The Haunted Hoard: Blair Witch (Xbox One)

When The Blair Witch Project was released, it was a bit of a phenomenon. The found footage style of the film and the marketing presenting it as a true story made the horror featured in the movie seem more authentic, so much so that it helped popularize the found footage style for the horror genre. While the slow burn of the film didn’t do much for me likely because the films that came after learned to make more economical use of time and explore the technique further, 2019 saw the release of a Blair Witch game that did not attempt to directly adapt the movie or its found footage approach, and surprisingly enough, this departure from the source material might have let it become an excellent horror game.

 

Blair Witch for Xbox One doesn’t ignore its inspiration of course. Taking place in Black Hills Forest, the game draws on plenty of the film’s invented mythology, introducing it at its own pace and able to explore it a bit more without the pretense that it’s depicting real events. However, the legend of the Blair Witch is only part of the plot, the main focus being on the game’s protagonist Ellis. Ellis heads off into the infamous woods in search of a missing boy named Peter, but the supernatural nature of the witch’s haunt quickly complicates things, Ellis finding the journey slowly taking on more and more personal slants as his past comes back to haunt him. Gradually we get to learn more about Ellis’s hang-ups and history, the game stringing the player along at a good pace with measured reveals and the peppering of clues and imagery that can get you on the right path to understanding him before the game lays it all out to bare.

Exploration in Blair Witch is done through a first person perspective, and like many of Bloober Team’s previous titles, this is used to plunge the player into surreal, immersive situations. The forest itself will subtly lead back to areas of interest to prevent you from getting completely lost and Ellis’s mindscape slowly starts leaking into his waking world. It feels like Bloober Team might have finally figured out its horror game formula. In Layers of Fear it underutilized its protagonist and creative scares despite being well constructed otherwise, and with Observer it leaned into theme so hard that it became visually cluttered, its breaks away from the art style more jarring because of Observer’s overcommitment to theme. Here though, Blair Witch might succeed because it is working off the back of a license, drawing both on preestablished elements as well as its newly created character, intertwining the two and allowing them both to breathe at different points to remain focused on the narrative without reaching too far for new ideas or delving so deep into a concept that it loses its luster.

 

The dark forest setting definitely does a lot for Blair Witch, even though it knows to break away from it at times to keep it from growing stale. Perhaps the biggest benefit to it all are the moments you see something lurking between the trees. The game doesn’t use what could be loosely called combat too often, but it mixes in well with a game that mostly focuses on puzzle-solving elements and environmental exploration. Strange things lurk out of sight, the player only able to repel them with the beam of their flashlight. They keep their distance as they prepare to attack, the player wheeling around in the darkness and trying to catch sight of them, their forms still hard to make out even when you’re looking directly at them. If you aren’t quick enough at catching them in the light though, they’ll move in to strike, the player only needing to worry about their health within the context of an encounter but easily able to perish if they let a creature in close. While sometimes I worry I might have become immune to horror game scares, at most jumping a bit from something startling, one of these sequences actually had me sitting back in my seat and gasping, the game managing to immerse me enough in the adventure to make it seem like it was coming out towards me, something helped by the sound and visual design quite a bit. There are definitely issues with plants popping in while exploring the broader forest, but natural sounds mixed with hidden foes contribute to a believable air of mystery around things, and while the game definitely plunges into full on surreality at points, the distortion feels a natural extension of psychological issues and supernatural influence.

Puzzles in Blair Witch can mix realism and the fantastic as well. A lot of progress involves investigating an area, uncovering documents that provide details about Ellis and the game world while traversing dangerous areas the proper way, but the game does hearken back to the found footage roots of the franchise by getting a video camera involved in the puzzle solving. Tapes showing events of the past can be rewound to alter the layout of areas, although the game doesn’t make much use of it and sometimes deceives the player into thinking it’s an option, leading to brief confusion as you search for the right moment in the video when there isn’t one. The camera can also be used to reveal the environment when your eyes fail, some creatures only visible through the video camera’s screen and trails appearing where your eyes otherwise couldn’t find them. The game does do a good job of balancing puzzle solving and story progression though, at least until it reaches the climax. With only a few details left to uncover, the player enters the last stretch… and unfortunately the game slows down a bit there, trying to play in the space it built a little longer and using some of the puzzle ideas it didn’t explore as much as it could have instead of wrapping things up. There is definitely one excellent element that helps keep the game strong throughout though, and that is what might be one of the best dogs in all of gaming: Bullet.

