Support NeoGAF

[Messofanego]

Really smart and on point stuff about the latest Tomb Raider from friend of GB and resident GAFer Cara Ellison:

http://caraellison.tumblr.com/post/94915454500/completed-the-latest-tomb-raider-for-the-third-time

Please give the whole writeup a read.

Look, Crystal Dynamics clearly wanted a bigger audience after the last Tomb Raider games. They looked at Uncharted and found a model of least resistance in game design that was accessible for everyone. No one ever gets stuck in Uncharted like you would in an early Tomb Raider game. People like even more combat and action taking a majority of the game. Platforming, people aren't fans of 3D platformers anymore. So why bring back skill when the trend was for a more automated experience? They were very smart and fit right into the risk-averse trends, and look they got 6 million copies sold. But the original Tomb Raider (1996) sold 7 million copies (video), think about that in context to today. They can afford to get more old-school players back.

Now that they have that bigger audience who've finally played a Tomb Raider game for the first time and enjoyed the tits out of it, they can bring in some of the challenge and pacing of the earlier games so that new players don't get a "1.5" feeling sequel and can see the improvements (when really it's just them going back to the roots). The original Tomb Raider felt like it had survival horror at its design, the reboot Tomb Raider just had that as an aesthetic (remember, the original vision of the reboot was more horror-oriented). They will adjust but appreciate if the game is harder than the first game (reboot) that they played. It could have an even more vast level of scope and scale with a slower pacing that accommodates, to get that next gen feel you get from God of War games. Get Gavin Rummery back on level design. Taking photographs fits right into that. It did with Beyond Good and Evil such as capturing pictures of exotic animals in the distance. People love their Team Ico games, Journey evoked that recently, the Souls games have been excellent at this, and Rime will hopefully too. Even the Uncharted games do some of that where they just want you to marvel at an environment, no dialogue, you just navigating a space and being alone with the main character's thoughts. If you add too much combat, it becomes predictable and you lose that buildup of tension that a level with just one tiger or a bear had in the previous games.

If I were to do it, this is how I’d do it.

1. Invest in environment artists and level design primarily, and get narrative designers in at the start. Plan to have large, gloomy, labyrinthine levels that intimidate the player, that scare the player. Use the Silent Hill method: there’s not usually any kind of enemy over the horizon most of the time, but you think there is and so you’re ready all the time.

2. Lara Croft is a tomb raider. She probably works alone. So keep her alone. The original painted her as a bachelorette. There’s no way she gives two shits about coming home to a man or a woman. This is a person who fucks and leaves. She’s rich: she’s the Bruce Wayne model. And there is nothing well-adjusted about Bruce Wayne or Lara Croft.

3. Understand that Lara Croft doesn’t even need to speak to have her be an interesting person, and so I would make her terse, so that she only speaks when she has to. She raids tombs because she likes the silence. Have her personality come through in the choices available to her. Steve Gaynor used to talk about this: what if a certain action were available to the player that demonstrated what sort of player you wanted to be, choices that change no variables in the game, but that tell you what kind of feeling you should have about it. Steve’s example was you could press a button at certain points to pray, but Lara’d probably take photographs. She’d probably document stuff. She’d probably cover her tracks for people trying to pursue her. Maybe she’d lay traps for the next tomb raiders. Maybe she would decide not to kill anything in the tombs - she’s an archaeologist. Why would she want to eliminate the things she finds on sight?

If you want to introduce other characters, have them be dead on spikes in tombs, and have her recognise them, Alien-style. Or have Lara try to lure her enemies into being dead on spikes in tombs.

4. Man what would I give to have Randy Smith make a Tomb Raider level.

5. Do not start a reboot. Lara Croft has been young and in pigtails a number of times already. We can accept who she is because we have known who she is for a number of years. In many ways she is as ubiquitous as Mario, even outside of video games, and I couldn’t give a fuck how or why a plumber started rescuing a princess from a giant green whatever Bowser is.

