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Ian Milham (Hardline, Dead Space) joins Crystal Dynamics, directing next Tomb Raider

FelipeMGM

Member
Brian Horton was their game director on Rise Of The Tomb Raider, but as we all remember he left the studio in January for Infinity Ward

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. (August 26, 2016) – Crystal Dynamics is excited to announce that industry veteran Ian Milham has joined the studio in the role of Game Director on the Tomb Raider franchise.

Milham studied Illustration in school and has been making games for twenty years, starting as an environment artist and spending thirteen years as an Art Director before moving into a Creative Director role. For much of that time, he was Art Director on the Dead Space games at Electronic Arts, as part of the team that created the series and its sequels.

“Ian is one of those rare veterans who combines creativity, artistry, and passion into excellence on-screen. It’s a matching type of DNA that Crystal Dynamics has forged itself upon over these last few years,” said Scot Amos, co-Head of Studio at Crystal Dynamics. “We’re very excited to welcome Ian as the newest top-tier talent joining our studio. His attitude, aptitude, and aspirations for crafting great game experiences are perfectly aligned with who and what Crystal Dynamics is all about.”

“Adventure games have always been my first love,” said Milham. "When the opportunity came to join Crystal Dynamics, I had to jump on it. This is the home of Lara Croft, who is a legend in action-adventure gaming and a pillar of the industry. I’ve admired Crystal’s work for a while now, as they continue to deliver top notch narrative and spectacle, coupled with deep systems and player choice. I’m very excited about where the studio is headed and I’m eager to be a part of it.”
 

JayB1920

Member
Wow, Dead Space was certainly not lacking on the artistic side. Sounds like he has potential.

Yes I agree here. Fantastic art direction. He was also creative director on Battlefield Hardline. I just hope he is serious about his love for adventure games and understands Tomb Raider. Hope they continue taking steps back in the right direction with it like Rise did. The Tombs were nice but It still has a long way to go.

Was it ever officially confirmed there'd be a "next Tomb Raider" before? :eek: Awesome!

Not officially but it is definitely being worked on in some form.
 

Vlaphor

Member
Hopefully (but unlikely), they'll drop this NuLara nonsense and bring back the classic. NuLara from ROTR is the worst protagonist ever and is terrible enough on her own to keep me from being interested in another Tomb Raider.

If they have to bring her back (which again, they really don't, considering that 2013 Tomb Raider barely outsold TR2 and that was with TR2013 being two game on five platforms versus one game on two platforms and ROTR not selling too well currently. Nobody misses New Coke either), then add some enjoyment to what she does. She's going on world-spanning adventures, and yet in ROTR she acted like she hated every minute of it and wanted to be anywhere else, doing anything else, and she constantly either complained about it or just whined about everything else.

I know I've complained about this quite a bit, but Tomb Raider has always been one my favorite franchises and to see it reduced to the garbage heap of mediocrity and terrible writing that was ROTR just hurts. Tomb Raider can be better than this.
 

Lime

Member
Ian Milham, if you're reading this: Please no more explosions and scripted setpieces, it's completely ridiculous and it takes away any sense of importance and significance.

Christ, the beginning of the Rise of the Tomb Raider is basically just ADHD game design screaming at the player:

  • an
    avalance was triggered, ice sheets and walls
    are falling down,
  • then a
    Hind D
    showed up and b
    lasted the car with Lara in it which then skeets off a cliff which
    Lara somehow survives,
  • then
    she enters an old temple which is blown up by detonations and everything gets flooded,
  • and then she gets
    attacked by a huge bear
Crystal Dynamics have no restraint and think that they just need to throw scripted explosions at the player in order to keep them entertained. The problem is that you just become numb after a while because you know that (1) Lara has plot armor galore, (2) the writing is poorly done so you don't care about Mass Murderer Lara as a character at all, and (3) everything is just expensive scripted presentation without much player input

(or this example that someone posted - another helicopter once more!!!)
 

Teeth

Member
He's a member of GAF too (monkeypants). He used to post here a bunch during the lead up to Dead Space 2's release, though I doubt he has much time to do so anymore.

Congrats Ian if you're reading this!
 

Harlequin

Member
Regardless of who's in the director's seat, I doubt they'll depart from the reboot formula any time soon so we'll probably get a few more uninspired (or shall we say entirely too inspired?), generic, over-automated action shooters with the Tomb Raider name slapped on over the coming years. Though he does say that he loves adventure games so it would be great if he brought more of that back to the series and made it less action-heavy again.

But yeah, I just want Tomb Raider to go back to being the challenging 3D platformer it used to be TBH, though I'm not exactly hopeful in that regard.
 

J_Viper

Member
RTR was a highly entertaining action-fest, but I really wouldn't mind if they slowed it down next time.

Doubling down on the hubs and adding proper side-quests could be neat.
 

jelly

Member
Cool, it needs new direction. Fingers crossed, they aren't far off from making something really good.

Less collectables and more varied missions and side quests. More challenge in traversal. Enemy sandbox needs to be more interesting and challenging.
 

