SHADOW OF THE TOMB RAIDER
Eidos Montreal offers Jess Kinghorn an illuminating first look at Shadow Of The Tomb Raider
Behind the locked doors of Eidos Montreal, we play through Lara’s watery return.
When asked which PlayStation game he personally feels is the most influential of all time, David Anfossi, studio head of Eidos Montreal, gives a perhaps unsurprising answer: “My preferred Tomb Raider game was the one in 1996 […] I had this PlayStation with the skin, y’know, the Lara Croft skin. […] I would replay it every year.”
Fast forward more than two decades and the studio has revealed a 14 September release date for the closing arc of Lara’s new origin story. OPM is visiting to see the game in person.
Anfossi tells us he’s delighted with the project, citing an earlier conversation with Daniel Bisson, director of Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, in which he recalls saying, “Can you believe that I played that game […] and had such an amazing experience in ’96 and now I’m about to deliver, with talented people, a Tomb Raider game? Incredible!”
The reboot trilogy attempts to honour but also elevate the character of Lara Croft. 2013’s Tomb Raider was the first step in chipping away at what the team describe as the ‘Teflon’ aspect of the character; before this return, as many will remember, Lara Croft was a wise-cracking, dual-guntoting caricature that little ever adhered to. From the start of this new origin story trilogy, Lara has been shaped and irrevocably changed by her experiences. “In previous games she was reacting to the consequence of the actions of others,” Bisson himself explains.
Quite rightly, Bisson notes the more mutable nature of the rebooted version of Lara Croft. This made sense, sen given the first game’s focus on survival sur in the unforgiving, tropical environment env of Yamatai. Rise Of The Tomb Tom Raider then carried this forward, for pitting Lara against the elements ele in Siberia as she sought to discover dis the secrets of Kitezh before taking tak on the nefarious paramilitary organisation org Trinity. In Shadow, not only onl do these survival elements return, retu but Trinity is also back, and this thi time, as a late reveal in Rise shows sho us, it’s very much personal.
“Even though she was clumsy, she was wa always making the right decisions. ThThis game, she will not. […] And she will even cross the line of her own morality,” Bisson elaborates.
THERE WILL BE FLOOD
During our first hour of gameplay, we see just that poor decision making come to pass. In a well-hidden ruin, the path to which showcases greatly expanded underwater exploration, Lara comes across a mural detailing an ancient apocalyptic curse that will be triggered if a particular artefact is removed. Desperate to keep going and stay as far ahead of Trinity as possible, Lara wrests a dagger from its final resting place.
“LARA’S BEEN SHAPED AND IRREVOCABLY CHANGED BY HER EXPERIENCES.”
Immediately afterwards, a rumble is felt all around and we hear our protagonist mutter, “Oh God, what have I done?”
Leaving the tomb, we see exactly what: a flood of Biblical proportions. Forced to take cover beneath the surface of the rough waves, we see the remnants of life brutally interrupted. Scrabbling to higher ground, we witness ordinary people crying out moments before falling to their deaths. Our gaze is absolutely not averted from the great loss of human life caused by Lara’s actions.
Ominously, Bisson asks us, “Will she become what she’s fighting?”
IN GRAVE DANGER
In more ways than one, the third game presents a descent for Lara Croft. Not only is she an agent of destruction making questionable decisions, but this theme manifests in the world around her. Whereas Rise’s tombs revolved around ascension, tombs here involve an inversion of that theme.
In our hands-on with Shadow, underwater exploration features heavily. Rather than only taking us from A to B, these sections have been greatly expanded compared to how they appeared in Rise. As we pluck secrets and salvage alike from the underwater depths, Lara’s vision begins to fade in and out. Thankfully,
a well-placed air pocket saves her from becoming another watery occupant of the tomb.
The pressure to explore efficiently before you run out of air heightens the tension of the underwater sections, and we find we are taking a literal breath for confidence before we dive. When we do find a lonely pocket of air, the relief disorients us for a moment as we breach the water’s
“THE ONE-WORD ‘ELEVATOR PITCH’ FOR THIS GAME IS ‘FEAR’.”
surface. Peeking back underwater, our landmarks aren’t where we’re expecting them to be, and we cling to this safe little outpost as we wait for the world to click back into place before diving back in head-first.
FEARY TEST
Daniel Bisson explains to us that the one-word ‘elevator pitch’ for this game, the word that governs so much of its proceedings and design, is ‘fear.’
That theme does a lot to balance some of Lara’s new abilities, avoiding tipping the scales fully into power fantasy territory. Like in the two previous games, Lara is not invulnerable. Even in the hour we play, we see Lara doubled over in pain after a well-placed strike from the stock of a Trinity operative’s firearm. We see her in mortal peril and at the mercy of her own lung capacity during the flood. An early Mayan tomb features perilous platforms and devastating drops. Bisson stresses to us that in these tombs, “Everything wants to kill you.”
While we do have our fair share of deaths in the hour we play (mainly of the ‘misjudged jumps’ variety), we get the sense that the early tomb is easing us in gently, and when we put down our DualShock we’re looking forward to seeing just how far the final game takes this. With an early main menu screen prominently featuring a large, snarling feline and Trinity operatives armed to the teeth, we can imagine.
