Nerds That Geek Game Review – ‘Blair Witch Volume III: The Elly Kedward Tale’

Written by John Edward Betancourt 

​It is always difficult for a fan to sit through the outright fall of their favorite franchise. Because no fan ever wants to see what they love, fail, and that’s why so many support their beloved sagas in such dedicated and defensive fashion. But sadly, nothing lasts forever in the entertainment world and the perfect storm of mitigating factors can bring a popular saga to its knees. For when quality dips, or the story gets too outlandish for its own good, people simply turn away and find something new to latch onto, and that exodus signals the end and oddly enough, both of those factors are key reasons as to why the Blair Witch gaming saga faded into oblivion.
 
Because Blair Witch Volume III: The Elly Kedward Tale basically goes off of the rails, and it effectively killed the video game arm of this franchise, and revisiting this one on YouTube was a painful experience. For I had truly forgotten all the of mistakes and missteps that this game brought forth when it was released back in the day and really, the first thing that caught me off guard and took me out of the story, was the acting. Because all of these games feature a great wealth of dialogue and every single line spoken in this particular game, is delivered in hammy and cheesy nature, with the over-the-top zest and zeal that plagued the early days of full motion video games and well, that acting is definitely something that removes you from the game immediately because it’s difficult to listen to this cheese-fest.
 
But the problems with the game don’t just end with the acting. Because the gameplay and overall plot are problematic as well. Case and point, the fact that you have to use every day religious items as energy weapons against the evil. Yeah you read that right, something as innocuous as a cross is a nasty weapon in this particular game since it ignites and burns the evil away and if that’s not odd enough, you can also use your Bible to zap the undead with electricity from heaven. And the fact that all of this is seen as ‘natural’ in game, makes it laughable to say the least and its only compounded further by the wannabe, Hammer Horror-esque soundtrack that plays over the events that unfold.
 
Yet while these issues could be forgotten and forgiven if they were supported by a quality story, that’s also missing from this game. Which is fascinating, because this is a portion of the Blair Witch mythos that was barely explored in the original film, meaning that the creative team at Ritual Entertainment could have gone wild and put together a powerfully terrifying story that provided us with the twisted origins of the Witch herself. But instead, we’re treated to a rushed tale that offers nothing new since it borrows more from Volume I than the source material, and that leads to a sloppy story that just goes from point A to point B without any rhyme or reason or explanation as to what makes the iconic ghost tick.
 
If anything, this really was the death knell of a unique idea, one that never quite reached its potential and that’s a shame. Because video games can sometimes go places that movies are simply unable to reach, and this trilogy could have been a horror masterpiece to say the least. But an obviously rushed production led to disaster and this more or less made developers afraid of games involving this character for years to come, since this is the first year, we’ve seen a new Blair Witch game hit the market. Yet while they failed to truly inspire their audience, they do deserve a little bit of credit for trying something new, because these stories were ambitious in their own right and there’s nothing wrong with being bold in telling a story, it’s just a shame that this trilogy lost its way. 

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