A new 4K trailer for the upcoming Blair Witch game gives potential players a brief, but haunting tour of the woods the game is set in.
Blair Witch was one of the big surprises shown off at Microsoft’s E3 press conference this year. It is a first-person psychological horror game that will play on the “found-footage” aspects the movie made famous.
Set in the same universe as the films, Blair Witch takes place two years after the first movie, in 1996. The game follows a police officer named Ellis as he searches for a missing person in the Black Hills Forest. The trailer shows developer Bloober Team has expertly recreated those woods in 4K, perfect for Xbox One X players. Ellis will carry with him a torch, and an era-accurate camcorder, similar to the three protagonists from the film.
The camcorder will likely play a significant role in the game, as it did in the original film. The Blair Witch Project is famous for starting the “found-footage” genre of movies, in this case following three film students as they looked to make a documentary on what they believed to be a local urban legend. Things did not end well for them. How much the game refers back to the movie, besides the titular witch, is yet to be seen.
The trailer doesn’t offer up any new gameplay, but instead focuses on the location the game will take place. So much of psychological horror deals in atmosphere, and the trailer subtly promises that it will deliver on this. It shows the scenic woods of Maryland both in the day and at night, with a sinister difference becoming evident as the sun goes down, and iconography that will be familiar to fans of the films begins to appear where it wasn’t before.
For fans of psychological horror, Blair Witch was a pleasant surprise at E3, and nothing we’ve seen thus far should discourage fans of the genre or the film franchise from giving this game a shot. And considering the game is being both published and developed by Bloober Team–the team behind Layers of Fear and Observer–the game couldn’t be in better hands.
Blair Witch is set to release on PC and Xbox One on August 30th, 2019, just after the original film’s 20th anniversary.
RayCarsilloWrites.com 