Some unfortunate news this weekend from Nightdive Studios, as the anticipated release of Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition has been pushed back. Originally due out later this year, Nightdive Studios CEO Stephen Kick made the announcement in an interview with Eurogamer that the game will no longer be released in 2020.
The reasoning behind the delay is due to the multiple challenges the team has faced since they began the remaster. “There have been some obstacles we’ve had to overcome in terms of the old technology the game uses,” Kick said. “And our hunt for the original source code and assets have come up empty.”
Kick continues, saying that Nightdive has had discussions with EA (which had bought Westwood Studios) about anything else related to the game that was in EA’s vaults, but couldn’t get a definitive answer. “And even if there was something, it’s very unlikely they would release it to us for legal reasons, mostly, which is a bit of a disappointment, because we were hoping to at least get the original audio recordings. So we’re basically working off what was in the original game at this point and not having access to any original stuff.”
As a result, Nightdive has has to reverse engineer the code, which is a task in an of itself, as the team has to create tools that will allow them to extract the original art assets. Complicating matters is the fact that Westwood had to heavily compress the video for the game, meaning that the video will more than likely have to be upscaled.
While this is an unfortunate setback, if you’re looking to get your Blade Runner fix , you can always buy the original version of the game from GOG.com, which now runs on modern PCs.
Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition will be available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.