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*********************************************************************** Matt Burton TSI Communications Worldwide (212) 320 2347 ************************************************************************
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Ritual Entertainment and Gathering of Developers Ship Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale
Final Installment in the Blair Witch Games Trilogy Available for $19.95
Dallas, TX, November 20, 2000 - Game developer Ritual Entertainment today announced that Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale, its third-person action PC game, has shipped to stores nationwide. Utilizing an enhanced version of Terminal Reality?s Nocturne game engine, Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale is the third and final title in the Blair Witch serialized computer game collection. Published by developer-driven computer and video game publisher Gathering of Developers and distributed by Take Two Interactive, Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale is available for a suggested retail price of $19.95.
"Ritual Entertainment has always focused on action gaming, producing games such as Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2 and SiN. With Blair Witch Volume 3, we were able to leverage this gaming legacy and bring a strong element of action and spell-based combat into the gameplay," said Jon Galloway, project manager/art director of Ritual Entertainment.
Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale is a suspense-filled action title with puzzle-solving elements and spell-based combat. Set in 1785, the game takes place a few weeks after Elly Kedward, the so-called Blair Witch, was banished to the dark woods surrounding the small town of Blair, Maryland. Following Kedward's exile to the Black Hills, several local children begin to disappear, raising the local residents? suspicions and fears that the abductions are directly linked to her.
Gamers take on the role of Jonathan Pyre, an ex-priest turned witch-hunter, who travels to the town of Blair to track down the diabolical witch after hearing rumors of her mayhem. As he ventures through a variety of mystical realms in search of the abducted children, Pyre uses a combination of conventional weapons and combat-based magic spells to fight off a legion of evil minions, ranging from undead zombies to demon possessed Indian gods.
Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale features include: · Nocturne engine that offers real-time, dynamic shadows and lighting. · Mysterious, dark and immersive atmosphere. · Realistic, detailed, and interactive world beautifully rendered in full 3D. · Chilling cinematography with professional Hollywood-quality voice acting. · Vast and expansive gamming area with 25+ sets, covering five different environments. · Intense action oriented gameplay. · Enhanced control geared towards combat. · Improved point and click control mode. · Spell-based combat system, with three distinct magic disciplines. · Enhanced visual effects. · Over 20 new characters, including new minion types and five boss characters. · Deeply immersive story that puts players in the midst of the horror of the Blair Witch legend.
"It was a very innovative and successful initiative for us to have three development teams sharing assets while developing three separate games with varying gameplay and one general theme," said Mike Wilson, CEO of Gathering of Developers. "Working with Artisan Entertainment and Haxan Films enabled the developers to take one of the entertainment industry's strongest licenses and create games that share the film's suspense, action and terror."
The first game in the Blair Witch trilogy was Blair Witch Volume 1: Rustin Parr. Developed by Terminal Reality, Blair Witch Volume 1: Rustin Parr is set in the town of Burkittsville, MD shortly after the arrest and conviction of Rustin Parr, a local hermit who claims the whisperings of an old-woman ghost led him to abduct and murder seven children. This game shipped to stores nationwide the first week of October. Blair Witch Volume 2: The Legend of Coffin Rock, developed by Human Head Studios, takes place in Burkittsville, MD during the fall of 1886 and involves Robin Weaver, a young girl believed to be missing in the Black Hills Forest. Players take on the role of Lazarus and try to uncover the mystery behind Robin's disappearance and discover a bit about their own character. Blair Witch Volume 2: The Legend of Coffin Rock shipped to stores nationwide in late October.
The Blair Witch Games have been receiving incredible accolades from the gaming and consumer press. PC Gamer described all three volumes as having "the highest-caliber spookery." Entertainment Weekly named The Blair Witch Games the "Best Movie Spin-Off" at this year's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) and noted that the "three game prequel both plays off and adds to the folkloric horror story." For Him Magazine (FHM) calls the games "an innovative concoction that adds a whole new twist to the Blair Witch phenomenon."
Artisan's second installment of the Blair Witch franchise, Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 was released in theaters on October 27. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 delves deeper into the legend of the infamous Blair Witch and the unspeakable evil wrought in the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland. Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 takes place in present-day Burkittsville, after the events chronicled in The Blair Witch Project. Four young people have signed up for a tour of the Black Hills, the latest Blair Witch-inspired moneymaker dreamed up by enterprising local Jeff Patterson. They set up camp near the foundation of the house that belonged to Rustin Parr, the old hermit who was hanged for the murders of seven children, and a crime that bore the mark of the Blair Witch. In the morning, the campers awake with no memory of having gone to sleep and five hours stolen from their lives. They return to Jeff's loft in Burkittsville to try and piece together what happened. In the process of trying piece together the events, the unsuspecting group has fallen victim to the forces beyond their control as well as Jeff's troubled past.
Blair Witch Volume 3: The Elly Kedward Tale System Requirements: · Pentium, MMX, Celeron, Pentium2, Pentium3, or Athlon at 233MHz or Higher · 64MB RAM (96MB for 3D Acceleration) · 1 GB hard disk space
About Ritual Entertainment Ritual Entertainment, founded in August 1996, develops hyper-immersive computer games. Based in Dallas, TX, Ritual's talented team has worked on some of the industry's most successful games including Duke Nukem 3D, Terminal Velocity, Syphon Filter, Links LS and Rise of the Triad. The company's first title, developed in conjunction with id Software, was QUAKE Mission Pack #1: Scourge of Armagon, won ?Best Add-on of the Year for 1997? from Computer Gaming World and PC Games magazines. Ritual released the highly anticipated SiN in late 1998. Inspired from this universe comes, Sin the Movie which was released October 2000 in conjunction with ADV Films. The company recently developed Heavy Metal: F.A.K.K. 2, a major action game based on Kevin Eastman's extremely popular Heavy Metal property. http://www.ritual.com/
About Gathering of Developers Founded in Dallas, TX in January 1998, Gathering of Developers is a developer-driven computer and video game publishing company, and a wholly-owned subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc (NASDAQ: TTWO). The company's mission is to be the worldwide leader in the development and delivery of commercially successful computer and video game software designed for a range of platforms. The company's pioneering partners are industry leaders and proven hit makers 3D Realms, Epic Games, PopTop Software, Ritual Entertainment, Terminal Reality Inc and Edge of Reality. For more information visit Gathering of Developers Web site at http://www.godgames.com.
About Artisan Entertainment Artisan Entertainment Inc. is a leading independent entertainment company that develops, produces and distributes entertainment product in the home entertainment, theatrical, pay television, and Internet arenas. Artisan Home Entertainment has over 6,700 titles in its extensive library including a diversity of well-known titles such as Terminator, T2: Judgment Day, The Blair Witch Project, Dirty Dancing, It?s a Wonderful Life, On Golden Pond, The Last Emperor, Basic Instinct, The Piano and the Rambo series. The company distributes video product directly to over 12,000 retail stores in the United States from popular brands such as Discovery, Hallmark and its own Family Home Entertainment, which has released titles such as Merlin and Alice in Wonderland as well as titles from The Baby Einstein Company. On the theatrical side, Artisan Pictures is a leading producer and distributor of leading independent features with output agreements with Showtime Networks for domestic pay television as well as theatrical output deals with Alliance Atlantis in Canada, Momentum Pictures in the U.K., Highlight Communications in Germany and Lauren Films in Spain. Artisan's product is sold in international territories through Summit Entertainment. The company also has a joint venture with Marvel Enterprises to develop, produce and distribute character-based programming across multimedia outlets.
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