Blade Runner - Enhanced Edition

[SM47]

Reading up on this and apparently they completely fucked up one of the very best parts of the game: going out on Ray McCoy's apartment balcony and listening to Vangelis' Blade Runner Blues. The audio cuts out? And the airship advertising the Offworld Colonies is no longer audible. Tragic

 

Bit mad considering Night Dive usually do an excellent job with this kind of thing. E.g Shadow Man, that remaster was incredible and probably the definitive version of the game 

[Popo]

1 hour ago, SM47 said:

Reading up on this and apparently they completely fucked up one of the very best parts of the game: going out on Ray McCoy's apartment balcony and listening to Vangelis' Blade Runner Blues. The audio cuts out? And the airship advertising the Offworld Colonies is no longer audible. Tragic 

I wondered what the point of going out in the balcony was!

[Benny]

Fucking up one of the most memorable moments in the game is quite shocking.

 

It's such a shame, as their Quake remaster was incredible, and they're doing amazing things with System Shock.

 

Did they farm it out to someone else or something?

[Hitcher]

I got a refund from MS.

[SM47]

Reason: severe lack of endorphin-releasing CS80 licks 

[Thor]

I'm gonna get a refund on steam and just grab the original on GOG. What a shower... 

[Benny]

What a disaster

 

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/the-blade-runner-games-new-remaster-looks-worse

 

https://www.eurogamer.net/popular-fan-made-blade-runner-restoration-relegated-to-controversial-enhanced-edition-add-on

 

I only played the game for the first time recently, and was really impressed how well it ran via ScummVM. What a shitshow from Nightdive.

 

Disappointing of GoG to have forced the versions to be amalgamated in one purchase so they still get the money even if you just want the original as well.

[5R7]

50 minutes ago, Thor said:

I'm gonna get a refund on steam and just grab the original on GOG. What a shower... 

 

DONT! you cant get the original version that was on GOG up until yesterday, you can only pay for the EE, which "includes" the original. But, its still giving money to nightdive. Where as the original was essentially made by fans

 

If you want to play the original, i might suggest, but am definitely NOT telling you this can be found there, googling the following "Blade Runner (Zomb's Lair)" "internet archive Blade Runner scummvm" , and then visiting a certain archive of the internet, which might be in the search results.

[earlymodernsteve]

6 minutes ago, 5R7 said:

 

DONT! you cant get the original version that was on GOG up until yesterday, you can only pay for the EE, which "includes" the original. But, its still giving money to nightdive. Where as the original was essentially made by fans

 

If you want to play the original, i might suggest, but am definitely NOT telling you this can be found there, googling the following "Blade Runner (Zomb's Lair)" , and then visiting a certain archive of the internet, which might be in the search results.

 

This appears to no longer be the case, as the alleged link may well now contain a doc that says the game has been removed due to being on GOG. Or so I've heard.

[Benny]

I thought this might at least look alright despite the problems mentioned, but I just looked at the comparison shots in the RPS article... It's blurry dogshit. Avoid like the plague.

 

This absolute classic deserves to be played on ScummVM like God intended.

[Thor]

Yeah, I'll just get the GOG version. I played enough of the new one to want to play it again. I recently played through The Dig again, now that is still a fucking fantastic game despite its age. 

 

Also, I know it's shit, but nightdive at least put some work into it, and it's not like they're asking big bucks for it. Will they even break even? 

[5R7]

8 minutes ago, earlymodernsteve said:

 

This appears to no longer be the case, as the alleged link may well now contain a doc that says the game has been removed due to being on GOG. Or so I've heard.

i will amend that, as it can indeed still be foudn on the archive, just, by looking for the scumm vm version instead!

 

[JoeK]

11 minutes ago, Benny said:

I thought this might at least look alright despite the problems mentioned, but I just looked at the comparison shots in the RPS article... It's blurry dogshit. Avoid like the plague.

 

This absolute classic deserves to be played on ScummVM like God intended.

 

I dunno. I think it was a fairly clever game in a number of ways, but I never thought it was a classic back in the day and I think it's aged horribly over the years. Which I've always found highly ironic, as my deep, deep obsession with the movie only increases with each viewing I have of it. 

 

I always thought it was a game that never quite knew how to straddle pandering to the movie fans and those who loved the book, so we got this really curious attempt to try and use both, and I never quite got it. I respected a lot of what it did, but it left me terribly unfulfilled.

 

Also, I don't care what anyone says, it looks fucking terrible these days. Really fucking awful. 

[ZOK]

Seems like this is just a waste of time then!

 

No matter - you can get all the Blade Runner vibes you will ever need if you play Cyberpunk 2077 and go into a particular building.

[Eighthours]

Nightdive are aware of issues and are going to be patching it, apparently. 

[gingerling]

In  2022 it baffles me how games can manage to get through QA with so many issues!

I've never tested a game, but I test software as my job, and I'd get sacked if I missed some of the bugs that slip through the net of current releases. Quality control has decreased since just about everyone accessed the internet. Lazy!

