Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition launches on PC and consoles

And just like that, Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition has launched.

The remaster of the groundbreaking point-and-click PC adventure from 1997, which ran into development difficulties two years ago, is available now via Steam and the Nintendo, Xbox, and PlayStation marketplaces. Nightdive Studios announced in March 2020 that it was updating Westwood Studios’ acclaimed sci-fi narrative, but in October of that year, studio chief Stephen Kick acknowledged that developers hadn’t realized the number of character models in the game, all of which would need remastering. Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition was then given a TBD launch window.

Nightdive has previously remastered System Shock: Enhanced Edition, Turok: Dinosaur Hunter and its sequel, and Forsaken Remastered. It’s still at work on System Shock 2: Enhanced Edition.

Blade Runner may have been a point-and-click adventure, but the game really pushed the limits of that label. As the all-new character Ray McCoy, players would be tasked with hunting down rogue replicants from the same population of characters each playthrough, but who was human and who was synthetic would change. With branching story paths and multiple endings, Blade Runner was anything but linear, and far more replayable than other point-and-click narratives of the day.

Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition promises frame rates of 60 fps (15 fps was the original), with an enhanced, in-game Knowledge Integration Assistant and clue user interface to help drive the story. The PC version supports gamepads (as do the console versions, naturally). The game is $9.99 in the Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo stores.

Blade Runner won Best Adventure Game of 1998 from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, and was likewise the best adventure game of the year for both PC Gamer and Computer Gaming World.