HomeNews
Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition on Steam now includes the better ScummVM releaseWhich was released in 2019
Which was released in 2019
Blade Runner: Enhanced Editionlaunched this week, upping the resolution and increasing the framerate of Westwood’s ancient adventure game in ways that make it look consistently worse than the original. If you bought the game on GOG, you could at least switch over to the superior ScummVM release, but not on Steam… Until earlier today, whenBlade RunnerClassic was added to the Steam version, too.
“The free update will be downloaded automatically and when you start Blade Runner through Steam, you’ll be given a choice of launching the Enhanced Edition, or the Classic version,” Nightdive Studiosposted on the Steam news feed. They also say they’re “looking at all your feedback for the game, and we’re still working on our first official patch for the game which will be coming as soon as we can.”
Failing to vibe in Blade Runner: Enhanced EditionWatch on YouTube
Failing to vibe in Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition
As Fach-Pedersen notes, including the ScummVM version with the Enhanced Edition is completely legal; Nightdive own the rights to sell Blade Runner, and the ScummVM work is available under a GPL license, which Fach-Pedersen says Nightdive comply with. From a player’s perspective, it’s also better that the ScummVM version is included, given it is currently the superior version of the game.
Fach-Pedersen has alsosince deleted these tweets, saying that people had been using his “airing of grievances to harass Nightdive employees.” Fach-Pedersen calls the harassment “completely unacceptable”, which of course it is.
All of the above is a real shame. Westwood’s Blade Runner was first released in 1997 and was successful in capturing the look and feel of its source material in a way few licensed games have managed before or since. It was still worthvibing with in 2014, and it’s still worth vibing with (the ScummVM version) now. Hopefully Nightdive release that mentioned patch soon.