6. Make her older. Make her fucked off. Make her weary. Make her bad. Make her the Indiana Jones you see after he thinks Marion’s dead. Make her really quite aware of what she’s doing. Make her the Godfather of games. She knows she’s stealing history and you still admire her. Lara’s not young any more. Why are we treating her like she is? For some dumb idea of female attractiveness? Fuck that shit. Lara’s probably had spikes through every part of her body and I bet she has metal pins holding her limbs together. She’s sturdier than Ripley. You know who I think is a hero? A woman who doesn’t care who thinks she is fuckable. She lives in the dark. Who’s gonna look at her? A mummy?

7. Make the puzzles absolute bastards. And make Lara traverse scary places to solve them.

8. Give her fluid, satisfying hand-to-hand combat. Lara has long legs. She is a rich girl with access to as many trainers as you like. She is built for krav maga. Give her a shotgun and a pistol so that she has them if she needs them. Make ammo scarce. Try not to give her a machine gun unless there’s some sort of implausible set piece at the end of the game. She is a tomb raider. It is implausible that she would be responsible for a large scale massacre, because she would literally rather run away with the goods than stick around to get shot.

In other words, make her an actual Tomb Raider with strength and independence. Rhianna Pratchett is probably aching to make her the kind of character that Toby Gard would give props to. Heck, get him in as the consultant that he already is right now. Toby Gard and Rhianna Pratchett could make a better Lara Croft, they would have very similar goals. Make him a Kojima/Suda 51 level of creative director/producer that makes the hardcore fans follow if the new game has the franchise creator's eyes over it. Could even put his name or "original creator of Tomb Raider returns" in the headlines or the marketing of trailers. She can write the character the way she wants and Toby can make the game design fit that rather than end up like the ludonarrative dissonance of the reboot where it's obvious the writer and designers were in different rooms (young girl surviving the harshness, shudders at the thought of killing a deer or the first human and yet goes on a breezy multihundred rampage with a bit of torture porn on the side).

She is aware of that problem with the reboot, and would now with help be able to implement the character better along with the design:

Kill Screen: A lot of games that build suspense around the first kill. But then five minutes later, you’re mowing down bad guys like a champ. I did notice that Lara remained unseated throughout the entire experience when I was playing Tomb Raider.

Rhianna Pratchett: It’s about balancing the needs of gameplay with the needs of narrative. The needs of narrative don’t always trump the needs of gameplay. In fact, it’s usually the other way around. And so I’d say from a narrative perspective, we would have liked the ramp-up to be a bit slower. But, you know, there are other factors to be considered! When players get a gun, they generally want to use the gun. We were brave in going such a long time without giving players a gun in a game where you end up doing a lot of shooting. We tried to innovate a little bit, but narrative can’t always win. Ideally if you can find a sweet spot, that’s great. But sometimes combat, or gameplay or whatever, has to win out.

Ease up on the combat pacing. Previous games had combat against human baddies but they were paced like big encounters, not run-of-the-mill shooting galleries. Have more animals and creatures attack Lara Croft. That wolf from the bushes attack in the reboot, great, more of that! It didn't even have QTEs! Have more of the disempowered sections that you still have in many modern action-adventure games where some weapons are taken away like the bloody assault rifles in the gif above.

I'm not even a big Tomb Raider guy. I played the first two games, loved them, really liked Legend (2007), didn't play the others, but was very disappointed with the reboot. I still appreciate what the older games can teach to modern games. The sequel could have more agile combat against humans like Legend shows. Have the platforming tied with the combat and level design to have a more natural flow than having divorced sections. The samurai assault battle near the end of the reboot has this (even if it became a one-woman army), and I wanted more of that kind.

Players are ready for a tougher, bigger, and better sequel. I don't want to end up a cynic towards a franchise's direction. Reboots don't get as much leeway from risk-averse design, but sequels do and there is expectation to. I think new fans would also like Tomb Raider to be a bit differentiated from Uncharted or "Uncharted but better" in the design. I think fans would be receptive to that.

Even Tricky I Shadow

Square Enix wants "Tomb Raider to be the best game of the generation", I'm sure such a sequel could raise that Metacritic score a bit higher

What I basically want is old Tomb Raider design philosophy to reign over some of the new Tomb Raider. We just had that with Wolfenstein: The New Order recently. We can have the best of both worlds in a sequel.

 

[Acquiescence]

That Ellen Page. She just seems to appear everywhere these days.

 

[DNAbro]

This is a lot of text and points but I do not expect Rise to do many of these things. They did say you would actually do more tomb raiding right?

