Focus Entertainment’s Blacktail is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG.
Developed by Polish game studio The Parasight, S.A., Blacktail is no Alice: Madness Returns. While the American McGee action game felt like a gritty refashioning of the original Alice children’s stories by Lewis Carroll, Blacktail is a more visceral take on an even darker fairy tale, but one that also takes it to unexpected directions.
Your character ostensibly appears to be the Baba Yaga, a morally ambiguous being in Polish folklore. While most depictions of her are of a deformed old woman, who flies around a mortar and pestle, and lives in a hut that walks on chicken legs, there are actually multiple interpretations and versions of her.
For example, some versions of her depict Baba Yaga as actually a group of three sisters. There are also other mythological characters related or may be the same as Baba Yaga, such as the Jezibaba.
In Blacktail, Yaga is a young woman, outcast from her town, and beset by many magical creatures. Hers is a dark and enigmatic hero’s journey, that may also be a bildungsroman.
This is the description The Parasight shares on their official website:
“Create the myth of Baba Yaga by living out the origins of this classic Slavic folk story in BLACKTAIL, the first-person action-adventure from THE PARASIGHT team combined with the international publishing prowess of Focus Entertainment. Experience a one-of-a-kind blend of intense archery combat and dark storytelling set in a vibrant fairy tale world. Choose your path to become either the guardian of the woods or the terror nightmares are made of.”
From its announcement last May, to various teases made in August, November and last week, we have received many smaller press releases, but few new details on what this game will be like.
We have seen enough from previews that it will be an action adventure game in the first person mold. It may not quite be a Skyrim, as you have a set character with her own narrative, but it may have some RPG elements, as is hinted at in the spells and arrows that Yaga seems to possess.
More importantly, the teasers hint at a morality system, possibly comparable to those found in Bioware’s games. While the easiest comparison here would be to Dragon Age, that one doesn’t really have a hard set morality system. Will your journey to being Baba Yaga be rigid, like in KOTOR? Or will there be opportunity to explore the many shades of grey?
You can check out Blacktail’s launch trailer courtesy of PlayStation below.
