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.

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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.

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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.