 

[Setsuna]

That Ellen Page. She just seems to appear everywhere these days.

Not ellen page

 

[I Wanna Be The Guy]

Legend was a fucking awful TR game and was the first example of dumbing the series down to appeal to a casual audience.

But at the same time Legend is what gives me hope for ROTTR. Why? Because after Legend we got Anniversary and Underworld. Foundation of core mechanics were laid in Legend and the real TR games are what followed. I have faith something similar will happen with ROTTR.

 

[Corleth the Fey]

Lara Croft, "I hate tombs".

I wouldn't trust Crystal Dynamics to make good on anything with this sequel. They've used Microsoft's cash to hide from the next Uncharted release. Why would they need to, if they were actually making a Tomb Raider game this time?

 

[JohngPR]

I enjoyed the first half of Tomb Raider (2013) more than I enjoyed the second. It seems like they tried to hold in the fact that the game was just going to be a shooter for as long as they could but it ultimately lost that feeling they were going for.

I like the idea that Lara had to do some murderous shit to survive the island. Perhaps some things she's not proud of. It's an interesting arc, but I think they took the murderous angle a bit too far. Maybe they can at least use that experience to make her respect life more rather than have her devalue it further and make another shooter. Despite enjoying the mechanics of the first game, I really was hoping for less shooting and more exploring. The little exploring there was was actually fun, more of that please! This was her origin story so I wasn't expecting her to just be Lara Croft as we know her right off the bat.

Tomb Raider has a harder time striking this balance than a game like Uncharted because Nathan Drake was branded a bit of a scoundrel from the beginning. There weren't any illusions to him not caring to taking a life. That precedence was established from the outset.

 

[op_ivy]

i think the latest tomb raider game was great fun and only needs a few small adjustments to really go to the next level (more and larger tombs, more open environments). this is more likely the path rise will take, and i'm fine with it.

OP is dream list territory, but has some good ideas.i like this part...

Now that they have that bigger audience who've finally played a Tomb Raider game for the first time and enjoyed the tits out of it, they can bring in some of the challenge and pacing of the earlier games so that new players don't get a "1.5" feeling sequel and can see the improvements (when really it's just them going back to the roots).

... and i like the idea of using a camera.

but yeah, for the most part expect more of the same and hope for more of the past.

 

[Poona]

Yes, more tombs, exploring, underwater swimming, swan diving, croft manor (just a place to mess about and maybe a bit more) and Lara just generally being acrobatic again is what I'm hoping for.

Oh and less qtes.

 

[Messofanego]

Legend was a fucking awful TR game and was the first example of dumbing the series down to appeal to a casual audience.

But at the same time Legend is what gives me hope for ROTTR. Why? Because after Legend we got Anniversary and Underworld. Foundation of core mechanics were laid in Legend and the real TR games are what followed. I have faith something similar will happen with ROTTR.

I did play some Anniversary last year after the reboot, liked it quite a bit and yeah Underworld was cool as heck in parts like the swimming. Seriously, new Tomb Raider should have swimming.

 

[Galactic Fork]

I enjoyed the 2013 game, but that was by disassociating it with the Tomb Raider series. I was playing One Woman Army on Pirate-Cult Island. When I discovered the Tombs were optional one room little puzzles, the Tomb Raideryness was sucked right out of it (plus there was my murderous rampage with a hammer). I consider Tomb Raider to be truly dead, but I will still play the shit out of One Woman Army in Random Commando Rainforest, or One Woman Army in Drug Smuggler Pyramid.

 

[Escape Goat]

The gun thing makes sense. Lara went all FPS with guns in the last game.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

Its gonna be another not-Uncharted game and you're gonna like it

 

[Messofanego]

I enjoyed the 2013 game, but that was by disassociating it with the Tomb Raider series. I was playing One Woman Army on Pirate-Cult Island. When I discovered the Tombs were optional one room little puzzles, the Tomb Raideryness was sucked right out of it (plus there was my murderous rampage with a hammer). I consider Tomb Raider to be truly dead, but I will still play the shit out of One Woman Army in Random Commando Rainforest, or One Woman Army in Drug Smuggler Pyramid.

Just want more Tomb Raiding, damnit!

