Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale

Late last year, Gathering of Developers announced that it had acquired the rights to publish games based on the then-popular Blair Witch movie license. Speculation abounded regarding these games until the company officially unveiled them at E3, where it was announced that three PC games based on the horror movie would be released later that year. All three games are using Terminal Reality's Nocturne 3D engine, but each is being developed by separate companies, and each falls into slightly different genres. The first game, Terminal Reality's Blair Witch Volume 1: Rustin Parr, was released during the last week of September, and it played like an adventure game. Human Head Studios' Blair Witch Volume 2: The Legend of Coffin Rock was designed to be more of an action game, and it hits store shelves this week. The third game in the trilogy, entitled Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale, is now nearing its final stages of development at Dallas-based Ritual Entertainment. This third game is arguably the most intriguing of the bunch because it will supposedly play like an all-out action game; not like the first two Blair Witch titles, which use the traditional survival-horror theme approach. More notable is that the game has been in development for only a few months and is already nearing completion.

With Halloween fast approaching, we took this opportunity to sit down with Blair Witch Volume 3's project manager, Ritual's Jon Galloway, to find out more about the game and its relatively short production cycle.

GameSpot: Describe the plot of the game. Where does it fit with respect to the first and second Blair Witch games?

Jon Galloway: In Blair Witch Volume 3, you play the role of Jonathan Prye, an ex-priest-turned-witch-hunter. Upon hearing rumors of a diabolical witch that's tormenting the town, Prye travels to Blair to search out Elly Kedward... the so-called Blair Witch.

The story takes place late in the year 1785, mere weeks after the Blair Witch was banished to the woods surrounding the small Maryland town of Blair. This places the game right at the roots of the mythos, where the legend of the Blair Witch all started.

GS: Why is Gathering releasing the three volumes of Blair Witch in reverse chronological order?

JG: That decision was made before we started working on the project. Personally, I think it was a really good idea. It is just really cool to follow the stories and legends back to its roots.

GS: How much interaction did you have with Human Head Studios and Terminal Reality to ensure that the storylines of all three Blair Witch games remained as seamless as possible?

JG: We kept in contact throughout the entire development process and even looked over and reviewed each other's design documents. It was great having the input of the other teams. Of all three games, I think we probably benefited the most from these discussions, as we were the last of the trilogy to go into production.

GS: Blair Witch: Rustin Parr was a survival-horror game with a few adventure elements, and Coffin Rock is somewhat more action-oriented. Is The Elly Kedward Tale an all-out action game?

JG: Blair Witch Volume 3 is definitely more focused on the action elements of gameplay. That is not to say that those other elements do not exist in our game, but they do not really take precedence in our game. The spell-based combat really allowed us to take this type action further than in the other games in the Blair Witch trilogy.

GS: What kinds of weapons will Jonathan Pyre have at his disposal?

JG: Prye begins the game with a few conventional weapons like a holy cross (bludgeoning weapon) and a flintlock pistol. As the game progresses, he will gain access to many more. The brunt of combat in the game is magic based, so you will receive many spells and magical weapons. Magic falls into three distinct circles of discipline: Christian invocation, shamanistic rites, and pagan black magic.

There are about ten or so distinct spells and weapons in the game. For a US$20 game with five to 10 hours of gameplay, that is quite a variety.

GS: All three games use the Nocturne engine. Did you implement any changes to it that Human Head and Terminal Reality didn't?

JG: We really didn't have much time to make changes or additions to the code, so we focused on enhancing what was there to better suit our need. Because of the spell combat, quite a few visual effects were coded for the game, and the focus on action lead us to muck around quite a bit with the A.I. Aside from the minions, we added about six or so specialized "boss" characters to the game.

GS: Did Gathering of Developers give you or the other two developers any kind of creative license to work with the Blair Witch fiction, or were you locked into a concrete set of rules?

JG: I wouldn't say the rules were concrete - we had quite a bit of free reign. Because our story was so close to the roots and origin of the license, we had more restrictions placed on us by Haxan than anyone else. Because of the nature of the Blair Witch, there were just some things they wanted us to steer clear of.

GS: How long has The Elly Kedward Tale been in development?

JG: We started full production on the title sometime in May. That puts our schedule in at just more than five months. That is definitely a short schedule, especially considering that Terminal Reality had probably put in about a year on the first Blair Witch title. I am amazed at how much this team has accomplished in such a short amount of time.

GS: Did you or any of the design team have a chance to play the two other Blair Witch games during their development?

JG: Due to obvious time constraints, I personally have not been able to fully play through either game completely. Some of the other team members have played them more thoroughly, and one of the team members, Mike Porter, was actually one of the main artists on Rustin Parr. He joined Ritual a couple of months ago, and he has been a tremendous asset to the team, especially so considering his extensive knowledge of the Nocturne engine and technology.

GS: The game has got to be pretty close to going gold, right?

JG: Very close. It has been a very long and hard five months, but the end is near.

GS: Now that it's nearly done, can you look back at the game and say it came out the way you originally anticipated it would?

JG: Well, actually, it is pretty close to the original vision of the product. I wish we had a little more time, as there were a few features we had to cut due to time constraints.

GS: Like what?

JG: We actually cut quite a few characters. This happened fairly early on when we began to realize that with six months to develop the title, we may have bit off more than we could chew.

GS: When can we expect the game to land on store shelves?

JG: Soon. It will be there for this holiday season.

GS: Thanks, Jon.