![]() The ScummVM team are also planning an option for "restored content" in Blade Runner, scraping together and fixing up unfinished bits. Moping in the rain, wishing I could go home and see my dog and get a good night's sleep, is what Ray should have been doing. I'd just been told my life was a lie and lost all sense of myself, after all, and wasn't sure whether it was a conspiracy or real. ![]() It's an adventure game where I once got stuck and ended up wandering the streets for ages, not sure where to go next, but it felt perfectly fitting with the tone. Keep it up and I'll be able to take retirement' while winking furiously at the camera." At no point does an awkward Harrison Ford soundalike tell Ray 'Well done, kid. His story runs parallel to the movie, briefly refers to its happenings, and visits so very, very many of the same places and people, but never has us meet Deckard. "We don't play Harrison Ford's Deckard but Ray McCoy, a rookie blade runner created for the game. I've written plenty before about Blade Runner, and how glad I am it doesn't retell the film. I gave my CDs away a few years back after losing hope and damn it, I would buy it again now. Maybe now publishers will resolve the rights issues plaguing this game and arrange a digital re-release. Previously, the best hope was fan-made patches which worked for many but were crashy for me. Wonderful adventure game platform ScummVM has officially added support for Blade Runner after four months of public testing. And given that some companies even bundle ScummVM with their classic games so they can be sold commercially on modern systems, perhaps Blade Runner may one day see an official release from current rights-holder EA.Westwood's 1997 Blade Runner, still the best video game adaptation of a movie, is now a whole lot easier to play on a modern PC. As of last Friday, however, as spotted by Rock Paper Shotgun, Blade Runner is now officially supported and playable on ScummVM, which you can download here.Īll of which is great news for those who've been sitting staring at their Blade Runner CD-ROMs with exasperated sadness in recent years. It apparently took eight years (thanks Wikipedia) to reverse engineer the Blade Runner engine and to include it as part of ScummVM, and another three until it was ready for public testing, which began this June. Over the years, ScummVM has expanded to support other titles and engines, including those by Revolution Software (Beneath a Steel Sky, Broken Sword) and the Discworld games. Unsurprisingly, Blade Runner was hailed as a classic (and you can read more praise in Eurogamer's retrospective from 2017), but, unfortunately, the passing of time and the march of technology has made the game increasingly difficult to experience without concerted technical jiggery-pokery - a situation exacerbated by the fact that re-releases and remasters have been made impossible, given the original source code was lost during a studio move.Įnter the team of adventure game fans responsible for ScummVM, a piece of software originally designed to make it possible to play classic LucasArts games like Monkey Island 2 on modern systems, before publishers realised there was a lot of money to be made in remasters. Throw in NPCs that didn't follow a scripted route through the story - instead moving around in relative real-time based on their assigned objectives - branching narrative pathways, and a multitude of different possible endings, and Blade Runner was an experience that didn't just capture the neon-streaked dystopian atmosphere of the movie with absolute precision, but which made its world feel positively alive. Faced with the goal of hunting down replicants, the game would randomly decide exactly which characters were artificial creations at the start, subtly changing their behaviour as the story unfolded. ![]() Westwood Studio's classic Blade Runner point-and-click adventure can finally be enjoyed once more with ease on PC, thanks to the diligent work of the ScummVM development community.īut first, a quick history lesson! Blade Runner originally released back in 1997, with Westwood (the sadly-now-defunct developer behind the likes of Command & Conquer and Dune 2) foregoing the usual easy cash-in route ordinarily associated with movie tie-ins for an experience both wildly ambitious and legitimately groundbreaking.Īlthough borne of the familiar point-and-click template, players, in the role of Blade Runner Ray McCoy, embarked on an investigation-based, and largely randomised adventure.
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