Easily the biggest disappointment of the reboot, and I'm sure Crystal Dynamics is working to improve that. They kept on saying before the game came out that the tomb raiding would be substantive, but failed on that promise.

 

[Alienous]

Woah.

What the fuck?

Wow.

 

[mrklaw]

They can afford to get more old-school players back.

Now that they have that bigger audience who've finally played a Tomb Raider game for the first time and enjoyed the tits out of it,

It seems they can afford to get less old school players back..

Agree with the article though, but then I was really fine with the previous games. I thought their tiny tomb sections were too puzzley, I'd prefer larger tombs with more exploration rather than lever puzzles

 

[kick51]

i will wait and see. Too many switcheroos in the game industry.

 

[pixlexic]

I think the reboot was trying to be too much like UC. tone down the waves of shooting badguys and the game would have been perfect.

 

[Galactic Fork]

Just want more Tomb Raiding, damnit!

Easily the biggest disappointment of the reboot, and I'm sure Crystal Dynamics is working to improve that. They kept on saying before the game came out that the tomb raiding would be substantive, but failed on that promise.

Eh, I think that ship's sailed. Tomb now equals cave with a puzzle. In the newer games, the cave might have... Three Puzzles! Separated by an army of dudes probably.

Woah.

What the fuck?

Wow.

Yeah, with my hammer I felt the game developers were channeling Rockstar back when they made Manhunt. Just imagine if she found a plastic bag... Gives me shivers.

 

[Amir0x]

Even though I have a zero percent optimism that they are going to smarten up and change their horrendous checklist-game-design-by-comittee abomination for the sequel, I hope you are right. I hope they used TR2013 to lure skill-averse gamers into the fold, so they can smack them upside the head in the sequel.

The interesting thing about TR2013, at least the only interesting thing as far as I am concerned, is that the actual platforming mechanics (that is to say, the way Lara Croft moves/jumps and her momentum) are drastically better than they were in any of the other Crystal Dynamics titles. But the entire game designed around those mechanics was atrocious. There wasn't a single need to get any better at anything. The window of error for jumps was so comically large that I probably could have closed my eyes and gained victory in all these obstacles. None of the levels were designed to challenge you or even interest you. As far as I can tell, they are there simply to provide pretty backdrops, because they certainly aren't there to demonstrate quality level design or anything.

In the original Tomb Raider games, you frequently had sprawling, brilliantly epic multiroom puzzles that didn't only require your brain - they often required your quick reflexes and application of your acquired skills to that point. You might solve a particularly hard puzzle, only to realize that now a clock is ticking and you have to navigate an obscenely difficult platforming obstacle course to make it an slide under the door before it closes.

There is nothing that even remotely comes close to the tension and rewarding nature of the best of OG Tomb Raider such as illustrated in that door example above. Bridges cinematically breaking around you to not threat of your own body as long as you press forward is not close. I don't know how anyone on Earth thought this was a good exchange, eliminating the only franchise left in the industry that still played this impressively for... that.... Uncharted/gore/AAA clone.

Back in the day, you didn't need the sounds of bullets echoing off the walls to be entertained. Tomb Raider 2013 thinks the only point to games IS to shoot bullets or arrows. 80% of my time in that game was spent navigating from one combat encounter to the next. OG TR fans used to mock whenever a TR game started bringing in too much combat, because we all knew that was never the point. The point was trying to use your wits and skills to navigate an ever increasing series of trap/obstacle courses and puzzle rooms whilst platforming in a very precise manner. People complain about the controls, but they were extremely deliberate and predictable, meaning the second you got a handle on them - and the learning curve was relatively steep, admittedly - the entire game benefited from the application of its precision. You jumped in a grid pattern, and so all your moves were able to be mapped out down to the second.

No, when OG Tomb Raider was around, the only thing gamers needed to keep them comfortable at night was the haunting screams of Lara Croft as she plummets to her doom for the 12th time after you yet again miss that swinging pole to get to the other side. Maybe you can't quite make that jump? But it's so close... I see Lara extending her hand to grab it. Maybe if I edge myself closer to the corner next time and--- ahhhh no. Dead again. And I loved every moment of it.



