In the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider, Lara Croft was a plucky young adventurer who wasn’t all that comfortable bashing peoples’ heads in. Not anymore!
In an extended gameplay preview shown today at Microsoft’s Gamescom press conference, we got to see Lara Croft in action in Rise of the Tomb Raider, the upcoming sequel to the acclaimed 2013 game. