Blade Runner is a Westwood Studios PC game loosely based on the 1982 movie of the same name. Released in 1997, the game was advertised as "the first real time adventure game". The story featured "Blade Runner" Ray McCoy searching for replicants in Los Angeles in the year 2019.
| Blade Runner | |
|---|---|
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| Developer(s) | Westwood Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Virgin Interactive Entertainment |
| Engine | Voxel Plus |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows |
| Release | November 21,1997 |
| Genre(s) | Adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
While it was generally agreed that the game's graphics and sound (music composed by Frank Klepacki) succeeded in adapting the cult film's haunting atmosphere, the designers' attempt at innovating gameplay such as simplifying the interface, adding action elements, replacing a traditional inventory with a database of clues, randomization of some events as well as multiple endings were given mixed reviews. The game performed poorly commercially, and since it coincided with the release of LucasArts' Curse of Monkey Island, another commercial flop, many deemed the adventure genre to have become a stale one, thus losing its mainstream status to FPS titles like Quake II and Half-Life.[citation needed]
Background and plotline
The Blade Runner videogame is based on the 1982 movie of the same name. The game is set not long after the beginning of the movie (we can see this as Tyrell hasn't been killed yet, as well as many more minor plot details, such as Holden having been attacked and taken out of commission and, in an optional meeting with Tyrell, the mention of Tyrell being in a meeting with Deckard earlier that day), in November of 2019. Our protagonist, Ray McCoy, is a rookie Bladerunner under command of Guzza, a police officer of superior rank. True to the film, the environment is similar, a dystopian, heavily polluted Los Angeles, brought to life by the fledgling 3D Real Time technology of the day. Also included are some landmarks from the movie, such as the dominating Tyrell pyramid structures.
McCoy is faced with the task of tracking down a group of replicants and "retiring" (killing) them. The game is unique to the point and click genre in that it begins in a highly complicated fashion, and continues that way untill the game's conclusions. The player progresses through a number of crime scenes, in which they must gather evidence, this is a matter of being highly observant of their surroundings as well as using techniques typical of detectives.
Gameplay
The Blade Runner videogame is notable for its accurate-to-the-movie, even lovingly-imitated environments, and for remaining quite true to Philip K Dick's novel. The game is in some ways even truer to the book than was the movie, in that Ray McCoy is more troubled by his identity than the film version of Deckard - much like the book's version of said character. Ray laments through a character named Lucy, who faces a similar dilemma; the theme is carried further by the many choices the player can make for Ray, which determine his eventual fate. Puzzle solving is a major element of the game: one must solve a number of compulsory puzzles and find a number of clues in order to progress the game's storyline.
Clues are found by searching crime scenes and areas in general, the first such scene being a trashed pet shop in the wake of a robbery. Clues come in the form of items, photographs, personal interviews or unusual markings. One can also use the ESPER system, located in the police precinct and in McCoy's apartment, to enhance photos, potentially finding some crucial information.
Combat in Blade Runner is occasional and extremely simplistic. There is one weapon in the game; Ray's standard issue police pistol. However different varieties of ammunition are available.
In 1997 when the game was released, Westwood promoted the game's then-unique "Real Time" system, which mainly comprises a series of scripted character paths and events; which should in theory add up to a highly replayable game. The game also includes considerable randomization of certain events, but ultimately these do not have a major effect. The alignment of certain characters (whether they are human or replicant) also varies between playthroughs, and an experienced player can tell what certain characters will be from the evidence collected - e.g. whether McCoy perceives a suspect as an expert or amateur bomber. The game includes thirteen different endings, some of which vary slightly depending on choice. Much akin to Philip K Dick's writing (or many crime novels), the game deceives and confuses the player intermittently, before eventually allowing them to witness Ray's destiny.
Major characters
Ray McCoy
Ray McCoy is the game's protagonist and a rookie police officer, with the badge number BR 61 661. He is younger and less experienced than his film counterpart Deckard, since his recent assignment to the Blade Runner unit (officially known as Replicant Detection, or "Rep Detect"). Other Runners often treat him with condescension (Crystal, for example) or patronize him (such as Gaff). McCoy lives in an apartment building (apartment 88F) with his pet dog, Maggie, for whom he shows a great deal of affection.