Like, I don't care that a franchise isn't for me. What I care about is when you appropriate a franchise for your own use, and then edit out every single thing that could even tangentially be related to that franchise - Tomb Raider - we know and love. At least have some respect for a cherished franchise and show you get what it's all about. What happened was the literal definition of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Anyway, I really enjoyed reading this article, I agree with a lot of the points, but think she needs to be even more definitive in the changes.

They can for example keep the actual Lara Croft physics/momentum of TR2013 and make a game that plays like the classics of old, if they so chose. It'd be a miracle at this point if it went down that way, but I'm always one or hope.

 

[Setsuna]

I did play some Anniversary last year after the reboot, liked it quite a bit and yeah Underworld was cool as heck in parts like the swimming. Seriously, new Tomb Raider should have swimming.

Underworld was annoying as hell with the swimming. I had to go look at guides to see what i had to do because it was so confusing

 

[tanooki27]

Platforming, people aren't fans of 3D platformers anymore.

I wish this weren't the case. when done well they're so rewarding.

 

[aeolist]

they've already admitted that they have to play it super-safe by getting the microsoft exclusivity funding. square enix is so goddamn scared of losing any more money that there's no way the next game won't be just as heavy on the shooting and hand-holding setpieces.

the kind of tomb raider game you want can't exist in the current big-publisher landscape

 

[Amir0x]

they've already admitted that they have to play it super-safe by getting the microsoft exclusivity funding. square enix is so goddamn scared of losing any more money that there's no way the next game won't be just as heavy on the shooting and hand-holding setpieces.

the kind of tomb raider game you want can't exist in the current big-publisher landscape

they said they were going to play it safe in Rise of Tomb Raider!?

 

[tokkun]

Trying to use the sales numbers and Metacritic score of a game that came out 20 years ago as an argument for what design choices make sense today seems somewhat silly.

 

[Nightengale]

TR 2013 was released... well last year, so I wouldn't be too optimistic on any of the major changes asked in this. It's only got a two-year dev cycle for its 2015 Holiday release.

With that being said, I quite liked TR. It's really just the terrible characters, the occasional shoddy pacing, lack of tombs and less-than-satisfactory combat encounter that needs work, and those can probably be massively improved easily based on the feedback the devs have gotten on the same.

But the one thing that struck me really hard about the write-up was the part about level design that lets you marvel the environment... because I'm having a really hard time thinking of any environments in Tomb Raider that was visually memorable strictly on level-design.

Sure, the game had great set-pieces and a lot of areas that allowed for good exploration and combat layout, but I have a hard time remembering anyone vividly that wasn't 'Lara all bloodied up in an ancient temple with corpses all around.' The quiet moments of the game were at the camp... with those terrible characters.

 

[Amir0x]

Also, the music in the original TR is so great. Bring back the composer! *swoon*

With that being said, I quite liked TR. It's really just the terrible characters, the occasional shoddy pacing, lack of tombs and less-than-satisfactory combat encounter that needs work, and those can probably be massively improved easily based on the feedback the devs have gotten on the same.

Do you think the like six terrible puzzles in the game were well designed? Not a one even represented a shadow of the amazing puzzles that were in the old TR games. That was extremely disappointing as well to me.

And the platforming. Why design a game with solid platforming mechanics without a smooth difficulty curve throughout the game which gradually builds up the challenge of platforming until you have amazing skill-based balancing acts? If you never want players to die, and thus never face any tensions during these parts, why even have them at all? They're just elaborate sight seeing mechanics after that

 

[No_Style]

When I played TR2013, I avoided most of the brutal execution finishers because I didn't feel like it was her style. I mainly stuck with the bow and specced towards gathering, building and stealth. In fact, I saw many of the of executions for the first time via the GIFs during the backlash threads.

 

[Mman235]

Good article, I agree with just about every point except the supernatural one; turning it into a stupid last minute "twist" is the whole problem with it in modern games in the genre in the first place, it should just be a natural part of the setting like it was originally. You're exploring long-lost places with potentially millennia of history and strangeness, sometimes weird shit happens, or you encounter things no human ever has for centuries, deal with it or die.

