Blair Witch: How You Play Matters

Blair Witch is a first-person, story-driven psychological horror game and it launches today with Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass for PC. While based on the iconic, cinematic lore of ”Blair Witch,” it tells a completely original story exploring human descent into darkness.

You play as Ellis, an ex-cop with a troubled past, who joins the search for a missing kid in the Black Hills Forest, the same forest we know from the movies. Things soon go awry and you find yourself caught in a horrible nightmare brought upon you by a mysterious force that haunts these woods – the legendary Blair Witch. This is the premise, but how this story will end depends largely on you – and on how you play.

Blair Witch features a number of alternative endings. However, you won’t find any decision wheels or dialogue options in the game. This is by design, since we found such solutions too intrusive and immersion-breaking for an experience we wanted to provide. We chose a different approach.

Instead of A/B choices, Blair Witch tracks how you play and the sum of your actions and reactions influence the story. Thanks to it, you act instinctively without thinking about making decisions and shape the story in a natural way.

Still, you might want to know what parts of your gameplay are tracked – especially if you already finished the game and want to replay it to see other outcomes.

Below you’ll find a few tips that will help you reach different endings:

• First of all, the game stars Bullet, your loyal four-legged friend that helps in your search in the woods. How you treat your dog is definitely tracked by the game. You can pet Bullet or reprimand him. You can give him snacks, you can keep him close or let him wander freely. Bullet is afraid of totems, so making him walk close to them is also a choice…
• Speaking of totems, you will encounter quite a number of them during your playthrough. Your gut instinct might be to destroy them, but know that you don’t have to.
• Your instinct may also be to answer all incoming calls, either to your cell phone or walkie-talkie, but remember than you can always ignore or decline them. You can also try contacting people on your own.
• Blair Witch is also the first Bloober Team’s game to feature combat. You can use your flashlight to fend off the monstrous forest creatures by directing the beam at them. However, that’s not the only option. Instead, turn off the flashlight, use the camcorder night vision to see in the dark, and try sneaking past the enemies.

These are just a few examples of tracked actions in the game, which also include your reactions to certain story-related events – but describing them now would mean entering the spoiler territory. Instead, I hope you will enter the haunted woods again and again to see in how many ways you can shape the story of Ellis and Bullet.

Blair Witch is available now with Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass for PC. It’s also available to purchase on the Microsoft Store. Click here for purchase details.

See the rest of the story on Xbox Wire

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source https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2019/08/30/blair-witch-available-now-xbox-game-pass/