Nightdive explains why the Blade Runner remaster turned out the way it did

Covid, missing source code and a lack of leadership that could step on the brakes.

Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition wasn’t nearly as improved as fans had wanted when it was released, and in some cases the remaster was clearly inferior to the original game. But why did it happen like this? In an interview with Pcgamesn has the developer taken the blade from the mouth.

They explain that the game’s release date was chosen to coincide with the film’s 40th anniversary, as they believed it would be special for fans. However, the studio was faced with a number of different challenges during development and in the run-up to release, not the least of which was having to use reverse engineering to rebuild the game from scratch, due to the lack of source code to use.

Furthermore, the testing of the game is said to have dragged on due to the fact that it has random elements. Other aggravating circumstances included employees being absent to recover from covid as well as lead producer Dimitris Giannakis being in the middle of a cross-country move.

If anyone thinks that a decision was ever made, that we sat around a table and said we’re going to release a game that doesn’t live up to Nightdive’s standards – for financial reasons, because of indifference on our part, or something like that – it didn’t happen .

This allegedly meant that there was no one to step on the brakes and state that the game was not ready for release. At the same time, Giannakis thinks that what the game suffers from is a series of minor problems, rather than one big one.

A major update to the game has been out for some time now and the team is now working on a second round of fixes. The Steam rating remains at “Mixed”, but recent player reviews are significantly more positive than when the remaster was released.