 

[bidguy]

an old school tomb raider game could never survive in todays gaming landscape

its all about the uncharted shootbang with the occasional puzzle here and there, beautiful vistas and a little bit of platforming

people showed thats what they wanted by buying uncharted and CD and square are on their tail now

 

[Big_Al]

I really enjoyed Tomb Raider 2013 and I must admit I'm one of those people who doesn't give a fuck about ludonarrative dissonance in videogames so it's not something that's ever bothered me. Then again I don't care about the stories of the Tomb Raider games in general as they've never been the appealing factor about that series.

However I do want them to go back to more exploration and less combat. It's the reason I enjoyed those earlier games so much. I want better platforming and more open spaces to explore. Combat should be only now and again with a bigger variety of animals/wildlife stalking the areas too.

I just wonder if they'll go in that direction though, I'm assuming not tbh.

 

[Nightengale]

Do you think the like six terrible puzzles in the game were well designed? Not a one even represented a shadow of the amazing puzzles that were in the old TR games. That was extremely disappointing as well to me.

And the platforming. Why design a game with solid platforming mechanics without a smooth difficulty curve throughout the game which gradually builds up the challenge of platforming until you have amazing skill-based balancing acts? If you never want players to die, and thus never face any tensions during these parts, why even have them at all? They're just elaborate sight seeing mechanics after that

You know, my feeling when going through the motions of those terrible puzzle and 'so-called tombs' in the game was that "Am I playing an Assassin's Creed game?"

I then realised that the game evoked in me the feeling of going through the motions in AssCreed games of basically doing the collectibles and filling up those % completion points instead of having fun, and even AssCreed has memorable 'puzzles' every now and then.

 

[Messofanego]

There is nothing that even remotely comes close to the tension and rewarding nature of the best of OG Tomb Raider such as illustrated in that door example above. Bridges cinematically breaking around you to not threat of your own body as long as you press forward is not close. I don't know how anyone on Earth thought this was a good exchange, eliminating the only franchise left in the industry that still played this impressively for... that.... Uncharted/gore/AAA clone.

They can for example keep the actual Lara Croft physics/momentum of TR2013 and make a game that plays like the classics of old, if they so chose. It'd be a miracle at this point if it went down that way, but I'm always one or hope.

Like, the actual platforming is not horrible, it's just everything around it where it's just one direction:

 

[SillyEskimo]

The blogger is wearing some thick nostalgia glasses when trying to remember old Tomb Raider, that's for sure. Describing Lara's body in detail when it was such a low poly model reeks of projection. Scarce ammo? Not at all. Citing control issues as a positive thing? Get that shit outta here. Lara's deaths were traumatic? As in, they are no longer traumatic?!? What the hell? I could go on and on nitpicking the first part of her post.

Her second segment, addressing how she would improve the formula, is much more forgivable. TR reboot did have too much talking as well as too large a cast. I agree that there wasn't enough down time between shootouts and the puzzles were a bit too thin. However, I do not agree with the opinion that they should take Lara's persona down the suggested path. I think the reboot is moving in the right direction for that. As an opening game for a reboot of the series, I think it did almost everything right. The sequel will be the time to make things even more intimate and slower paced. I really like those suggestions.

 

[Galactic Fork]

Like, the actual platforming is not horrible, it's just everything around it where it's just one direction:

That's hardly platforming, that's a glorified QTE.

 

[Amir0x]

These points are real solid:

1) Few AAA games today let the player feel vulnerable in the way that Tomb Raider allowed. The environments were vast, cavernous, mysterious. Unsettling. Lara’s body was spindly, looked gymnastic yet somehow frail. Her bare skin was showing. The ambient sound was sinister, echoing, quietly insidious. The environments felt somehow claustrophobic and vast at the same time.

2) Tomb Raider used to be full of tension. Many of the elements of early Tomb Raiders, particularly the first and best, had more in common with Resident Evil and survival horror than it does with Uncharted. Animals would leap out at you with no warning; you had trouble navigating and controlling Lara just like Jill Valentine, you were constantly anticipating traps or failing bridges. Bats would take a lot of health off you. Lara’s scream as she fell was unsettling and stinging to the ear. Lara’s deaths were traumatic.

...


Indiana Jones’ primary job is to run away. Why are we making Lara Croft confront everything these days? In 1997 I made her run the fuck away.

So many times did I freak out flipping maniacally over some shit in the game.

