayed even across changes in leadership and designers. I can log in now and despite the changes to the world gen and things being better fleshed out, it still feels like the old days of wandering, farming, and occasionally getting up the nerve to delve deep. But now there's a lot more to delve for, and that's awesome. I'm not embarrassed to say I still play as a full adult, and I'm still fascinated by GT's theories about MC.

I wonder now if the zombification of piglins isn't a defense mechanism set up by the ancient builders. Yes the hero "won" after using a last ditch weapon.

I had always thought of endermites as being parasites that feed on endermen, with ender pearls being their eggs. We always assume that ender pearls are eyes, but, from a certain point of view, they look like real life frog eggs, with a layer of slime around a dark spherical center. Perhaps this is why only some endermen drop ender pearls, not all of them have been infected. This would also explain why endermites come out of enderpearls randomly and why endermen are aggressive towards them. It’s a situation similar to how parasitic wasps lay their eggs in caterpillars, so that their offspring can eat them from the inside out.

matpat needs to do more theories on Minecraft Dungeons. Not only base game connecting lore, dungeons has like their own lore, and it's very interesting. Such as illagers colonizing a villager settlement, ancient villager civilization in the jungle, and the mystery of the crypts we see throughout creeper woods and pumpkin pastures. And it doesn't end there, there's even more to find out

This reminded me of something. Anybody else remember that one Minecraft theme event thing where the nether was taking over a village and you had to do different stuff to progress through it? That was the single thing that this reminded me of.

One reason for the loss of biodiversity in the nether might be the Warped Forests...a crimson forest imbued with soul power so dense, it keeps away the -Lin species (hoglins, piglins, whatever you name them) since even a hoglin runs at the sight of a mere warped mushrooms. The reason why piglins run from soul lanterns. The reason for their crumble. The reason for the withers' existence.

I like it how minecraft doesnt have story quests or almost any story at all but yet it has such big and interesting lore. The game appears as just a building game but it secretly hides so so much more

I imagine Matpat looking at the three new mobs and thinking “Alright which one has the most *LORE!?”*

The ancient builders last ditch effort to save the echo system was to respawn the ended dragon before losing their sanity, and turning into enderman. That’s why there’s the big obsidian pillars around it when we travel there.

i think destroying the heart of ender also stopped the creation of the enderlings due to one small detail the enderling's sounds are actually heavily distorted overworld mobs like zombies skeletons and spiders. watchlings sound like zombies, blastlings sound like skeletons, and the snarelings like spiders.

Please do a theory on how much bird seed can save you from a fall in gravity falls when Stanley is running for mayor he saves dipper and mable then he falls into bird seed

I'm surprised that Matpat didn't mention that the piglins didn't immediately become zombified. Suggestion of a possible bioweapon used between games?

What's weird is that I suspected that these portals were the result of some conflict, and it's nice to be kind of right.

This essentially ties up with several of matpats theories. The piglins are not turning zombified because the virus doesn't exist yet. The end theories are perfectly explained. I also think this perfectly explains why the bastions are destroyed and why the piglins attack on sight unless we provide gold. Also maybe soul sand valleys are just places where the war was fought. A lot of massacre might have taken place over them. The fossils found in these valleys can be of huge species that died out during the biodiversity loss or the war. Also explains why the different biomes seem to have a lack of too much biodiversity.

I think it would be cool if they added stuff from Dungeons to vanilla Minecraft. Just make it only spawn really far from the End Island. Like 50k blocks from where the outer end starts.

so MatPat discovered that Steve and the ancient builders were british... impressive stuff

The ancient builders push piglins back to the nether where they fight for the death and piglins won. Their numbers are reduced to fraction of the original and their homes in ruins.

The Piglins don't necessarily know that gold is rare in the overworld.

10:25 This is also proven by a mechanic in the game, when an enderman sees a endermite, it tries to kill it, because the endermen remeber what they did the the end and don't want it happening again.

I noticed a teeny tiny inconsistency: Enderman. In the first episode you explained that Enderman are evolved builders, however, that only happend when they HAD to flee to the End. Here however you say that they first entered and the End was "alive", using evidence from Minecraft Dungeons...but, there ARE Endermans in Dungeons, and they are mini-bosses...Sooooo, how there can already be Enderman, if the builders haven't evolved yet into them... assuming that the End was spoiled by builder refugees, thus creating a contraddiction, which means, the premise is wrong, or the thought process is wrong...Another thing is that, Enderling, Endermen and Endersent all resemble each other, something that would be very improbable if Endermen and the others had different root ancectors

I agree with some parts of this but… perhaps dungeon’s takes place in the future? There are zombies in the game that aren’t an apocalyptic level threat, unlike what your other theories said.

if the endermite eats everything, indeed the endermite eats trees also in minecraft dungeons there are plants like coral that can emit spores, and indeed endermites can eat that, in mcdungeons there are also plants that can secrete poison if it is true that the endermite eats it they will die because of that plant emit poisonous gas

If we believe that Legends is a prequel… then I must believe that the mobs, upon hearing of what happened (the true story, not the half-baked one) must have rebelled. This rebellion probably killed quite a few of the old Ancient Builders, although I assume not all of them. That’s why mobs are hostile in Minecraft, but not in Legends.

