Blade Runner is a noir, and noir have tropes. Blade Runner hits those tropes.

"Is he a robot or not" could probably go clear back to "is she a witch or not". I mean, by the time Westworld had come out Star Trek had been off the air for six years and off the top of my head there's three "are they robots" episodes in there. I can think of a couple Twilight Zones, too. A quick dive down TV Tropes makes me hypothesize Pinocchio in 1883, which wouldn't exist without Frankenstein in 1818.

Ridley Scott is all about odd pacing. He comes from an art/commercial background and look matters far more than story. Tony Scott was far, far worse. Here's one of the most useless, slowest, most pointless openings of a vampire movie ever made that is also totally fucking awesome:

Blade runner is, most assuredly, style over substance. But that style, when it came out, was something. Here's Meg Ryan in 1982:

Here's Chevrolet in 1982:

Here's TV in 1982:

And, I mean:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billboard_Year-End_Hot_100_singles_of_1982

Blade Runner represented "another direction" almost as firmly as Star Wars had. I think most people who are still entirely too enamored of it definitely view it in context, while people who, like, weren't born yet will never really have the same relationship with it.