I actually fractured my ankle as a result of Tomb Raider.

It was that one level where you first fight that T-Rex in the big open room, Lost Valley. Well before that there's a bunch of hallways you have to navigate, and I'm inching my way around peering into the absolute blackness at the end of every hall and sweating like crazy. my friend is totally eggin' me on, trying to make me nervous. He's played this part before, but he won't tell me what to expect. So I'm slowly inching forward and I hear some footsteps, loud. But I can't tell where it's from. I'm panning around jumping like an idiot trying to find some corner to look from so I have a good defensive post. Then out of my field of vision a Raptor leaps right past my shoulder, and I jump so far out of my chair in real life that when I landed I actually broke my ankle.

I screamed like a baby, but I also couldn't stop laughing my ass off at how ridiculous I was lol

 

[Leafhopper]

Like, the actual platforming is not horrible, it's just everything around it where it's just one direction:

Even when they did that kind of stuff in Uncharted, I wouldn't call that platforming. That's just holding up on the stick or your forward key on your keyboard and initiate QTEs.

 

[evilromero]

I just want to be able to explore my giant mansion again. That was honestly my favorite part of TR2.

 

[Bold One]

It will try to ape uncharted again it will be a pretender. The first game lacked a personality

 

[Nightengale]

However, I do not agree with the opinion that they should take Lara's persona down the suggested path. I think the reboot is moving in the right direction for that. As an opening game for a reboot of the series, I think it did almost everything right. The sequel will be the time to make things even more intimate and slower paced. I really like those suggestions.

Agreed on the persona thing.

I mean, I can understand her viewpoint, but it makes sense to want to reboot Lara Croft and give her an origin story. ( Granted, the actual character development motions could've been better ) But I'm really glad that Rise isn't planning to whitewash all the craziness that happened in the first game with the hints of major PTSD as a story point for her and that it's still going to be an origin story of sorts, since it's about her 'rise' as a Tomb Raider.

 

[Y2Kev]

an old school tomb raider game could never survive in todays gaming landscape

its all about the uncharted shootbang with the occasional puzzle here and there, beautiful vistas and a little bit of platforming

people showed thats what they wanted by buying uncharted and CD and square are on their tail now

Well, no, a $50MM-budgeted game couldn't survive aiming at the hardcore. But they're the ones choosing to make that kind of game. The core audience is plenty big if they wanted to make a game targeting the hardcore with lesser production values and less...you know, Michael Bayisms.

I mean, they kinda already do this. They make two Tomb Raider games: one isometric dungeon crawly game and one big budgeted action AfT game.

 

[Messofanego]

I don't want the sequels to become TRINO

Spoiler

(Tomb Raider In Name Only)

 

[grandwizard]

Similar to Cara Ellison's post, I really like this analysis of what the Tomb Raider reboot gets wrong by Jeremy Parish.

Presented as intricate and complex side adventures, in reality the bonus tombs each consist of little more than a single puzzle that requires you to apply basic game mechanics in a slightly more complex fashion than the designers dare to expect of you along the critical path. Any seasoned fan of the series can walk into these “challenging” bonus areas and deduce the solution at a glance… and just in case you take more than about two minutes to complete the task at hand, you get an on-screen prompt telling you to use Lara’s Detective Vision 2 to show you the solution. The message is clear: Please don’t hate this video game. You’re super-duper smart!!

 

[semiconscious]

Please give the whole writeup a read.

i did, & i liked it. it's very well stated, & it's the view of anyone, like myself, who enjoyed the first games, & missed the elements that made them unique in the new tr...

that said, i can, in no way, believe cd will go in this direction. the 'one moment touchy-feely, next moment over-the-top action/violence' thing has become so easily marketable that the time required to develop clever, well-designed levels & challenges would likely be looked at as a potentially unappealing waste of effort...

 

[Amir0x]

You know, my feeling when going through the motions of those terrible puzzle and 'so-called tombs' in the game was that "Am I playing an Assassin's Creed game?"

I then realised that the game evoked in me the feeling of going through the motions in AssCreed games of basically doing the collectibles and filling up those % completion points instead of having fun, and even AssCreed has memorable 'puzzles' every now and then.

