Blade Runner Enhanced Edition Review: hunting for androids again

In the world of literature, few stories are as striking as that of science fiction writer Philip Kindred Dick . A marginal – if not marginalized – writer in life, he died shortly before the film adaptation of his he was released in theaters. But Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? , which consigned him to eternal fame: his influence in science fiction is still felt today (you can find here our special on Philip K. Dick and the post-apocalyptic world of Eastward). You may never have heard of the name of the novel, but in all likelihood you know, and perhaps have seen, the film that was made: the Blade Runner directed by Ridley Scott.

There is a video game that was able to evoke the atmosphere of the film, considered very faithful to those of the book by Dick himself, who also had the opportunity to see some clips of the film in a private screening dedicated to him. Not only that: the Blade Runner developed by Westwood Studios and published by Virgin Interactive in 1997 , was able to integrate the imagery of the good Ridley film, bringing to the fore some fundamental themes of the novel neglected for production needs in the film version. The Enhanced Edition of this videogame Blade Runner takes us back to the streets of Los Angeles in 2019 and now we are ready to tell you how our walk alongside Ray McCoy went.

Between past and future

Today Westwood Studios no longer exists, and its troubled history, marked by several acquisitions – first by Virgin Interactive, then by Electronic Arts, which in 2003 finally decided to liquidate the studio – played a non-secondary role in the development of Enhanced. Edition of Blade Runner. Nightdive Studiostotale unavailability of the source code of the original Blade Runner.

After that announcement, Blade Runner Enhanced Edition had literally disappeared from the screens. No news from the developers . Rumors began to chase each other about an alleged abandonment of the project, silenced only a few days ago: Nightdive Studios, surprisingly, has in fact communicated a release date very close.

And so on June 23 the Blade Runner Ray McCoy returned to walk the streets of Los Angeles and we with him. Everything has been rebuilt from scratch, with some graphic improvements that have modernized the city and its inhabitants: the original futuristic kinematics have been restored, going from 15 to 60 frames per second with 4K resolution, while the anisotropic filter and the Subpixel Morphological Anti-Aliasing (SMAA) increase the quality of the textures. Gamepads are now also supported, and the Knowledge Integration Assistant (KIA) interface that our McCoy uses has been renewed. Now let’s take a break from these acronyms and technical considerations and get into the heart of the adventure, because there is so much to say.

The second Blade Runner …

There is a reason why the Westwood Studios video game is still remembered today as one of the most interesting video game adaptations ever made.

As anticipated above, Blade Runner takes the best of two worlds : on the one hand, the cinematic Los Angeles imagined by Ridley Scott, with its rain-ridden streets and that grime, human and material, that nothing can ever wash away; on the other hand, the original source, in which Philip Kindred Dick imagined a post-apocalyptic society in which the thing most dear to man was not other human beings, but sheep, dogs and cats, due to the almost total extinction of animal species following a terrible nuclear war. Here, this theme – affection for non-human animals (it must be specified, because we are animals too) – is only hinted at in the film, while it is central to the novel.

Westwood Studios made a bold choice: bring the issue of animals back to the center , making it the real engine of the videogame events that lead Ray McCoy on the trail of a group of Nexus 6 replicants , the same ones also seen in Ridley Scott’s film. In this narrative, the replicants are primarily killers of the precious animals for sale at Runciter Animals: McCoy, the budding Blade Runner, must track them down and “retrieve” (read: kill) them before they can further harm the city and its inhabitants.

A sequence of brilliant chases begins , between one reference and another, to the literary and cinematographic universes that form the basis of the work of Westwood Studios. It is possible to visit some of the most iconic places of the film: from Sebastian’s disturbing home, full of toys that seem alive, to the pyramids of the Tyrell Corporation, all the proposed locations are faithful to their counterparts seen in the cinema. With an extra touch, of course, because the possibility of crossing them and interacting with their inhabitants, as well as discovering their most hidden corners is a real joy for fans. The choice to unravel the story in parallel with that of the Blade Runner Rick Deckard was original and well done(played in the cinema by Harrison Ford): the most attentive players will even be able to see Deckard in one of the scenes of the game, but we do not make any further spoilers so as not to spoil the surprises.

