Blade Runner

About Blade Runner

Blade Runner (1997) is Westwood Studios' "real-time 3D adventure", a sidequel to Ridley Scott's film in which rookie Blade Runner Ray McCoy hunts replicants in 2019 Los Angeles, with randomised suspects and thirteen endings.

Blade Runner in Depth

Shortly after the film begins, McCoy is assigned to track down replicants suspected of slaughtering animals, a crime almost as serious as murder because most species are extinct. His investigation leads to a frame-up by the corrupt Lieutenant Guzza and into the underworld of Los Angeles. The story runs parallel to the film's, recreating its locations and some scenes and music; Deckard is mentioned and seen but never speaks, while Sean Young, Brion James, James Hong, Joe Turkel and William Sanderson reprise their roles. The supporting cast includes Lisa Edelstein as fellow Blade Runner Crystal Steele, Mark Rolston as the replicant leader Clovis and Pauley Perrette as fourteen-year-old Lucy Devlin.

Play centres on detective work: searching crime scenes, questioning suspects and analysing clues, which are filed automatically in McCoy's Knowledge Integration Assistant. The ESPER system enhances photographs to reveal hidden details, and the Voight-Kampff machine tests whether subjects are replicants by watching needles as the player chooses questions of low, medium or high intensity, after which the player can kill, arrest or release them. Which characters are replicants is randomised each game. McCoy's attitude in conversation can be set from Polite to Surly or Erratic, or chosen line by line, and the world runs in real time, with other characters pursuing their own aims, leading to one of thirteen endings.

Making Blade Runner

Westwood Studios developed Blade Runner and Virgin Interactive published it for Windows in November 1997. Advertised as a "real-time 3D adventure game", it was one of the first adventures to combine 3D characters with a world that progressed in real time. It was a commercial success, selling over a million copies, and received generally positive reviews, averaging 77% on GameRankings. Next Generation gave it four stars, saying "all movie-licensed game publishers should take note", GamePro praised its faithfulness, cinematics and "riveting plot and slick style" while criticising the characters' "overwrought body language", and Science Fiction Weekly gave it an A+. It won the AIAS's PC Adventure Game of the Year and was nominated for PC Gamer's Best Adventure Game. Nightdive Studios and Alcon Entertainment released an Enhanced Edition for PC and consoles on 23 June 2022.