Blade Runner remaster has been postponed due to technical issues

Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition, an improved version of the point-and-click game Nightdive Studios is working on, is not coming out this year. The game has been postponed until an unknown date, partly because the source code and original assets have been lost.

Blade Runner (1997)Stephen Kick, CEO of developer Nightdive Studios, said in an interview with Eurogamer that there are “obstacles that need to be overcome because of the old technology the game uses.” He also says that the search for the game’s original source code and assets has not yielded anything so far.

Blade Runner was released in 1997 and was made by Westwood. When EA took over that studio in 1998 and moved the office, the game’s source code was lost. During the development of the Command & Conquer remaster, old Westwood material has surfaced again. Kick is in contact with EA, but says he has not received a clear answer about the presence of Blade Runner source material. Although EA would have, the CEO expects his studio will probably not get it, for legal reasons.

It was already known that Nightdive Studios has to rebuild the game. The studio plans to make the new version in its own KEX engine. It was previously used for System Shock and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter remasters . However, the interview shows that reverse engineering the code takes more time than expected. “It’s a time-consuming task that requires us to create special tools to extract the original assets,” says Kick.

In September , the developer showed footage of Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition, but that was a polished cinematic scene from the game. At the time, the studio said the remaster would be released in 2020, for the PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. It is not yet known when the game will be released.