The game takes a lot of cues from the dreadful 2016 film while also negating or muddling many of the additions that it made to the lore, meaning that any sort of consistency in the world is basically thrown out the window.
• Rustin Parr was a fairly notable figure because he was one of the few tangible examples of the witch's influence. There were books and documentaries dedicated solely to him and his victims that expanded on him and how rare it was for the outside world to see the corrupting influence of the witch be actualized. The game proposes that there's an equally notable and prolific serial killer, Carver, who we have simply never seen mentioned before despite this game taking place two years after the events of the original film. Parr is mentioned in Blair Witch 2016 and in plenty of the accompanying materials like Curse of the Blair Witch and The Massacre of the Burkettsville Seven, but no mention of a similar figure that apparently also nabbed victims and murdered them in a fashion that was remarkably similar to that of Parr. It's an addition that makes zero sense.
• In Blair Witch 2016, we're told about the massive search parties that searched for Heather, Josh and Mike following their disappearances. Those search parties, as many do, surely included police dogs that were tasked with searching for traces of the missing students. At no point do any of those dogs pick up on the malevolent forces of the woods, yet this game insists that Bullet, just an ordinary police dog, is the key to helping you detect activity as this game insists upon using the "animals detect ghosts" trope. This is a bit of a nit-pick, sure, but it stuck in my craw.
• Blair Witch 2016 already went way too far by actually showing creatures but this game took things to another level of absurdity. Essentially, this game proposes that there are now anthropomorphic stick figure creatures? If we take the 2016 film's word for it, which unfortunately we have to as this is considered cannon, the bevy of creatures we have seen are all evocative of Elly Kedward with the pale skin and elongated limbs but we are never shown stick figure creatures, nor have they ever been documented in the lore. These are new creations for the game and have never been seen, or even speculated about, outside of the game. Aside from the absurd nature of showing monsters in Blair Witch to begin with, at least the 2016 movie had the decency of showing us monsters that resembled a creature that was already firmly established within the universe. These creatures exist solely because... well, sticks! They're made of sticks, like the stick figures!
• The stick figures... yeah, this is one hell of a confusing bit. In the game, you're given the option of avoiding the various stick figures or interacting with them by crushing them. In the original film, these were simply totems that were effectively signs showing the progression of the witch as it inched closer and closer to Heather, Mike and Josh. In the 2016 film, the stick figures are revealed to have voodoo doll properties and crushing a stick figure that is wrapped up with a character's hair directly leads to the death of that character. In this game, we are never directly shown what is happening when we crush the stick figures, though we are vaguely directed to avoid crushing them as this "increases the witch's influence." Are these figures connected to people trapped in the woods? Are we killing them as we crush these figures? Are these figures somehow just supposed to be allowing the witch to get closer to us? If so, why were Heather, Mike and Josh all taken by the witch despite them having never crushed the stick figures? They didn't "increase the witch's influence." I guess it doesn't really matter if you crush them or not because the game's "good ending" involves you getting murdered by Carver regardless, a man who is led by/driven insane by the witch, so the witch will win out regardless of whether or not you interact with the figures and "increase her influence."
• In Blair Witch 2016, we are given an eleventh hour twist that shows that time is cyclical in the Black Hills Forest, resetting and repeating on some sort of indeterminable cycle. In the 2016 film, this is represented by a flash seen outside of a window when the reset occurs and when we realize that the footage that lured our protagonists to the forest was actually their own footage taken at the end of the film. Interesting idea, sure. It also explains how the Parr house simultaneously exists and ceases to exist within the Black Hills Forest so that's nice. In this game, we are shown time dilation when using... a camcorder. The time dilation occurs whenever Ellis rewinds or fast-forwards through specific tapes, not solely on a whim, or when the forest "resets" with a flash of light. Are we to believe that the time dilation is actually occurring due to tapes and a camcorder? Is it occurring due to the tapes, camcorder AND the forest resetting time? This is never made clear but it poses a lot of questions that the game simply never bothers answering.
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