EvaUnit02 on 23/6/2022 at 21:48
Mostly Negative overall reviews on Steam, oh dear. Apparently the upscaled assets are of questionable quality and the game is buggy.
Buy the thing on GOG, it's the only store carrying the vanilla version (running on the ScummVM source port).
(
https://www.gog.com/en/game/blade_runner_enhanced_edition)
[video=youtube;kDxS2jh76Kg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDxS2jh76Kg[/video]
I've been waiting for this remaster for a couple of years, I held off buying the vanilla release on GOG because of it. What a let down. Hopefully they'll be patching the hell out of it.
Neato bonus:-
Here's a Twitter thread about how Night Dive CEO, Stephen Kick, acquired the rights to the game.
(
https://twitter.com/pripyatbeast/status/1540030755337666560)
This was such a cool game. Back in 2002 I spent a whole school holiday break playing it on my mum's Windows 2000 work laptop. The thing came on about 4 or 5 CD-ROMs. I remember finding it odd that it wasn't a 3D accelerated title, but later learned that it used the same voxel graphics engine that powered C&C: Tiberian Sun.
Briareos H on 24/6/2022 at 09:25
And on top of that they removed the dubs for no good reason. It's one of the rare games I'll always replay in French.
There's no reason whatsoever to get this over the GOG version.
demagogue on 24/6/2022 at 11:21
The bigger they are the harder they fall I suppose.
I can see both the strong motivation in the devs and the dilemma they dug themselves into with this project.
Evidently the lesson here is that remaster is the wrong paradigm for games from that period. Either you go GOG's route and just make the original playable on modern systems, or you just completely remake it with new tech and assets from the bottom up.
Jason Moyer on 24/6/2022 at 12:55
They remastered a game that's a year older than Blade Runner, went with neither of those routes, and it's one of the best remasters ever made. It's not perfect, but it's damn good.
ZylonBane on 27/6/2022 at 01:50
FFS, why do so many people keep mindlessly throwing around the word "remastered" when talking about the Night Dive projects that are clearly labeled "enhanced"? This obviously isn't a remaster, it's just the same old assets shoved through a filter and dragged into a new engine.
henke on 27/6/2022 at 07:18
What's the difference? Looks like plenty of remasters these days are using AI upscaling. Keeping track of what's a remaster and what's a remake is effort enough and we don't need to muddle things up with yet a 3rd category. So naah dude, it's a remaster.
Tomi on 27/6/2022 at 08:42
Maybe "enhanced" is the proper term for a half-assed remaster?
demagogue on 27/6/2022 at 10:08
The issue is that the version out on GOG (the ScummVM version) was already a remaster, so even aside from the technical side of it, I gather they needed to call it something else to signal what this is that's different.
Interesting (
https://www.videogamer.com/news/blade-runner-fan-remaster-ousted-by-new-enhanced-edition/) side note to that, the makers of the remaster aren't happy that their game is only available now as an add on to Night Dive's version, not to mention some of their work was used by Night Dive without credit. Kind of reminds me of the System Shock 1 re-release shutting down the fan version while also using their work.
ZylonBane on 27/6/2022 at 19:55
Quote Posted by demagogue
The issue is that the version out on GOG (the ScummVM version) was already a remaster
It was not. It used the original, unmodified assets.