The atmosphere also never allows us to get complacent. The music and sound are very much like what you’d expect in the opening act of a horror movie; there are layers of barely perceptible noises, from the earthy creaks of wood to what sounded to us like a woman doomsaying barely above a whisper. Audio director Rob Bridgett told us that mixing those layers of sound together so that it felt natural was a challenge, and that the devs were pushing for a cinematic feel. Peering around corners in even supposedly safe areas and straining our ears for even the slightest hint of danger, we’d say they’ve nailed it.
The team additionally took a great deal of inspiration from the South American setting. Echoes of the death whistle’s wail can be heard throughout the sound design too (and if you’re hungry for side content, there’s even a clutch of them hidden around the early, aforementioned Mayan temple for you to shoot down. Despite being bright blue, they’re surprisingly tricky to track down). David Anfossi is eager to note that, while the story features a strong supernatural element, the devs did consult with a professor of Mayan culture to ensure the history and artefacts you find within the game had real-world grounding.
The supernatural has been a key component of Tomb Raider from the beginning, and the end of this origin arc is no different. With biblical floods and apocalyptic curses from the opening act, it certainly pokes its head in far earlier than previous entries. That said, we’re told that Shadow will have more of a balance
between these elements and realism. The early portion we play only gives the barest hints of this through Jonah and Lara’s interactions. Incidentally, the added depth to their relationship is refreshing (something we’ll talk more about shortly), and we look forward to seeing how this develops in the final game.
WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
Stealth has been elaborated on since Rise. Now Lara can merge into the plentiful, wall-clinging foliage and bushes that surround environments. Emerging to land a deadly blow on unsuspecting foes, she can then use that same flora to hide their bodies and minimise the likelihood that other Trinity soldiers will be alerted to her presence. The game avoids making Lara Croft go full Arnold Schwarzenegger, disappearing into Predator’s jungle, but the series’ welldocumented love of upgrades suggests that may actually not be too far off an endpoint for this origin story.
Gameplay director Vincent Monnier tells us that, with the jungle being very green and messy, one challenge was to have visually distinct gameplay sections. Visual signposting has long been a strength of the series. While it’s clear in Rise what foliage or ledge you can use, thanks to each’s uniform design, both are so well integrated into the world that each area still feels individual; our early encounters with Trinity helpfully feature a fecundity of greenery but do not feel like a closed loop.
The whole sneaking process is refined here, as opposed to the mad scrabble 2013’s stealth descended into all too often (though, to be fair to that game, we’ve never been the stealthiest bunch). In what we play of Shadow, there is at least one memorable section that necessitates ‘going loud,’ with bullets flying just as much as hastily crafted molotovs. Stealth is held front and centre for much of what we see, but the jury’s still out on
“LARA ISN’T SOLELY SURVIVING ANY MORE, SHE’S BECOME OBSESSIVE.”
exactly how much conflict you can sneak past. It’s not really an option for us, with each enemy placed in too prime a position not to eliminate one way or another if we want to proceed without further incident.
We are led down a carefully constructed path, from an atmospheric, candle-lit Day Of The Dead celebration, through to Trinity’s dig site, under water, then into a Mayan temple and the set-piece of the flood. It’s a familiar pace for reboot fans. Notably absent from what we see are the more open hub areas. With such a strong focus on the jungle in many of the conversations we have with the team, and seeing many luscious fronds throughout the hour we play, we suspect this is where those hub areas may make their return.
SKELETON CREW
But it’s not all tombs and striking back against shadowy, artefact-hungry groups. Script writer Jill Murray and narrative director Jason Dozois tell us that they wanted to refocus on the people around Lara, seeking to give her allies and antagonists more depth. This is perhaps most obvious in constant companion Jonah. Frequently a quietly supportive presence before now, our demo opens with the pair having a harried conversation about the supposed location of a muchsought-after tomb. As Lara breezes through an explanation about varying interpretations of a stone carving, it’s clear the two aren’t on the same page. This tension culminates after the flood, in a moment that Jill Murray told us was some of her favourite recent work.
Atop a building, an island of safety among apocalyptic circumstance, Lara tells Jonah what happened, that they need to stop Trinity and they need to leave now. Jonah resists the idea, saying they should stay and help the people left alive. When Lara dismisses this, in turn dismissing those displaced by the flood she caused, Jonah angrily snaps back “It’s not all about you, Lara.”
This isn’t the first time Lara has heard these words over the last few entries – that honour goes to Joslin Reyes in the first reboot game – but the fact that now even Jonah is saying them signifies the shift Bisson speaks of. Coming into view are aspects of the character we’ve not seen before; Lara isn’t solely surviving any more, she’s become obsessive to the point of exclusion of all else. Putting a spotlight on character flaws bubbling to the surface from the beginning adds depth and gives Croft another compelling layer of complexity that we can’t wait to see get fully fleshed out.
Emblematic of this new, uncertain direction, in the reveal trailer Lara wonders, “What will I become?” While we don’t have the answers now, we’re looking forward to uncovering them after Shadow Of The Tomb Raider’s release on 14 September.