Vol.
2, Issue 13
February 22, 2000
"It's
not just like a wind that's passing through..." - Night of
the Living Dead.
ecently,
Josh Vasquez, a regular contributor here at loonygames, called
Nocturne, "a masterpiece." This is high praise
indeed from someone not easily impressed. Of course, for anyone
who knows Josh and has actually played Nocturne this isn't
much of a shock. The game mixes film noir with classic horror,
and in doing so creates an entire world within the game's four
chapters.
It was
recently announced that Terminal Reality, the development house
behind Nocturne would be making a game based on the film,
The Blair Witch Project, and furthermore, that
this would be the first of three such games, all made using
the Nocturne engine, and all tying into the same mythology.
We dispatched
Russell "RadPipe" Lauzon (whose previous interviews
include last issue's interview with
Brandon "GreenMarine" Reinhart and issue
2.5's interview with Paul Steed) to talk to Terminal Reality's
Jeff Smith (PR monkey) and Jeff Mills (production lead) to get
the scoop on their upcoming Blair Witch games, and the influences
behind Nocturne.
-
Jason "loonyboi" Bergman, editor-in-chief.
Let's start off
with some general info about your upcoming titles. Explain the
Blair Witch Projects for us.
Smith: Blair
Witch, Volume 1...is a game that we're working on with the Nocturne
engine, of course. It is Part 1 of a 3 part series that is being
done by the Gathering. Volume 1 that we're working on covers
the Rustin Parr mythology from the Blair Witch legend, which
was lightly touched on in the movie. As you may or may not know,
the Haxan guys, who are the directors and producers, went to
great great great lengths to supplying and manufacturing a very,
long, deep, rich, broad time-spanning mythology.
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Woo...Nocturne meets Blair Witch. (112k).
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I think we've
kind of quelled some of the initial concerns about Blair Witch
the Game Volume 1 that we're working on being 3 kids running through
the forest. It really has very little to do with the movie at
all, other than the mythology and the realm of the Blair Witch
legend. Volume 2 that is being worked on by Human Head will cover
an additional story and then Ritual Entertainment is working on
the third one. All of these titles should be available to the
public by November. So they'll release quickly, one after the
other. And then, of course, there's always the potential for additional
games based on this type of storyline, using advanced iterations
of the Nocturne Engine into the distant future.
Blair Witch Volume
1: you've been introduced, in Nocturne, to an organization called
Spookhouse, and Spookhouse is the badest of the bad of the 'never
seen' people of the world, to combat supernatural forces. So
there are a couple people you've met like the Stranger, who
was the lead in Nocturne and he had a little badass named Doc
Holliday. She was always the Mad Scientist of Nocturne and would
come up with different weapons, melee weapons, radiance emitters,
and things to help them in their battles, and it's because of
the story and mythology that Spookhouse and Nocturne had created,
you see Stranger is one of these guys that isn't an investigator,
he goes in to pretty much combat adverse forces. Whereas some
of the others that you met, like Hiram and Doc Holliday, were
more methodical, more research oriented. So when you go into
Blair Witch, you're looking at playing through the different
characters, you'll actually take the role of Doc Holliday. With
her more research-oriented background, it makes her the prime
Spookhouse operative to be sent out to investigate Rustin Parr
and what the hell really happened.
Because
it will be revealed to you that Spookhouse in its existance, and
operatives and contacts that it has throughout time, there has been
paths crossed where Spookhouse was involved with the Blair Witch
legend. At least at some points in the past and possibly in the
future there would and could be, similar investigations done by
the Spookhouse. And our game is focusing more on bringing forth
characters that we introduced in Nocturne, just because that's kind
of the way we approached it. Now it won't probably be the same for
Human Head and Ritual. They'll probably be introducing characters
of their own that are new. So they may not all fall into the 'Spookhouse
meets Blair Witch' realm. The common thread is the use of the Nocturne
engine, and not always being involved with Spookhouse directly,
they're mentioned on the fringe and they're all part of the same
story, the same world, and the same universe, but all the games
take place across different time periods, almost 100 years apart.
So what we're doing with Rustin Parr episode took place in 1941
and the early 40's. Where Human Head's story will probably revolve
more around 1880.
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