During the course of the game Ray investigates several crimes, including animal murders (a serious crime in the dystopian world of Blade Runner), homicide or illegal weapons selling. Eventually, he is framed for the murder of Izo, a black market gun runner, by his superior, Lieutenant Guzza, who considers him dangerous to his business at the police station, which involves deals with black market providers or silencing of witnesses. Forced to hide, McCoy explores the dark, decrepit underworld of 2019 Los Angeles, which allows him to make contact with the Twins Luther and Lance, former Tyrell employees, and break into the Tyrell Corporation pyramids, to steal the basic DNA sequence for the NEXUS-6 replicant series. When the twins are given this data, they reward McCoy with a detailed report containing all evidence of Guzza's crimes, which McCoy uses to blackmail his former superior and force him to set his falsified record straight, and to set up a meeting in The Kipple, where Guzza used to meet his black market contacts. It is during this face-off that Guzza is wounded by Sadik's pulse rifle, and the decision as to what to do with him (the player can either run off from the scene or perform a coup de grace on the lieutenant). This decision affects the game's ending.
McCoy wears a light brown lounge suit, a dark tie and a brown trenchcoat, looking similar to Deckard. He uses a standard issue .45 blaster as his sidearm.
Roy McCoy is voiced by Mark Benninghofen.
Crystal Steele
Crystal Steele, badge number BR 61 354, is one of the most effective police officers in the LAPD Blade Runner unit. She is an excellent marksman, setting a near perfect score on the police shooting range, and also an exceptional undercover cop. She refers to replicants as skin-jobs and is very much in favour of their extermination. She also has rather unconventional methods of interrogating suspects, as evidenced by her questioning of Spencer Grigorian, who at first refused to give details about suspicious individuals in his group. However, in the second part of the same audio interview, he hastily describes them, and he sounds clearly shaken. In regards to Ray McCoy, she is playful, with a considerable amount of condescension towards the rookie.
Her cases often intersect with McCoy's, such as the aforementioned Tyrell manufacturing plant bombing, carried out by Sadik, one of the replicants involved in Izo's black market trade. Crystal also saves McCoy's life before he can be executed by two cops sent by Guzza to silence him. Shortly thereafter he is marked as a suspect and an APB is put out on him, but Steele lets him go, stating that he's "not on her list". Her fate in the game is ultimately tied to the player's actions, and she can either die (killed by the player or in an explosion set up by Sadik) or survive and pair up with McCoy following the retirement of Clovis, the rogue replicants' leader, in the Moonbus.
Crystal is voiced by Lisa Edelstein.
Gaff
Gaff is a character originally presented in the film. He is a competent, veteran cop who appears at various intervals to give advice to McCoy, who he seems to see as young and thus unpredictable. He taunts "You killed anyone yet?" in a semi-playful, semi-serious attempt to coax McCoy into a response. He shares Crystal's view on replicants, though to a lesser, more casual extent.
Lt. Guzza
Lt. Guzza is the boorish, overweight superior to McCoy and overall commander-in-chief of the Blade Runner unit following Bryant's leave. Guzza is rather unkempt and asocial, remaining in Bryant's office for most of Blade Runner's duration, appearing briefly in the Hawker's circle in the Animoid Row, where he is photographed by Izo, talking to a policeman looking strikingly similar to the one who later arrests and interrogates McCoy.
The arrest was set up by Guzza, who has framed McCoy for murder; McCoy was coming too close to discovering Guzza's illegal operations. These included dealing with replicants (despite his apparent hatred for them) and selling police grade weaponry on the black market. With use of incept photos provided by Clovis, Guzza marks Ray McCoy as a replicant, hoping that he will be removed. However, the framed Blade Runner manages to procure a detailed report of Guzza's illegal activities. Using this information, he eventually forces Guzza to dismiss the charges and clear his file, and makes him meet with McCoy deep underneath Los Angeles.
Guzza's most probable fate is to be killed during the meeting in The Kipple surrounding Los Angeles, and his body to disappear in the extremely toxic waste flowing beneath the city.
The character is voiced by Jeff Garlin.
Clovis
The leader of the renegade replicants on Earth, Clovis is a man of mystery - on one hand, he appears as a peaceful, highly educated man, eloquent and elegant, on the other he is sometimes a ruthless brute, capable of inhuman acts of aggression, as evidenced by his attack on the animals in Runciter's pet store. He led the hijacking of the Moonbus, which allowed him and his followers to arrive on Earth, seeking a way to extend their four year lifespan. He also wanted to see the serene and beautiful planet he learned about from books. The disappointment of seeing it devastated by the Terran war might have added to his determination.