Haha, oh yeah. The game loved throwing shining trinkets everywhere. I gave them props for making them examinable though and sometimes putting neat things on them. I gave them a +0.3 for effort there

In Tomb Raider OG, you had astonishingly well hidden relics which frequently, if you wanted to obtain it anyway, you'd have to push your skills to the absolute maximum. Some of them were quite hard to obtain. So even that exploration is rewarded with compelling gameplay.

Like, the actual platforming is not horrible, it's just everything around it where it's just one direction:

That's exactly what I was thinking of. The platforming mechanics of Lara Croft were actually surprisingly solid to me. I thought due to that it meant we would be getting extensive well designed platforming segments meant to challenge me and give me a palpable sense of achievement. Instead, not once - not even once - did such a segment exist. It crushed my soul

The thing that gets me is they could conceivably have cinematic moments like the bridge, whilst still making the platforming challenging and the level design compelling. But for some reason they were so frightened to offend any gamer. They were so worried that a player might die and therefore reject the game because they've been conditioned to flee whenever an obstacle presents itself. It is a sorry state of affairs I think. It's OK, developers. It's OK to gradually introduce mechanics and start them easy, and then slowly throughout the course of the game build to a crescendo of crumbling platforms and wild shifting columns and barely-made-it ledge grabs where you have to time your leaps perfectly. Games in which you can die frequently are dramatically more tense than those in which you basically can't unless you're trying really hard. The reward at the end of the tunnel is infinitely larger than if you're just handed a victory.

I don't know why this truth was lost to so many gamers, but I hope it can one day change back again...

 

[SEGAvangelist]

TR 2013 was released... well last year, so I wouldn't be too optimistic on any of the major changes asked in this. It's only got a two-year dev cycle for its 2015 Holiday release.

With that being said, I quite liked TR. It's really just the terrible characters, the occasional shoddy pacing, lack of tombs and less-than-satisfactory combat encounter that needs work, and those can probably be massively improved easily based on the feedback the devs have gotten on the same.

But the one thing that struck me really hard about the write-up was the part about level design that lets you marvel the environment... because I'm having a really hard time thinking of any environments in Tomb Raider that was visually memorable strictly on level-design.

Sure, the game had great set-pieces and a lot of areas that allowed for good exploration and combat layout, but I have a hard time remembering anyone vividly that wasn't 'Lara all bloodied up in an ancient temple with corpses all around.' The quiet moments of the game were at the camp... with those terrible characters.

It was released March 2013 and this game is being released late in 2015. So it looks more like a 2.5 year cycle? That's plenty long for a sequel.

I hope we see more Metroid influenced level design. That was my favorite thing about the reboot.

 

[Bold One]

Wrong thread

 

[Nightengale]

Haha, oh yeah. The game loved throwing shining trinkets everywhere. I gave them props for making them examinable though and sometimes putting neat things on them. I gave them a +0.3 for effort there .

I really enjoyed all those inter-connected diary logs from the collectibles. ( well, except the ones about your crew mates) Those were good.

 

[Shinta]

Honestly, I think it is obvious that this is the direction they're going to go in. The whole first game is about the transition from normal girl, to hardened warrior and resourceful explorer. She literally learns about the basics of climbing in the game.

They were more focused on making that emotional connection so that she felt more like a believable person, which I thought was a huge step forward for the series. Climbing the communications tower was her big "getting over the fear of heights moment." Breaking out of custody was her "getting over killing moment." The end of the game then sets up the sequel perfectly with her

Spoiler

finally getting the double pistols.

The whole thing was about her becoming THE Tomb Raider. If that wasn't clear enough, the title of the next game is Rise of the Tomb Raider, and she's outside a tomb. I'm sure they heard the criticism of the past game and will be adding in more in depth tombs.

Those of you expecting Tomb Raider (PS1) should just give it up. It'll be like the first game, with more in depth tombs, which sounds great to me.

 

[Ricky_R]

So they want to trick those who got TB2013 because it was a more accessible game to get a sequel that will not be as accessible?

Aren't most old school TR fans, PlayStation fans also, anyway? I understand what they're saying, but I'm not sure this line of thinking is doing themselves any favors by getting it out there.

I still want the game and CD to be successful, but I think they just need to let the game do the talking. We've enough words these past few days.