Blair Witch

Bloober Team's newest, Blair Witch, came available on the Xbox-PC game pass on day one of the game's release. I thought I might as well quickly play through it and get slightly more value out of my second month of subscription. Having played two of the developer's earlier titles, I wasn't expecting much from it however.

The Blair Witch Project (1999) popularized found-footage films. Produced with a minimal budget yet turning a massive profit as a sleeper hit, it made others chase after a similar success. I didn't think much of the movie -- it wasn't scary or even entertaining. I did like its ending though. Remembering what the villagers had said when the students had interviewed them at the start and then seeing the ending scene was a proper oh-shit moment. I felt the journey had been worth it, so to speak.

There was a sequel in 2000, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2. I recall it was terrible and didn't really have anything to do with the original. Then apparently another Blair Witch movie came out in 2016, a direct sequel to the first film (and ignoring the second). I reckon this game might be based on that, having an identical title and all.

PTSD Witch

I feel it rarely if ever works when the horror genre tries have its protagonist have some traumatic event in the past and then tie it to the current supernatural happenings, like they had something to do with each other. I think it's especially bad in movies but evidently it doesn't work in video games either. At least not with the writing skills Bloober Team has.

Blair Witch's protagonist is Ellis Lynch, a war veteran and a former police who joins the search for a missing kid. Ellis has a lot of shit in his past and that shit comes back to haunt him in full force. The game is more about his mental traumas than a witch story. I think if one buys a game called Blair Witch, it should be about that and not about reminiscing some conflict in the Middle East.

Ellis has a companion, sort of a service dog called Bullet. He's sometimes used to lead you to where you need to go and there are few other interactions you can do with him. It's impossible to say if they affect the narrative. Like does feeding Bullet the three dog treats you have change anything?

Aiming for a specific ending in a Bloober Team game is pretty difficult even if you know what they are, I've found. I unlocked every achievement in Layers of Fear with the help of a guide and the prerequisites for each ending seemed really hard to figure out on your own. I assume Blair Witch is the same way. Just for the sake of it I tried to avoid everything optional like destroying totems but then a streamer I watched got the exact same ending as I did with a different playstyle.

Drawn-out ending

Walking around surreal, never-ending hallways to finally encounter something to interact with doesn't do anything but waste one's time. Blair Witch's setting is at least bit more open with its forest than Layers and Observer with their narrow corridors. But then there's the final location.

When I saw the house, I got excited as I thought the game was maybe going to end something like the first movie. Little did I know what was to come. Instead of providing a swift ending, the house continued on forever. Bloober Team had saved all their twisting corridors to the end to pad the game's length. All enjoyment had escaped me by the time I finally get to the basement.

Blair Witch was somewhat spooky before I learned what the game had to offer. A monster getting stuck in a shack's geometry was pretty much what broke the immersion. There are few jump spaces as well and they were mostly quite effective due to being so far between. In the house they no longer worked; I had gotten bored of the game and was just trying to get to the end as quickly as possible.

Visually the game's all right, running on Unreal Engine 4 like Observer. It doesn't run very smooth though, or at least didn't feel like it did, and changing graphics options didn't seem to affect anything. As a Windows Store game it didn't have Steam's overlay to show exact FPS. There was an FOV slider this time although I think it only went up to 90 degrees horizontal which is a bit too low.