Replicating Blade Runner: Why is this video game classic so hard to remaster? - article

When Nightdive Studios announced the start of work on a remaster of the beloved 1997 point-and-click adventure Blade Runner, it also claimed that the game would arrive on PC, PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch by the end of 2020. Eurogamer , however, may reveal that this will not happen: the development of the title has had to face a series of unexpected obstacles that have complicated its path.

Nightdive Studios, a company that has become famous for the restoration of great classics such as System Shock and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, secured the Blade Runner license in December 2019 and immediately began work on remastering the Westwood Studios epic adventure.

In September 2020, the Washington-based developer released a comparative video between the original opening cutscene and the remastered one. The video was not received with particular enthusiasm by fans who started complaining that the original Blade Runner style was lost in the upscaling process.

This content is hosted on an external platform, which will only display it if you accept targeting cookies. Please enable cookies to view. Manage cookie settings In an interview with Eurogamer, Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick confirmed that Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition has been postponed to a later date.

"We had to overcome some obstacles related to age of technology behind the game, "Kick confessed. "We wanted to recover the original source code and assets used at the time but we ran into more difficulties than expected."