[Wonderm]

Never been so excited to deflated coming into a thread in my life

 

Ffs

[Benny]

1 hour ago, JoeK said:

 

I dunno. I think it was a fairly clever game in a number of ways, but I never thought it was a classic back in the day and I think it's aged horribly over the years. Which I've always found highly ironic, as my deep, deep obsession with the movie only increases with each viewing I have of it. 

 

I always thought it was a game that never quite knew how to straddle pandering to the movie fans and those who loved the book, so we got this really curious attempt to try and use both, and I never quite got it. I respected a lot of what it did, but it left me terribly unfulfilled.

 

Also, I don't care what anyone says, it looks fucking terrible these days. Really fucking awful. 

 

I came at it completely fresh this last year as I had never played it before, but it was one of the point-click adventures I always regretted not picking up back in the 90s.

 

It has of course dated, but I found many of the things it does narratively are very special even when viewed with a modern lense. Some of the actual dialogue is a bit ropey, but if you put yourself into that 90s adventure game mindset it comes across pretty well.

 

I think it works as a great companion piece to the Blade Runner mythos. And for all that it gets wrong, so many things about it are still interesting or fascinating to experience. I also disagree about the visuals: I think the aesthetic looks awesome and the backgrounds have a gorgeous 90s PC game "look" about them that remains distinctive and odd and interesting.

 

The sound design and music is also great.

 

It just makes this half arsed effort tragic, when regardless of how you feel about the original, a restoration should still try to respect that original work, and it seems this one really doesn't.

[Spacehost]

What a pity.

 

Oh well, here’s an excuse to post the extended interview about the magic they used to make the game.

 

[friedgold]

3 hours ago, Benny said:

Fucking up one of the most memorable moments in the game is quite shocking.

 

It's such a shame, as their Quake remaster was incredible, and they're doing amazing things with System Shock.

 

Did they farm it out to someone else or something?

Wait, what? This is the same group? Unbelievable! like you say, Quake was perfect, exactly as I remembered. I know this game was supposed to be increibly hard to update but the reported issues seem to be design choices rather than compromises. What a bummer, I've never played it but remember the screenshots in PC Gamer fondly.

[womblingfree]

Aside from Doom amd Quake, this and Battlezone were the best reasons to have a PC for gaming in the 90’s.

[Benny]

My sweet summer child.

[Malc]

1 hour ago, gingerling said:

In  2022 it baffles me how games can manage to get through QA with so many issues!

I've never tested a game, but I test software as my job, and I'd get sacked if I missed some of the bugs that slip through the net of current releases. Quality control has decreased since just about everyone accessed the internet. Lazy!

Sometimes the QA people will point out various issues, but wether or not the devs take note and fix them is another issue entirely. 

[b00dles]

I still love a detective game that let's you "miss" clues or come to the wrong conclusion (and in this the way the culprit changes etc is great) so many games that try and do a detective mechanic end up with a checklist of clues you have to find which is clearly stupid if you're the first person examining a crime scene and don't know how many there might be. 

 

Unfortunately in this it was mainly because the clues might be tiny and you've got to do pixel hunting across the playfield but the idea is still great and more games should account for being a shit detective. 

[alex3d]

The Gabriel Knight Remaster is already borderline but this one looks atrocious. Seems like a lot of point and click adventure remasters are making everything worse.

[Superunknown]

One of the Nightdive devs has been responding to questions on resetera as Edward850. They posted this in relation to Nightdive's own tweet about being "aware of known bugs..."

 

Quote

Aware is an understatement. Before anyone asks, no I won't talk about what happened, but we have identified at least a couple of things that went wrong in the launch process that need changing for future projects. Vague, I know, but I don't want to give the impression of blaming any one particular person or group as I don't think it's any one person's fault.

 

GOG bundled both versions of the game (ScummVM and Enhanced Edition). While Steam never had the ScummVM version, Nightdive have now arranged for it to be added to Steam as a launch option.

 

And they are actively working on patching the game:

 

Quote

"It's going to be a long weekend" was mentioned.

 

[Gambit]

10 hours ago, gingerling said:

In  2022 it baffles me how games can manage to get through QA with so many issues!

I've never tested a game, but I test software as my job, and I'd get sacked if I missed some of the bugs that slip through the net of current releases. Quality control has decreased since just about everyone accessed the internet. Lazy!

 

As a former QA person, I can speak from experience that bugs making it into the final game are almost always never the QA departments fault.

[Popo]

48 minutes ago, Superunknown said:

One of the Nightdive devs has been responding to questions on resetera as Edward850. They posted this in relation to Nightdive's own tweet about being "aware of known bugs..."

 

 

GOG bundled both versions of the game (ScummVM and Enhanced Edition). While Steam never had the ScummVM version, Nightdive have now arranged for it to be added to Steam as a launch option.

 

And they are actively working on patching the game:

 

 

Morning, noon and night dive. 

[ZOK]

There's a decent review off the Switch version here:

 

 

None of the issues would put me off it currently except for this glaring one - apparently its has a bug that wipes your save file completely. So I'll definitely be sitting this out until that's eliminated.

[Exit Chamber]

12 hours ago, Wonderm said:

Never been so excited to deflated coming into a thread in my life

 

Ffs

 

Yes, this 100%. Looks like I'll give it a month or two before (hopefully) buying it.