Amir0x said:
Yeah, I'd like to ask them two questions.
OK, Jeff Wajcs, the Lead Designer on LCGoL answered these for you:
Amir0x said:
One - what person or group of people specifically came up with the ideas for the cooperative nature of the grapple hook and the spear ladder? I know someone had to be the "golden go to" during the brain storming sessions, and they need to be duly acknowledged for their talent.
"The grapple rope was actually one of the first features we had prototyped, the climbing and swinging, at least. It was something we inherited from the previous Tomb Raider games, and it seemed natural enough to want to connect the two players with it. We fell in love with the leap of faith right away, especially the part where you can just let your buddy go and watch them die (We grief each other a lot). The grapple tightrope, my favorite grapple feature, also came in very early. There was some talk about the line having some elasticity, turning the tightrope into a trampoline, but that would have been a mess (and our programmers would have enough to do as it was).
The spear was harder. Lara had her grapple line from previous games, but what did Totec have? We hit upon a shield early enough. It was originally supposed to function as a glider in addition to reflecting bullets. I remember we had a spear before we had the shield jump. Jump-jump came later, after Neub (
Daniel Neuburger - Creative Director) convinced everybody that it was a) fun, and b) not going to break every level. Once we had one spear, we soon figured out that three spears was the right number. We discussed having the spear only stick into certain objects in the world (if only to make our lives easier), but again Neub insisted on a spear that stuck into everything because it was fun, and even though it did break everything to start off."
Amir0x said:
And two - What was the development philosophy behind Lara Croft? Specifically, how did you decide how much of the mainline Tomb Raider games you would take with you, and how much you would leave behind? Was there guidelines to how much of the spirit of the Tomb Raider games there should be, or did you have pretty much open season on every aspect?
"Our credo was fast paced adventure. GoL would still include the balance of puzzles, platforming, and combat that Tomb Raider has always had, but everything would be filtered through the lens of fast and fun. We went with the isometric perspective early in large part due to how engaging the combat became. The traditional lock-on style combat of previous games was ditched in favor of the more arcade-flavored combat we shipped with. Lara is still mowing down ancient horrors, but now she needs a bit more skill to do so.
Puzzles, usually the highlight of the Tomb Raider experience, were trickier. Again, fast and fun was the focus. Gone were the puzzles that spanned multiple rooms on opposite sides of the level. The goal of a puzzle must always be clear; the player should always know what they should do, just not how to do it. There was an added emphasis on physics and experimentation. Figuring out a puzzle meant playing with the pieces, as opposed to static thinking. Turns out that these kind of puzzles embodied the Tomb Raider spirit better than the epic exploration puzzles of games past.
Another big part of the Tomb Raider formula is the story. We prioritized gameplay first, and that meant keeping the story simple. This allowed us to do whatever we thought would be fun. A chase sequence featuring a giant fish monster usually wouldnt have a place in a more complicated narrative, but we were able to get away with it and the result was one of the teams favorite levels. Fun gameplay was the most important part. We definitely took a lot of risks with the formula, and it was amazing how much the final game still feels like a Tomb Raider game."
Opus Angelorum said:
@ Keir_Eidos
I'd interested to find out if the next Tomb Raider game has been changed at all based on the critical success of Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light.
Well, expect big things but that's all I can say because we're currently not talking about the next TR (frustratingly enough for me).
If there are any more questions anyone has let me know and I'll try and get them answered for you.
