Status maeday Dec 9, 2022
Boy do I have some thoughts.
On a technical level, there are some incredible moments in here. Truly some seriously trippy mind altering stuff and it's all very very cool. It's also very tonally and lore accurate to Blair Witch as a whole, and I am super happy with that. It's barely a game, and it's muddled with mostly unnecessary …
Boy do I have some thoughts.
On a technical level, there are some incredible moments in here. Truly some seriously trippy mind altering stuff and it's all very very cool. It's also very tonally and lore accurate to Blair Witch as a whole, and I am super happy with that. It's barely a game, and it's muddled with mostly unnecessary collectibles, but still, it's good overall. This was definitely an enjoyable experience from someone who loves the Blair Witch franchise, albeit perhaps a bit too much.
THAT BEING SAID
Bloober is an awful, disgraceful team and should be disbanded. They simply reuse ideas, assets and treat mental illness and mental health - trauma, PTSD, depression, among a million others - like they're untreatable and incurable, as though the people who suffer from them, such as myself for example, are not worth the time, and cannot get better, nor do we deserve to. Now, to be fair, Blair Witch as a series itself is rife with protagonists who are kinda screwed up, but in most of those cases, they're characteristics, not definitions. Heather, in the original film, definitely has control issues, and all 3 of the characters from the original film clearly have trust issues, even before the Witch (or whatever is in the woods) starts messing with them.
But Bloober sees these traits as nothing more than a negative thing we should be punished for. That because we're sick, or hurt, that we deserve to be lost in the woods, murderous and impossible to fix. That's unforgivable quite frankly, and as a developer, they should be held accountable. I won't even get into the outright stolen things they used in other titles that that in depth video essay I linked a while back goes into (like the Aphex Twin Rubber Johnny uncredited "cameo" or the PT crying loops) because that's a whole other thing. I just want it stated that, while they didn't fuck this title up in terms of presenting something in line with Blair Witch...
...they continue to fuck up by presenting people with issues, people like me, as people not worth the effort, or even remote basic human dignity, and that's a way worse way to treat someone than whatever the Blair Witch could do.
Addendum: Bullet is ride or die, and I would die for him. God bless that dog.