Throughout the course of the game, he works to acquire different elements of replicant DNA in order to fulfil the goal of living and manages to coerce two Siamese twins, Luther and Lance, to bypass the virii encoded in the DNA and prolong the lifespan. The search for DNA would take him to Los Angeles DNA row, where Tyrell subcontractors work, without the corporation's security. Contacted contractors included Moraji, who designed the skin (leaving him to die with an explosive charge planted by Sadik next to him) and J.F. Sebastian, the nervous system designer. The search would even take Clovis to Tyrell's headquarters, where he confronted the doctor himself, almost killing him before the security intervened and forced him to jump through a window.
Clovis was an extremely intelligent man, similar to Roy Batty, who would carefully plan and execute those plans. When he struck a bargain with Guzza, which included false evidence to frame McCoy, he intended to coerce the detective into acquiring DNA data for him and eventually make him join the replicants.
His ultimate fate is highly dependent on the player's actions - if he chooses to ally with the replicants by shooting Guzza in the sewers, he can either make his way to the Moonbus and leave with him and Sadik, or, if he spared one of his potential love interests (Dektora or Lucy) he can leave with them via the ruined tunnel beneath Crazy Legs Larry's car dealership. In the former ending, Clovis survives and leads the replicants off-world, while in the latter he is shot on-board the Moonbus by Gaff. If the player chooses to side with the police, he assists Steele in killing the remaining renegade replicants, eventually confronting the resigned Clovis.
Clovis is voiced by Mark Rolston.
Minor Characters
Sadik, Zuben, Dektora, Luther & Lance (Siamese twins) and Gordo Frizz are the game's remaining replicants. Their characters develop in cut-scenes and the player's interactions with them. Their main goal is to evade "retirement", and to acquire the DNA sequences used to create them, which would allow them to live longer. They would then escape Earth on a hijacked moonbus. Some are neither aggressive or hateful towards human beings (Clovis and Sadik being exceptions on several occasions). The replicants are extremely wary of their status as fugitives. Some of the replicants hold down jobs: Zuben works in a Chinese restaurant as a chef; Dektora is a model/exotic dancer; and the twins are recently dismissed employees of the Tyrell corporation turned wheeler dealers; mostly in the business of passing artificial animals off as the genuine article; and Gordo Frizz is a comedian. Sadik, Dektora and Gordo may or may not be replicants, depending on how the plot unfolds. Clovis, Zuben and the twins are the only characters in the game who are guaranteed to be replicants on every playthrough.
Eldon Tyrell is another character originally presented in the film, the founder, CEO and owner of the Tyrell Corporation. He is a remarkable genius, being responsible for developing the basic DNA sequence for the NEXUS-6 series of replicants. He is good friends with Dr. Marcus Eisenduller, a gravity expert, and J.F. Sebastian, a DNA designer living in the Bradbury building in DNA Row in Los Angeles.
As he is not yet deceased, one assumes the game is set shortly after the beginning of the film. Tyrell owns an artificial owl, which is very rare, as owls were one of the first species to become extinct following World War III.
Lucy is a teenager of about 14 who is unsure whether she is a replicant or a human, and is very concerned as to which she truly is. The extent to which she can appear in the game depends on the player's actions. If she comes to interact with Ray, she grows very fond of him, seeing him as a dependable figure. Lucy may or may not be a replicant, but within the game is almost always identified as human, via the Voight-Kampff test.
Rachel is Tyrell's secretary, and as with Rachel in the film, is a replicant who mimics humans extremely well; she is modeled after Tyrell's niece. She is physically attractive, well spoken, brusque, and appears only briefly within the game. As she has not yet paired with Deckard, one again assumes the game is set shortly after the beginning of the movie. Her status as a confirmed replicant is not revealed in the game.
J.F. Sebastian is also similar to his film counterpart, a reclusive, genius, loner residing in the enormous, bleak and dilapidated Bradbury Building. He is accompanied only by his eerie robotic puppets and will ask McCoy personally do depart if the player attempts to enter his home at certain points in the game. He owns several futuristic devices, such as a synthetic egg creator. He is one of the chief scientists who assisted in the creation of the Nexus 6 replicant models.
