Minecraft Dungeons 2 is taking a different approach to its relationship with vanilla Minecraft than its predecessor did. According to the game's developers, the sequel deliberately moves closer to the mechanics and feel of the original sandbox game, in part because the Dungeons franchise is now established enough to stand on its own two feet.

Speaking to GameSpot, Minecraft Dungeons 2 creative director Måns Olson and design director Laura de Llorens Garcia explained that the team deliberately pulled the sequel closer to vanilla Minecraft during development.

"As much as Dungeons 1 tried to interpret vanilla Minecraft--and I think we did a pretty good job of it--with some of the things that we had deviated from, we decided to take them even closer to vanilla," de Llorens Garcia said.

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The sequel introduces several systems that will feel familiar to players of the original Minecraft game, including four armor slots, Enchantment Books, and jumping. "I think the fact that those systems now work that way makes it feel a lot closer to base game Minecraft," she added.

However, it wasn't simply a matter of making Dungeons 2 more similar to Minecraft. Olson explained that the team had a specific reason for taking a different approach with the sequel.

"When we made Minecraft Dungeons and we did the early testing of the game, when we asked players what they thought and what it reminded them of, there were a lot of players who said, 'This game reminds me of Minecraft PvP servers,' or, 'It reminds me of Story Mode.'"

There are now separate armor pieces, like the base game.

Olson said that this was particularly important because many younger players had relatively little experience with games outside of Minecraft. As a result, the first Dungeons needed to establish its own identity first.

"In that world, it was very important that we made Minecraft Dungeons stand out--a game that didn't feel like the base game, that felt different enough to stand on its own legs and bring something new to the table," he explained. "'Cause otherwise it could have just been a mod, you know? It needed to be something of its own."

That led the team to make some pretty significant departures from vanilla Minecraft.

"So we made a Minecraft game without mining or crafting, which sounds silly, but that's how we went about it." Olson explained.

For Dungeons 2 though, the team felt it had more freedom to move back toward vanilla Minecraft because of that identity being established for the Dungeons brand. The developers see the sequel's larger, more interconnected world as another way of bringing it closer to the main game. Although Dungeons 2 isn't being positioned as an open-world game, the the exploration has been increased compared to its predecessor.

"We did push the world to be bigger and more exploratory in this game compared to the first game and that brings us closer to vanilla," Olson said.

That philosophy extends beyond Dungeons 2 itself, as the developers have been working closely with the vanilla Minecraft team while developing The Sift--the new dimension that is introduced in Dungeons 2, before coming to Minecraft in 2027.