Nightdive ships ScummVM version Blade Runner after criticism of remaster

Nightdive Studios is giving Blade Runner Enhanced Edition purchasers the option to play the classic version of the game. Anyone who downloads the remaster via Steam will automatically receive the ScummVM version from now on. The update follows after criticism of the remaster.

It is a free update for the version on GOG and Steam. After launching Blade Runner Enhanced Edition, players will be given the option of playing the remaster or Blade Runner Classic. Nightdive Studios reports this on Steam. The classic version is the variant that runs on ScummVM. This version of the original appeared on GOG in 2020 and includes an option to play the game with some scenes that were not used in the 1997 game. With the arrival of the Enhanced Edition, the ScummVM version disappeared from GOG. This has never appeared on Steam before.

Nightdive Studios announced in 2020 that they want to release a remaster of Blade Runner for PC and consoles. The studio bases the Enhanced Edition on its own game engine KEX and offers support for widescreen display and polished graphics of characters, animations and cutscenes, among other things. Since the source code of the original was lost, the studio had to reverse engineer the original.

That turned out not to be quite successful. After the game was released last week, the game turned out to be riddled with bugs and players complained that visuals were worse than better than the original. Among other things Kotaku and PC Gamers found that many details had been lost due to the remastering. The Blade Runner movie celebrated its 40th anniversary last weekend.