Nirolak

Mrgrgr
Congrats. He seemed to always like that type of gaming, and a lot of old Visceral staff are there, so it's a good fit.
 

martino

Member
Ian Milham, if you're reading this: Please no more explosions and scripted setpieces, it's completely ridiculous and it takes away any sense of importance and significance.

Christ, the beginning of the Rise of the Tomb Raider is basically just ADHD game design screaming at the player:

  • an
    avalance was triggered, ice sheets and walls
    are falling down,
  • then a
    Hind D
    showed up and b
    lasted the car with Lara in it which then skeets off a cliff which
    Lara somehow survives,
  • then
    she enters an old temple which is blown up by detonations and everything gets flooded,
  • and then she gets
    attacked by a huge bear
Crystal Dynamics have no restraint and think that they just need to throw scripted explosions at the player in order to keep them entertained. The problem is that you just become numb after a while because you know that (1) Lara has plot armor galore, (2) the writing is poorly done so you don't care about Mass Murderer Lara as a character at all, and (3) everything is just expensive scripted presentation without much player input

(or this example that someone posted - another helicopter once more!!!)

because helicopter does different if naughty god labelled ?
 
Very optomistic about this. New people on projects tend to have some fresh motivation, hopefully that projects into some fresh ideas.
 

Muffdraul

Member
Welp, I just lost a whole lot of interest in whether or not Dead Space 4 ever comes to fruition.

Congrats to MonkeyPants!
 

I Wanna Be The Guy

U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Ian Milham, if you're reading this: Please no more explosions and scripted setpieces, it's completely ridiculous and it takes away any sense of importance and significance.

Christ, the beginning of the Rise of the Tomb Raider is basically just ADHD game design screaming at the player:

  • an
    avalance was triggered, ice sheets and walls
    are falling down,
  • then a
    Hind D
    showed up and b
    lasted the car with Lara in it which then skeets off a cliff which
    Lara somehow survives,
  • then
    she enters an old temple which is blown up by detonations and everything gets flooded,
  • and then she gets
    attacked by a huge bear
Crystal Dynamics have no restraint and think that they just need to throw scripted explosions at the player in order to keep them entertained. The problem is that you just become numb after a while because you know that (1) Lara has plot armor galore, (2) the writing is poorly done so you don't care about Mass Murderer Lara as a character at all, and (3) everything is just expensive scripted presentation without much player input

(or this example that someone posted - another helicopter once more!!!)
I'm playing Uncharted 4 at the moment. It sounds like you're describing that game. Everything is breaking. Everything is exploding. The gameplay is for the most part limited in player input and scripted as hell. That's just the way third person action adventure games are these days sadly.
 
Not saying much. But my eyes quickly went to BH and didn't even notice he worked on Dead Space. I love those games!

I really enjoyed Hardline. It had its issues like any game, but I really liked the fact that they made the game a lot more open compared to BF3 and 4 and even gave you the option to use stealth to avoid enemies or arrest or kill them. You could tell they were more inspired by the Bad Company games than the mainline titles.
 
Hopefully (but unlikely), they'll drop this NuLara nonsense and bring back the classic. NuLara from ROTR is the worst protagonist ever and is terrible enough on her own to keep me from being interested in another Tomb Raider.

lol what is this nonsense.

considering that 2013 Tomb Raider barely outsold TR2 and that was with TR2013 being two game on five platforms versus one game on two platforms and ROTR not selling too well currently.

TR2013 sold 8.5m copies it more than "barely" outsold RoTTR. RoTTR sales aren't anywhere near TR2013.
 

Garlador

Member
SE wouldn't be that dumb again. They did pretty severe damage to the brand with Rise.

NEVER underestimate SE's ability to learn the wrong lessons and do the wrong thing.

I hope they don't, though. That was a loss for pretty much everyone, so one would hope they don't repeat that unsavory ordeal.
 

Harlequin

Member
I'm playing Uncharted 4 at the moment. It sounds like you're describing that game. Everything is breaking. Everything is exploding. The gameplay is for the most part limited in player input and scripted as hell. That's just the way third person action adventure games are these days sadly.

Uncharted is Uncharted and Tomb Raider is Tomb Raider. What's par for the course for one can be totally unaccpetable for the other. And even if we were to resign ourselves to the idea that Tomb Raider should be an Uncharted clone, I'd still argue that Uncharted manages to do the whole action blockbuster spectacle thing a hell of a lot more elegantly than the Tomb Raider reboot games have. In Tomb Raider it tends to feel somewhat clumsy and arbitrary, whereas it's usually much more well-integrated in Uncharted.
 

Lime

Member
because helicopter does different if naughty god labelled ?

I'm playing Uncharted 4 at the moment. It sounds like you're describing that game. Everything is breaking. Everything is exploding. The gameplay is for the most part limited in player input and scripted as hell. That's just the way third person action adventure games are these days sadly.

