You think about Blade Runner’s vision for the future, and you can’t help but be disappointed. I mean sure everyone was living on top of each other, the pollution looked like it’d bake your lungs if you weren’t constantly popping cigarettes and having homicidal Replicants blending in with society would make anyone paranoid, but where’s my dang flying car?
Anyway, Blade Runner in any of its numerous cuts is still a fantastic film, featuring brilliant performances, set design and a tale that inspired cinema for decades to come. While a sequel would only be released way way later in 2017, a sort-of sequel hit store shelves much earlier. Released back in 1997, Blade Runner was an incredibly accurate recreation of the film that still managed to tell its own story, combining point and click action with some stunning art direction for the time.
Its naturally more dated than a video game ad declaring Gex the Gecko to be a Sonic the Hedgehog killer, but it still slaps! Inside of that game, players took on the role of Ray McCoy as he chased down his own gang of replicants in a story that ran parallel to the 1982 film. It was good then, and it’s still good now as a slice of story. Story that will be getting a remaster from Nightdive Studios. Having been behind the rather excellent System Shock: Enhanced Edition, Nightdive aims to spruce up Blade Runner for PC, PlayStation and Xbox.
“Blade Runner is still a jaw-dropping achievement on every level, so while we’re using KEX to upgrade the graphics and respectfully elevate the gaming experience in a way you’ve never seen before, we’re still preserving Westwood’s vision and gameplay in all its glory,” said Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick in a press release.
“While you can enjoy the benefits of playing the game on modern hardware, the game should look and feel not as it was, but as glorious as you remember it being.
If you can’t wait, you can find Blade Runner on Good Old Games right now, albeit in its original form and without any of these upcoming enhancements. A shame, because those gorgeous backgrounds alone deserve a little bit of sharpening to bring them back up to scratch. If you’re not looking forward to pointing and clicking your way through future crime scenes, you have to ask yourself: Are you a Replican or a Replican’t? Actually wait, don’t answer that.
Last Updated: March 13, 2020
Original Heretic
March 13, 2020 at 12:12
If you wanna speak to the manager, you are a RepliKaren.
And if you can’t, and you’re very Afrikaans, you could well be a RepliKarent.