FACING CERTAIN TOMB
The world is a character – and it doesn’t seem to like Lara very much
Duringthe hour we play, Lara treks through a variety of locations, and though we’re told Shadow will focus more on the people she’s with than the places she visits, it doesn’t mean the tombs get short shrift. Lead level designer Arne Oehme, who has an extensive background in photography and worked as the senior level designer on 2014’s Thief, speaks to us about telling a story via the space. He describes the story as itself an environment and the world as a character when we ask about his approach to level design. After your fair share of rock climbing, abseiling, deserved deaths across a secluded stretch of coastline, and then a brief dip into a water-logged cave, it’s time to corrupt some crypts. The cavernous Mayan tomb sees you scrambling your way across stone and a fair number of wooden structures that you hope haven’t rotted all the way through. Soon you run out of wall and are faced with only hanging platforms left to form your path. Skittering and jumping along blocks suspended from the ceiling, you try not to think about whether they’ll hold your weight… until the final platform dips down under you at the last moment. With a hasty leap of faith, Lara finds herself on solid ground once more and face to face with her first puzzle.
An engaging traversal from point A to point B, the trip also instils an uneasiness within us. We can’t trust the aged architecture of the tombs. This early one eases you into that sense of everything wanting to kill you, to echo Daniel Bisson’s words. The environment is very much its own entity and it might not be on your side.
But back to that puzzle. We don’t want to spoil too much – these things are best figured out for yourself. Though, when we ask Arne Oehme about secrets he may have left within levels, he draws our attention to a hidden space in the puzzle area, behind which Lara can attach a rope. He won’t tell us what is squirrelled away back there, only that it exists. Having missed this during our hands-on, we’re looking forward to discovering this, and any other secrets stashed away, in the final game.