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Blade Runner Video Game Restoration Coming to Steam and Console

Art for Blade Runner interactive adventure

Blade Runner Video Game Restoration Coming to Steam and Console

A new edition of classic 1997 adventure game Blade Runner is coming to Nintendo Switch, Sony PS4, Microsoft Xbox and Steam later this year.

Alcon Entertainment – who brought us the Blade Runner: Revelations VR experience for the since-defunct Google Daydream and is also responsible for financing such projects as Academy Award winner Blind Book, as well as The Book of Eli and Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner: 2049 – has teamed up with Nightdive Studios, which has released new and enhanced editions of such classic PC games as System Shock and the Turok series. Nightdive Studios will helm the project using their propriety KEX game engine.

The original Blade Runner, a voxel-based wonder billed as a “real-time 3D adventure game, was released over 20 years ago by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin and Microsoft Studios. An influential and beloved game – Nightdive Studios CEO Stephen Kick calls it “a jaw-dropping achievement on every level” – it interwove a branching narrative distinct from the plot events of the influential 1982 Ridley Scott movie but concurrent with them (similarly to the way the Neuromancer game by Interplay Productions related to the William Gibson novel).

Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition

More Than Just a Replicant

While the code for the original game was lost, a playable version using the ScummVM engine appeared on GOG late last year, Nightdive Studios’ Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition will include updated character models and cut-scenes and support wide-screen resolution.

Despite graphics updates, the studio is aiming to preserve the mood of the original; “While you can enjoy the benefits of playing the game on modern hardware,” states Kick, “the game should look and feel not as it was, but as glorious as you remember it being.”

Given the number of games influenced by it, not to mention the fact that we’re all big cyberpunk fans here at IGR, we’re excited to get a look at the updated edition. There have been many derivatives – some good, some downright awful – but we really hope they get this one right. Given the pedigree of the teams involved, things are looking up.