 

Bullet is your almost constant companion throughout Blair Witch, a German Shepherd who is both incredibly endearing and constantly useful. To find your way through the forest involves Bullet catching scents or following sounds, and with a set of commands, you can have Bullet search around for certain optional collectables or even head out to solve a puzzle or two himself. Bullet prevents the player from feeling totally isolated, a constant friend there to support you and anchor Ellis’s mind as the world twists around him. Like many video game dogs he probably barks a little too much and a little too loudly, but he’s not used for cheap pop scares, the sight of Bullet always reassuring. Perhaps his biggest role though is when you face the strange shapes in the forest, Bullet being able to pinpoint their movement and growl at them to give you an idea where to face. When Bullet isn’t able to keep up, you scramble to try and compensate, that leading to the sense of terror at knowing the creature will make its move soon, but he almost always does what he’s meant to do, and while isolation is an effective tool for creating a sense of unease and dread, Bullet prevents you from being swallowed by it while also adding his own moments of concern when he breaks too far ahead or needs to endanger himself to help you. Your connection with him may feel closer than even the ones you’d establish with a dog in a pet sim, for in a game that is trying to scare you and make you doubt yourself, he prevents you from losing your way, the spots of brightness making a dark game easier to push through.

THE VERDICT: Bloober Team has refined its horror formula with Blair Witch, mixing in the psychological horror of its main character’s personal history with the supernatural world of the Blair Witch franchise, both carrying the proper amount of weight to make an immersive horror experience. It does drag out its climax a bit, but most of the progression does an excellent job of mixing in puzzle elements with its exploration, the scares evolving from the atmosphere and story importance to hit you in a more effective way than a simple jump scare. With the dog Bullet along to serve as a helpful companion and emotional anchor, the player is still able to enjoy a properly frightening experience without being overwhelmed by the surreal horrors of Black Hill Forest.

 

And so, I give Blair Witch for Xbox One…

A GREAT rating. While I haven’t had the chance to play Layers of Fear 2 yet to see the proper progression of Bloober Team’s approach to narrative exploration games in the horror genre, it does feel like Blair Witch is an excellent culmination of the work that started with Layers of Fear. Blair Witch spends just as much time exploring the eerie woods borrowed from its media franchise license as it does the new character of Ellis Lynch, the player not able to rest on series knowledge to predict all that will happen and having a new tale to explore with the trappings of something familiar. Even though I wasn’t too hot on the film that inspired it, the subtle integration of certain elements and greater exploration of the more supernatural side of things let the game grow into more than something riding on a big name while having an independent identity to sustain its play as well. The visuals built off the forest and the memories of Ellis’s past work together well and can create some unusual and atmospheric locations and situations, but the pace does slow down near the end and a few puzzle mechanics are a touch odd. With Bullet by your side though, Blair Witch can keep you vulnerable but not fully exposed, able to protect yourself because you have a companion there to lend a paw when needed.

 

While that visceral reaction I felt when I sat back and gasped due to a creature’s quick approach is the only major fright I experienced, the game built to that moment well enough to break through what I thought a hardened shell. It did have a traditional startle or two left in it for me as well, but Blair Witch had pulled me in to an impressive degree because of the confidence Bloober Team had in how to distribute its plot points and build to its scares, even giving you warnings that only make them more tense as you are left to anticipate the possibility of what could happen. Its relationship with puzzles could be improved, but otherwise, Blair Witch ironically handles presenting its horror expertly despite borrowing its name from a film that provided scares by shirking such professional approaches to presentation and plot structure.