Unfortunately, the developers failed to win the rights to the film soundtrack signed by the unforgettable Vangelis, who recently passed away, but composer Frank Klepacki did an excellent job in reconstructing that soft and elegant soundtrack that had characterized Scott’s film.

The interpretations of part of the cast of the film are still brilliant today: several actors, including Sean Young (in the role of the splendid replicant Rachael) and William Sanderson (the aforementioned Sebastian) lent their voices for their videogame counterparts. Honorable mention for the incredible voice acting of James Hong , who returns to play the bizarre Chew.

… and his new adventure

It is more than legitimate to ask whether it makes sense to replay the remastered version of a slightly dated graphic adventure today. Sure, Blade Runner was Westwood Studios’ flagship back in 1997, but will it stand the test of time? The answer is a bit peculiar: while the basic mechanics of the video game continue to enchant, some choices of the Enhanced Edition have not completely convinced us. The developers had adopted some interesting solutions to increase the replayability factor of the title.

First, the nature of some key characters – humans or androids – is decided at the start of the game, and of course it is not revealed by the player, who can use the iconic Voigt-Kampff test in certain situations. This influences the course of the adventure, which presents innumerable variables depending on the order in which McCoy’s investigations are carried out, and on the combinations of events that therefore occur. Secondly, there is no single way to solve the game’s mysteries and continue the investigation: Blade Runnerhe does not take the player by the hand but respects his intelligence, allowing him to act in complete freedom. Of course, the absence of driving also has drawbacks. In fact, it may happen to find yourself blocked but normally it is enough to talk again with the characters encountered or retrace the settings to find a fundamental clue, or to unlock a conversation or a location. A tip: save often, because Blade Runner surprises players with some situations not exactly typical of a staid point and click adventure.

Our investigator is repeatedly attacked by replicants, especially in the last stages of the adventure. It may also happen that you have to quickly escape from potentially deadly situations, or find yourself in trouble with the cumbersome gun aiming system supplied to the Los Angeles Police Department. Losing progress could also be good, allowing us to make different choices or explore elsewhere, and the wide variety of situations makes McCoy’s death a little frustrating, sure, but the limitations of gunplay are obvious and have not been resolved in this one. Enhanced Edition.

The story of the android hunters therefore convinces also in its videogame version , as well as in the literary and cinematographic one. We also talked about the graphic improvements, which however do not change the aesthetics of the original work, on the contrary: the approach of Nightdive Studios is extremely conservative , and the final result is certainly less spectacular than that achieved by the developers in Quake Remastered ( our Quake Remastered review is just a click away).

The models of the characters, composed of voxels, retain all their rudimentary nature, in the suggestive framework of pre-rendered backgrounds full of charm , but in some cases they are flattened and made too homogeneous by the filters applied to improve the textures.

Today, as in 1997, finding the most minute clues on the screens is a real challenge : however, the detectives are helped by the color change of the cursor, which turns green when it is on a point of interest, and slows down its movement. That’s not always enough, and in some cases – especially if you’re using the Nintendo Switch in handheld mode – details get lost … Just like tears in the rain , it should be said.

If it is understandable the choice not to act with a heavy hand on the original aesthetics of the game, less justifiable is the renewal of the KIA interface , which collects the clues put together by our Blade Runner. KIA is simply not navigable: it lacks clarity altogether, and finding an object or particular piece of conversation is a mission impossible.

And here we come to the most sore point of all: localization. Blade Runner Enhanced Edition provides players with subtitles – previously absent – but it does so by inserting them in boxes with such poor aesthetics as to seem like placeholders.

It is possible to select the Italian language, but the translation is incomplete: the KIA interface and all the clues reported therein remained in English, as well as the selectable options when talking with the various characters in the settings.

Not to mention blatant literal translation errors of idiomatic expressions, missing pieces of sentences and, in general, poor spelling care. We hope that the localization will receive some future patches, because the Italian public deserves something better.