Posted in: Games, Indie Games, Video Games | Tagged: blair witch, Bloober Team, Lionsgate Films

Bloober Team's "Blair Witch" Captures the Spirit of the Film Franchise

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Bloober Team and Lionsgate Films joined up to create a psychological horror game based on the Blair Witch film franchise, that manages to recapture the subtle horror of the original movie with an original story. Plus, it has a dog. And yes, you can pet the dog. I can also confirm that the dog is not able to be killed in combat, so you don't have to watch as Blair Witch creatures rip poor Bullet apart in front of your face. Instead, you can give him some dog treats, because he really is the goodest of good boys.

The game puts players in control of a former cop with a tragic backstory. Ellis and his trusty dog Bullet join in the search for a child who went missing in the Black Hills Forest near Burkittsville, MD in 1996. Meaning, the game takes place two years after the original Blair Witch Project. While Ellis does make some progress in his search, the story quickly devolves into a deep psychological thriller where you don't quite know if you ought to believe what you see.

We get some flashbacks of Ellis's life, which indicate that he might not be the most reliable narrator. Nor does he have the best grasp on reality. So dropping him alone in some spooky woods is definitely not a great idea. And the game does primarily feature Ellis traversing through the Black Hills all on his own. There are NPCs for the player to interact with, and those interactions will influence the game's ending, but it is primarily a tale of isolation and the damaging effects of being so very, very alone.

While there are monsters, and there is a Witch-esque presence who speaks to Ellis, the game is very ambiguous on whether or not these things are real. So if you go in expecting the game to take a hard stance either way, you will be sorely disappointed. However, there are certainly things there for people on all sides of the debate about the Blair Witch, even those who haven't taken a hard stance on whether or not the Witch is actually real. Which, honestly, does the game far more favors than a hard stance ever would. Because now the game exists in ambiguity, which is where the Witch legend gets the most mileage, as you get to thinking: is the Witch just a hallucination brought on by local legends? Is the Witch just a manifestation of people's innate terrors? Or is this all just a really bad nightmare?

Bloober Team leaves that decision up to the player. And that makes the events of the ending, where Ellis ends up at the Blair Witch house, even more suspenseful. As the player goes through the house, solving puzzles, and avoiding what could be certain death. Or just sheer, inexhaustible madness.

While the game is primarily a psychological horror thriller, there is some "combat" in the game. You don't get a weapon, just a flashlight. And you can only use it to run off the various monsters that chase you throughout certain parts of the game. To be honest, calling it combat is a bit of a misnomer. The confrontations in Blair Witch are completely one-sided and are more akin to puzzles than a fight. After all, not every monster type behaves the same way, so you need to use your sense of hearing and Bullet's body language to figure out where the threat is coming from.

Honestly, Blair Witch is almost a perfect game. There's nothing bad about it, outside of occasional glitches. The instability in the code seems to relate to some of the cinematic cuts. When looking at an object that triggers a cutscene, the game's camera will sometimes bounce around the invisible Ellis in order to get behind him for the cinematic to play properly. Or the object itself will bounce and rotate, sometimes disappearing as well. If the glitches weren't relatively persistent – I came across at least one every session – they'd be easy to overlook. Sadly, their prevalence mars what is otherwise a fabulous game.

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