The Nether used to have less biomes too. Maybe the warped and crimson forests and soul sand valleys came up after the builders left, as nature's way of fixing itself.

I'd like to think that throughout the years Mojang is working on a movie that shows the entire lore of Minecraft

If this game is a story, it could be exaggerated by the “winners of the war” so to speak.

Just letting you know, Matt: You’ll need a metric crapton of Emeralds to make that bribe at the beginning since they are only worth 31 cents each. (According to your colleague, Austin.)

Minecraft Dungeons deserves your theories WAY more than this. secret kingdoms, lore in statuary, item descriptions that speak volumes when given context, _an enemy's Gait_ providing evidence as to its origins, signature weapons doing so, AND it's a fun dungeon crawler.

I think the builders realize what they have done at some point, as we see the end crystal is designed specifically not only to protect the end dragon, but also built off of resources found in the nether, using ghast tears and blaze powder. Maybe with the last egg left we might get a chance in the future to bring life back to the end.

I really love what you're doing with this game but I would like to see an episode on the fossils.

I think the silver lining to the ecosystem destruction is that the nether has been getting better, more plants “returning” to the nether, and maybe a similar thing may happen to the end, if mojang ever decides to revisit the end dimension for updates.

A detail you overlooked is that piglins and zoglins turn zombified when they come to the overworld, maybe it was a curse to prevent any future invasions from the piglins

Minecraft legends was predicted by captainsparcels 6years ago in the fallen Kingdom series.

My theory is that the piglins did invade because of greed, just not material greed. I would say what happened is the builders invaded the Nether and pushed the piglins back a great deal. Then the piglins manage to push the builders back into the overworld and fueled by greed and new found confidence in their own military power, they launch a major counter offensive into the overworld before eventually being pushed all the way back to their bastions, which were then shelled in some manner or left to rot after the piglins either surrendered or were annihilated, explaining the extensive damage on them in Minecraft

With what Matpat said about biodiversity loss in the End, it would be really cool if a Sniffer in the End could bring back some of the old End plant life.

Mat pat is an extremely creative guy to have lore theories on Minecraft

Kind of makes me wonder if at some point other Ancient Builders escaped into still-other dimensions....and if they'll be returning at some point, no lessons learned, and just as driven as ever to plunder the Overworld, not realizing their ancestors had been there before. Or perhaps they DID know, and they were coming back to slaughter the Withers and reclaim the world. Not sure I want to see that.

Game: comes out. This theory: now has some holes because the piglins are actually hurting the land also

Random thing I heard from some sort of dev QNA a while ago. Endermites spawning after an Enderman's teleport happens because the Enderman passing through another dimension while teleporting, and doing so accidentally brings an inhabitant of that dimension back, the Endermite. This is likely not up to date, it's just a random thing I remembered.

At this point im convinced that Mojang is just waiting for Matpat to basically write the story for them.

Since there’s two new separate biomes in the nether now, I wonder how many different species lived in those before their homes went to ruin, maybe we as the player are meant to be the saviour, the one who restores what had been lost by our kind in the past and fix what’s broken by bringing back old specifies like how the sniffer is an ancient dinosaur that you can only obtain by finding the eggs underwater and hatching them it’s just the beginning of our adventure in saving the worlds

I love the idea that minecraft legends and dungeons is like a prequel to our minecraft

Based on a prior theory, it's weird that the piglins doesn't immediately become zombified.

So happy to see you covering Minecraft Dungeons! There is so much lore potential hidden in there, for example, in the opening cutscene for the end dlc, when traveling to the End a piece of the Heart of Ender refers to the End as “the beginning”

This theory actually sounds better than any storyline mojang has come up with

With this theory the normal skeletons in the nether makes sense

Whoever wrote the script is very fond of the phrase “the game proper” considering how much matpat says it

It explains piglin behavior in the main game, too. Normally, they attack on sight. Wear gold and bring it to give away, though, and the piglins leave you be... until you try to steal from them, that is, after which the only way to pacify them is to give the gold back.

