15 years after the release of Ridley Scott's science fiction classic Blade Runner, Westwood Studios gave us the equally memorable Blade Runner point-and-click adventure game. Now that game is being enhanced for re-release across all major consoles and PC.
As confirmed by The Hollywood Reporter, the restoration and enhancement of the game will be carried out by Nightdive Studios after a partnership was agreed with Alcon Entertainment, the production company behind Blade Runner 2049.
Fans will be pleased to hear Nightdive is handling development seeing as the studio already has a lot of game restoration experience through working on the System Shock and Turok titles. Nightdive also has a remake of System Shock planned for release later this year.
Development of an enhanced version of Blade Runner comes after many years of work following Westwood Studios losing both the source code and assets for the original game during a move from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. In December last year, the original game did appear in updated form on GOG.com, but that was only made possible through 11 years of reverse engineering the game's engine and subsequent testing using ScummVM.
Nightdive will use its own KEX game engine for Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition, and promises to update the character models, animations, and cutscenes, while adding support for widescreen displays, control customization, and all the original language translations. A launch is planned for later this year across PS4, Xbox One, Switch, and PC. However, to play it on PC you'll have to purchase it through Steam as Valve managed to secure an exclusive.
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