Blair Witch 3: The Elly Kedward Tale Review - PAGE 1

The final chapter in the Blair Witch video games series is complete and the anticipation is over. What anticipation you ask? Okay, so you weren’t sleeping outside the video game store the day before its release, I wasn’t either. Surprisingly enough, Ritual Entertainment has developed an impressive game, one that probably would sell more copies without the Blair Witch insignia on the front. It’s obvious that Artisan is trying to suck every last penny out of its multimillion-dollar fluke, especially for the fact that they chose to make not one, but three games. The reason I refer to the game as being impressive is the visuals are very pleasing to the eye and the plot is quite engrossing.

When you think of Blair Witch you probably picture a bunch of scared teenagers lost in the woods crying into their cameras. That’s not what you’re going to see in the game series. The story of Blair Witch 3 is the following; first of all it’s not the early nineties, like in the movie, BW3 takes place in 1785 at the root of the myth of the Blair Witch. You are an ex-priest named Jonathan Pyre, who has giving up the search for God, to hunt witches. Pyre from the beginning of the story is struggling with his loss of faith, and it is your mission to regain that faith as well as solve the mystery behind the myth. Pyre journeys to the town of Blair and is welcomed by the fleeing towns people. Elly Kedward (the accused Blair Witch) was tied to a stagecoach and sent into the inhospitable woods where she was to die from cold and/or starvation (whichever came first). After her assumed death, the children of Blair started to disappear. The town now believes that these abductions are being caused by the resurrected Elly Kedward and in fear for their lives the town is abandoned. By the time Pyre arrives the town of Blair only holds four people, a man of the church, a man of the law, and two inmates. After a bunch of small talk you realize your mission: prove that the inmates (a drunk, and a friend of Elly Kedward) are innocent, find the missing children, find your faith, kill some zombies and unravel the true evils behind the strange things going on in Blair.

What I was most impressed with in BW3 was the display of great visuals. It is clear that Ritual put a lot of time into the details of their scenery and it definitely pays off. It really feels like you’re playing a movie at times. Each scene truly expresses a dreary, evil atmosphere, which makes you always feel there is something just waiting to jump you from the shadows. In the woods, branches stretch out over you as snow falls from above. In each room the light sources are placed just right to set the mood. Three single candles burn in the corner of Elly Kedward’s dark, broken down house which are lit just enough to illuminate her black magic artifacts and in the refuge of the church the glow of the fire reassures you of your safety. The surroundings in the game are very pleasing to the eye, making you look forward to the environments that await you.

The gameplay is pretty simple in concept… “go, and do whatever people tell you to do, and shoot anything that gets in your way”. This was a problem I had with the game, you pretty much felt like you were a errand boy, people tell you to go pick something up and you go get it, not much brain power involved. The only action comes when demons show up to scare you, and attempt to eat you, set you on fire or cast some crazy spell on you. But don’t worry you have a large arsenal to fight back with. Besides your normal everyday fire arms, Pyre begins to pack some vicious weapons of magic. As the game goes on and the plot thickens, you learn all sorts of spells, and are given numerous artifacts of great power to show those brain-eating zombies a little something about priesthood. The visuals these super natural weapons create are quite stunning and make you feel pretty tough when you are blasting away those evil creatures of darkness. The controls really needed to be cleaner, I found myself bumbling around running into walls and in times of panic shooting everywhere but at the flaming demon of fire readily approaching. Also with an engine that uses static backgrounds, switching back and forth between each cell can really interrupt a good battle.