No Cop out second season goes back to beginnings
A tomb. not a great place to be visiting in real life, particularly if your companion’s hinting you’re about to be buried in it. But in videogames, we can’t get enough of them. Since 1996’s original Tomb Raider we’ve loved seeking out treasures, triggering deadly traps and only just escaping the horrors that lurk within.
Their absence was the only flaw of 2013’s excellent reboot Tomb Raider. That game had great exploration, platforming, puzzles and combat... but where were our beloved tombs?
Brian Horton, game director on Rise Of The Tomb Raider, explains that tombs are back, and the scale has never been bigger. “Getting into them is interesting, solving them is more challenging, and just that journey of getting lost in a big exploration space and discovering them, it really has a nice feeling of reward.”
Graphically it’s outstanding, one of the Xbox One’s best looking games. But the team have kept the spirit of what makes the series special. “In a Tomb Raider game, there’s a point where you want to feel like you’re getting a sense of discovery at a certain cadence,” explains Horton. “So the Syria tomb was very well crafted to make the player feel that sense of discovery around most every corner. That was a big part of how we try to design our spaces.”
From the explosive climax of the Syrian tomb that opens the game, to Siberian ice tombs that are just begging to be explored, Rise Of The Tomb Raider is looking like an explorer’s paradise. Brian and his team have gone to great lengths to make this the most immersive Tomb Raider ever “We really put you into the shoes of Lara Croft. You’re discovering places that no one else has for maybe thousands of years, and have to use her smarts and wits to get through.”
Rise Of The Tomb Raider is released on Xbox One and Xbox 360 on 10 November.
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