Introduction

Wasn’t that a movie or something?
It started with Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which was then (loosely) adapted into a movie called Blade Runner in 1982. It was mostly about the nature of humans, and robots, and the definition of humanity, and blah blah blah blah. All the usual science fiction stuff. The term 'Blade Runner' didn’t appear in the original book; the film producers just picked it because it sounded cool. The movie pretty much bombed during its theatre run, but it became a cult classic over time, and the ‘future noir’ look of the film was subsequently copied by every gritty sci-fi film made over the following 20 years.

They made a game out of it?
It was an adventure title released in 1997 by the now defunct Westwood Studios. The game featured a 'real time 3D voxel engine', lovingly rendered environments lifted straight from the movie, and a pretty heady story for its day. A lot of the events are randomized as well, and there are something like 13 different endings, which makes for unpredictable encounters and some replayability. Of course, the game flopped horribly. Another adventure title, The Curse of Monkey Island, came out in the same month and suffered similarly tragic sales, and together they heralded the beginning of the end of the adventure game genre.

A year later, Westwood was purchased by Electronic Arts.

Do you get to play as… uhm… whoever the fuck Han Solo was playing in the movie?
Not really; it’s not a re-telling of the movie per se. You play Ray McCoy, a rookie cop assigned to the same division as Han Solo. It takes place at around the same time as the movie; you meet many of the same characters; you visit the same locales; Ray even dresses like Han Solo did in the movie. But no, it’s a different story. I’m so sorry.

Where’s the appeal then? I wanted to play Han Solo, damnit.
This game's got child molesters! Animal murderers! Yellow Peril-inspired dystopic environments! Voight-Kampff empathy tests! A character who smokes cigarettes, back when smoking was allowed in video games! Poetry-spouting emo bad guys! Lens flares! And of course, Blade Runner’s everlasting contribution to modern pop culture imagery... a fan slowly spinning in front of a light source:

The Let's Play Archive

Blade Runner

by Scorchy

Introduction

Table of Contents