Okay? So another game does something similarly. So what? I'm not talking about UC, I'm not sure why you mention it.

lol what is this nonsense.



TR2013 sold 8.5m copies it more than "barely" outsold RoTTR. RoTTR sales aren't anywhere near TR2013.

I'm not going to deny that it was perhaps a good strategy to copy the latest AAA action adventure principles and make a mish-mash of those ideas (cover-shooter, collect-a-thon, random XP, scripted setpieces, abundance of cutscenes, etc.), but the number in itself of 8.5 million copies was also due to SE selling the game for cheap in order to drive interest in the possible sequel.

Nirolak worded my point better in some other thread a while back, but amount of copies sold don't necessarily mean commercial success. As we saw, SE wasn't happy with the amount of revenue during its first couple of full-price months.
 
I'm not going to deny that it was perhaps a good strategy to copy the latest AAA action adventure principles and make a mish-mash of those ideas (cover-shooter, collect-a-thon, random XP, scripted setpieces, abundance of cutscenes, etc.), but the number in itself of 8.5 million copies was also due to SE selling the game for cheap in order to drive interest in the possible sequel.

Nirolak worded my point better in some other thread a while back, but amount of copies sold don't necessarily mean commercial success. As we saw, SE wasn't happy with the amount of revenue during its first couple of full-price months.

His argument wasn't about game quality, commercial succes or anything. It was that it barely outsold ROTTR. A factually incorrect statement.
 

ShutterMunster

Junior Member
The new Tomb Raider games can't get much lousier, narratively speaking. Hoping he's good at that because it's the only sore spot on two outstanding games.
 

Inuhanyou

Believes Dragon Quest is a franchise managed by Sony
I'm glad they are working on tomb raider 3 after what happend with tomb raider 2...i had thought this series was done
 

Vlaphor

Member
TR2013 sold 8.5m copies it more than "barely" outsold RoTTR. RoTTR sales aren't anywhere near TR2013.

When I said, TR2, I meant Tomb Raider 2, not ROTR. Until Tomb Raider 2013, TR2 was the highest selling Tomb Raider game. TR2013 barely sold better...but that's just in terms of total numbers. TR2013 was two games released on five platforms (Xbox360, XboxOne, PS3, PS4, and PC), whereas TR2 was just one game released on Playstation and PC...and TR2013 still only sold slightly better.

Keep in mind that I did generally like TR2013, but that version of Lara is nowhere near iconic enough to be irreplaceable, which is what my original statement was about. With ROTR not selling too well, I don't think anyone would blame SE if they took the "New Coke" approach to this reboot and just decide to bring the classic back.

I do still stand by my statement that NuLara from ROTR is the worst protagonist in any game ever though. To quote myself from a previous post again

She doesn't want to be there, she doesn't want to be doing what she's doing, she hates every minute of it, and she will make sure you are aware of that. That does not sound like a strong/well written character, it just sounds like angst and anger were used as shorthand for good character motivation.

NuLara in this game is worst protagonist in any game ever. I will say that a million times over, since she is the first protagonist that was so terrible that I was skipping cutscenes just so I wouldn't have to deal with her constant whining and dislike of everything she was doing. Classic Lara had fun with what she was doing, and that fun transferred to the player. Classic Lara Croft for life.

You ever go somewhere with someone who doesn't want to be there and constantly complains about it, in an attempt to drag down the experience for everyone else? That's NuLara from ROTR.

You ever read Achewood? Play ROTR and you'll know what a world-spanning action-adventure starring Roast Beef would be like...but even more depressing, since Roast Beef does occasionally look for happiness, whereas NuLara obviously hates it and refuses to let herself feel any of it for a second.
 
If Rihanna Pratchett is writing the next game then the current new narrative they have for Lara is probably gonna continue the same. ROTR ended with
Lara ready to go to war against Trinity, a heavily militarized organization.
Lara Croft is an action hero now.
 

x-Lundz-x

Member
The fact that this confirms tomb raider 3 is in development makes me the most happy. A dead space series veteran has me excited though! I would love to have Lara go on a true horror adventure.

I love the new series so this is awesome news. I swear to god if they do another exclusivity deal I'll fucking lose it. I own both platforms and always will but makes me so damn angry what they did with rise.
 

Harlequin

Member
If Rihanna Pratchett is writing the next game then the current new narrative they have for Lara is probably gonna continue the same. ROTR ended with
Lara ready to go to war against Trinity, a heavily militarized organization.
Lara Croft is an action hero now.

I'm not sure whether Rhianna is actually the problem. She's only one of several writers working on the games (Crystal does have an in-house narrative director, for example) and we know that most of the first reboot game's plot was already in place before she even started working on the project (for example, the only character in that game she actually came up with herself was Whitman, everyone else was already there beforehand) so the problem may well be one of the other writers on the team or just the way Crystal as a company approaches game writing, it's hard to tell.
 

dreamfall

Member
Just slow it down. Make Lara more capable, and not a bloody action superstar. Thoughtful platforming as the focus, elements of good horror.
 
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