The Blade Runner reissue gets unusually bad reviews

By: Vadim Osiyuk | 27.06.2022, 14:08
The Blade Runner reissue gets unusually bad reviews

Studio Nightdive is famous for its remasters of classics, and usually there are not many claims to them. But with Blade Runner something clearly went wrong: the claims for this reissue are so huge that it has become the studio's most underrated item

At the time of writing the news in Blade Runner: Enchanced Edition contain mostly negative reviews - 29% based on 84 ratings. The reviews and comments highlight the following shortcomings of the remaster:

  • You can not move freely just by clicking the mouse - only between interactive points
  • Too primitive new interface 
  • Prior to the release, the game's page talked about improved cinematic scenes, where the frame rate was raised from 15 to 60 fps. The reviews say that in fact there are few reworked passages. Now in the description Enchanced Edition in Steam there is no mention of 60 fps.
  • The zoom is awful: users suspect that Nightdive used too simple AI algorithm, which makes the updated image look too blurry and left without a number of details - for example, the rain looks worse.
  • Extended subtitle support does not apply to cut scenes
  • There are new bugs: shooting is triggered every other time, there are departures from the game 


Author of the portal Rock Paper Shotgun and the amateur Blade Runner come to the conclusion that the remaster has only two advantages over the original: the version for consoles and support for controllers. In everything else Enchanced Edition loses to the original if you run it through the popular amateur ScummVM engine. 

It seems Nightdive has not yet given official comments on the situation with Enchanced Edition: the studio has just mentioned that it is going to fix a bug that prevents the choice of voice acting in other stated languages. But at least one update Enchanced Edition has already received Steam users can run the original version of Blade Runner paired with ScummVM. 

The other Steam products, where Nightdive is listed as a developer, there are no similar negative reviews.