Chew is another scientist who assisted the Tyrell corporation in the creation of replicants, unlike J.F Sebastian, his speciality is eyes. He is much like the Chew we see in the motion picture; highly intelligent, but at the same time a wary, eccentric and cautious person. He conducts his work in a small laboratory opposite the twins' apartment.
Bryant is the police captain of the precinct, but is supposedly absent from the game due to sick leave. His stand-in is the aforementioned Lieutenant Guzza.
Izo is a gun dealer of seemingly Asian descent specializing in the dealing of rare, high specification automatic guns. He supplies these weapons to the replicants and sympathizes with their cause. He also owns a Samurai sword, and when cornered he becomes highly aggressive. Prior to becoming a felon, he was a member of a fledgling replicant sympathizer group.
Bob is a grizzled veteran of World War III (which appears to have been a pivotal event a decade or so prior to 2019). He mentions that he served for around three and a half years. He owns a gunshop across the street from Animoid Row, and seems to be suffering from some physical disabilities. He appears to despise replicants even more than Crystal, though when a Voight-Kampff test is administered his result is almost always inconclusive. When he does receive a definitive result, it is almost always "human". Bob is the only character with whom the player's tampering with the Voight-Kampff test can alter the result; this allows the player to decide whether he is human or replicant, and therefore whether he can be killed by the player without any fear of repercussion.
Miscellaneous characters include the police station cops, who the player may interact with at certain crime scenes. The precinct's forensic examiner named Dino Klein. Mia and Murray, an elderly couple selling grilled tofu on Animoid Row, the shopkeepers of Animoid Row (including a Jamaica lady covertly selling cheese; a rare product in the Blade Runner universe due to the extinction and deaths of many mammals as well as the destruction of Earth's environment.) Howie Lee, the owner of a restaurant bearing his name in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles. The various storekeepers seen throughout the game, and "Crazy Legs Larry" a quick talking, paraplegic car salesman and the owner of a car sales room.
The Game Engine
The game engine was innovative for its time (1997), and many gaming magazines (notably PC Gamer) believed it was the future. It was the first real-time 3D game engine that didn't require or use a still rare and expensive, 3D graphics accelerator. Game designers Westwood achieved this through a self-developed technology based on "voxels" (pixels with width, height and depth). They went with the idea and expanded it, calling it "Voxels Plus".
The polygon data of every model was in the game just as it is in a modern day game, but it was not rendered as a 3D accelerator would, instead Westwood developed an advanced voxel-based technology so that they could escape the need for a 3D accelerator displaying the polygon geometry. Basically, instead of just having one two-dimensional voxel, they used dozens of rotating voxels in the shape and depth of the actual polygon model data, making it true real-time 3D without requiring 3D hardware.
In layman's term, it was piecing together flat "picture panels", rotating and positioning them in 3D-space thereby giving the illusion of a 3D object.
The 3D models look quite rough in-game due to the low amount of voxels used to display them; had the number of voxels had been raised to increase the detail the game would have become too slow to play. With the level of detail Westwood settled on, the game ran at a minimum of 15 FPS on slow systems.
By the time of release 3D accelerators were in reach of the average consumer. Therefore the need for this complex "workaround"-technology faded fast which indicates that Westwood released their technology too late. A few other games using "Voxel Plus"-technology were released after it, most notably the Delta Force computer game series in 1998.
In a 1997 pre-release interview with PC Gamer, a Westwood developer gives further details as to the developmeny process.[1]
Trivia
- In the game there is an amusement arcade called Hysteria Hall, in this hall Westwood Studios' Command and Conquer: Red Alert can be seen as an arcade machine. The screen is presumably in attract mode, and repeats a scene from some FMV in the game, depicting a jet flying through a canyon.
- Luther and Lance are listening to music during a cut-scene and argue over what to listen to. The music Lance switches to is 'Mechanical Man', a song from the soundtrack of another Westwood Studios release, Command and Conquer.
References
- ^ Westwood developer interview from PC-GAMER Vol. 4 No. 9 September 1997
External links
- Blade Runner Zone – Hosted by BRmovie.com
- BladeZone – Blade Runner the Game
- BRmovie.com – Blade Runner FAQ
- GameRankings reviews
- Blade Runner at MobyGames