Team nightdive has had a hand in re-releases of many classic games like Quake and Turk. User ratings for all such studio projects are kept around 90% on Steam. Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition should have added to the triumphant list nightdivebut something went wrong.
The reasons for the failure of the remaster were told by the head of business development of the studio Larry Cooperman (Larry Kuperman) and lead game producer Dimitris Yannakis (Dimitris Giannakis) in an interview with PCGamesN. In conversation Cooperman calls failure Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition “death by a thousand cuts” – at release, the project suffered from many minor flaws that spoiled the player’s experience.
According to the developers, the updated version Blade Runner got into a difficult situation due to a number of problems. The most important of them was the lack of source code – the team had to resort to reverse engineering and rebuild everything from scratch. If you believe Yannakisit took thousands of hours.
The device also threw difficulties Blade Runner. The testers had to look for errors much longer due to the random generation of events – with the same passage, the gamer may face different consequences. In addition, the project used advanced technologies for 1997 – everything on the screen looked two-dimensional, but in reality it was rendered in 3D.
Everything is done in a 3D world, although the game looks like a 2D adventure. There was lighting, shadows, depth of field and other 3D technologies before 3D in games became the norm.
Dimitris Yannakis
The coronavirus also contributed – many employees of the testing department were absent from work in order to recover from illness. And you Yannakis during this time he moved from one country to another.
nightdive timed the release of the remaster for the fortieth anniversary “Blade Runner” — Cooperman admitted that it was a mistake. “The responsibility for choosing the release date and for not changing it is 100% mine” – said the head, emphasizing that the idea was to please the fans. However, the interlocutors do not know why no one suggested rescheduling the release.
If anyone thinks that we deliberately decided to release a game that does not meet the standards nightdive, for economic reasons or because we don’t care, then it’s not. The main reason for this lies in simple human problems. And I cannot say that if we had postponed the launch for a couple of months, the situation would have been different.
Larry Cooperman
After release Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition The studio is relentlessly patching up the project. On July 4, the first patch appeared, fixing many bugs. Release date of the next update nightdive does not name. According to Coopermandevelopers returned to the previous standard, so as not to repeat the mistake with the release of the anniversary. “The second update will be released when it’s ready,” — stressed the head of business development.
Apparently, the efforts of the developers are paying off – user ratings on Steam have risen from “mostly negative” at the start to “mixed” at the moment.
Blade Runner: Enhanced Edition released on PC (Steam, GOG), PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo Switch.
