Based on the Hit Film is a series of articles looking at the video game spin-offs and adaptations of popular horror movies.
In 2016, fans of The Blair Witch Project were given the chance to return to the Black Hills Forest outside of the sleepy town of Burkittsville. Excitement and anticipation were at a high after the first trailer, which promised to return to the roots of the film series. Viewers wondered what another trip to the haunting woods would uncover as Blair Witch opened up the potential for an outpouring of lore regarding the titular witch. Unfortunately, that’s not at all what flashed across the screen for 89 minutes.
Where the first sequel, Book of Shadows, muddied the waters with an ill-conceived plot that distanced itself from the original, the 2016 return to Burkittsville was a disappointing rehash of a proven concept. Crestfallen by the movies, fans still clamoring for expanded lore had few mediums they could explore. Amidst the release of short stories and companion novels, a trio of video game developers had constructed their own version of the Blair Witch history.
The product of Gathering of Developers’ hard work was the Blair Witch trilogy, a series of survival horror video games run on Terminal Reality’s Nocturne Engine. We covered Volume I: Rustin Parr and Volume II: The Legend of Coffin Rock in previous installments of “Based on the Hit Film,” but it’s time to close out this forgotten chapter of gaming with Volume III: The Elly Kedward Tale.
In The Elly Kedward Tale, we step back in time as Jonathan Prye. The former priest-turned-witch hunter is called to the 18th-century version of Burkittsville, then known as the Blair Township, to investigate the disappearance of Elly Kedward. Convicted of murdering children for pagan rituals, Kedward was left to die in the infamous woods at the hands of distraught citizens. During her sentence, she vanished, but the children of Blair were far from safe.
Prye enters a supernatural mystery led by local chaplain, Father Hale Goodfellow. He’s only one of several mysterious townsfolk the former man of God must question to uncover the truth behind Kedward and the missing children.
By the time Volume III: The Elly Kedward Tale released, it was already at a disadvantage. Volume I: Rustin Parr set the tone for the series with a successful horror game that mingled detective work with slow pacing and an intriguing story. The sequel, The Legend of Coffin Rock, failed to capture the same magic. It did little with the lore laid out in Rustin Parr and The Blair Witch Project. Instead, Volume III attempted to delve deeper into Burkittsville’s dark history with a linear experience that focused heavily on a tedious story that forced gameplay to take a backseat.
The Elly Kedward Tale, developed by Ritual Entertainment, had the opposite problem. Whereas Volume II took away control frequently, Volume III may have given players a little too much time as Prye. By now, the action had grown stale. Any horrors that stalked the Black Hills Forest around the Blair Township were predictable and expected. The Elly Kedward Tale maybe had the most intriguing piece of the Blair Witch story to tell, and it threw that chance away in favor of unexceptional action. If you don’t mind embarking on fetch quests, cycling through the same limited arsenal, and facing off against enemies that have become too familiar, there may be something for you in Ritual’s concluding chapter.
There is no satisfying ending and, much like the movie sequels, we’re once again left pondering the lost potential of the Blair Witch franchise. Players should be excited for the concept of a witch hunter squaring off with a powerful supernatural force, but Volume III spends so much time thrusting players into a ridiculous alternate “demon world” and throwing boring enemies onto the screen that it forgets the source material.
That does seem to be the real curse of the Blair Witch – a loss of focus on what viewers really want. The Blair Witch Project teased plenty of source material for branching stories, but every interactive medium since has either overlooked or seriously downplayed the horrific stories tied to Burkittsville and the woods. While the trilogy of video games attempts to touch on this history, only one entry thoroughly succeeds.
Maybe we aren’t meant to delve into an expertly fleshed out legend. The Blair Witch Project left us wanting more, but what if there isn’t anything more to be had? Could the witch just be a cover for the human atrocities that led to the deaths of so many? In a way, having to use our imaginations is a much more effective tool than the vessels we’ve been given since Heather, Michael, and Josh’s journey into the Black Hills Forest of Maryland graced the silver screen.
Despite the many attempts at bringing the Blair Witch into the spotlight, she’s just as shadowed now as she was in 1999, when we first heard her name. Even a video game revolving around her story couldn’t satisfy the curiosities we’ve been begrudgingly holding onto for 20 years – so is there really anything that can fill that void?