0:42 they are basically saying that "we are too lazy to come up with our own lore and we wanna keep adding new cool stuff without the problem of lore, so we leave it to MatPat to connect the dots for us"

Hey Matt Pat, could you do a video on Signalis??? The lore in that game is so wonky, that I am genuinely interested in *what the hell even just happened (I can piece together some things in a clear way, but some other things were just really confusing).* In fact, I think that type of lore fits just perfectly right in your alley

I’d like to see a theory on what exactly the Heart of Ender from Minecraft Dungeons is, given how it’s much more demonic than the regular endermen are despite originating from the End, or perhaps a theory about the ghasts and their origins

never did i think that a freeplay game i used to play 24/7 would have as much lore as it apparently does but here i am

6:17 Mat: "Watchlings-" Me: "WATCHLINGS? No no no no no. WatchERS.They're different." Don't mind me just tying in some Grian with everything.

I think that dungeons takes place after minecraft for two reasons. Firstly there is a cutscene at the beginning of the the game that shows the stronger enderman deactivate the end portal after hopping out of it And secondly gene the ender dragon has already been killed by your player in minecraft.

after hearing about what the ancient builders could of possibly done just makes me want to have the ability to fix what was once lost, even if only slightly, by bringing stuff into the nether and end to make it more of a place that creatures could live (kinda makes me want to do a giant build project to let me do that)

Actually, considering that game does focus on stripping resources to build elsewhere, forcing you to go to the nether and end, killing the only thing guarding the end inorder to get those rare resources... It shares some pretty deep ties to colonisation, which is known to be supremely destructive.

I haven't completetly watched the video yet, but before I forget and after watching a bunch of other stuff, maybe after defeating/keeping at bay the monsters of the Nether, the ancient civilizations were inspired to create other dimensions to battle a different threat/the Nether itself (wither) if it wasn't defeated, which lead to the Warden and then the end. The inspiration is Disk Five.

If Piglins could make obsidian, that technically confirms the Ice age theory.

I honestly love the concept of this game. The nether invaded the overworked and its up to you to travel the overworked and get all sorts of mobs to help fight back

The way matpat can just take almost A N Y T H I N G into a believable theory is just insane to me lol edit: thanks for the likes ive never gotten this many before ^-^

Funny how MatPat has such an interesting ability to just think of a game and make the weirdest theories on it

I also find it interesting that in mc dungeons the end is filled with structures which means there was way more than just the ancient builders

10:30 Well it explains why Endermen hate these things so much,

I got unreasonably excited when Mat mentioned minecraft dungeons. I need to see a full theory video on it

There is always a tinge of truth in Legends.

Hopefully you see and acknowledge thos comment, I only played a little of legends thanks to Xbox. But I don't like the game play, but the world! Could you do a theory on the world, Foresight, knowledge and action? And the dimension the hero hails from and etc? It would be a honor for me to see a theory I thought of first!

Theory: The player is actually the last living ancient builder. In beta we see lots of Steve’s running around the over world, I’m not saying that is canon but more of a representation. After alpha the only resemblance to these Steves are zombies and skeletons. I think disc 11 explains what happened to us as the player, the last builder. We run away from monsters, jump from somewhere high, land in water which likely knocked us out. My theory is that the player got amnesia and woke up (spawned) confused and not remembering what happened to the rest of the builders in the overworld.

8:04 the wolves then started to kill of elks ( as they do) and less elks meant more trees which meant new root systems that CHANGED THE COURSE OF THE RIVER!! the removal then eventual reintroduction of wolves had an effect on the actual geography in yellostone. im a british 15 y/o doing geography gcse. that shows how significant of an event this was in the subject that it is used as a case study and i think its used in A-Level as well

I wonder if there is anything to the white glowing eyes of the Piglins. You know, being that the Orb is a thing and all.

I want to believe this awesome theory, but it can't be true, the builders most likely went to the end, but the end is almost infinite, it's impossible that they could have explored the ENTIRE end

You know, with this theory, the trailer quote about the invasion because of greed could easily actually sneakily be referring to the nether being invaded. The land was never explicitly mentioned as being the overworld after all.

Just finished watching and started to think about the soul sand valleys. Where they a result of battles that took place in the nether and the souls of the dead seeped down in to the soil. Therefore creating soul sand.

5:04 w game

This is what I thought, so called hero of the story but every Hardcore players I see has a prison of villagers to trade with

I am SO glad you brought up how important wolves are to nature's ecosystem. They are so, so, SO important and I'm happy it was incorporated into a Minecraft video so it can get more attention! Thanks Game Theory team 💖

I don't play minecraft anymore but your videos make me wanna play another world to try again. You bring to life the lore that was never told to us.

I have a theory, what if pillagers are just another villager job like hunters irl. They capture golems to bring them back to the village and the pillagers attack you because they think your going to make them lose their job

I feel like the creators saying "do you think it happened" is the answer its up to you to decide the history and the future of minecraft you make the story as the player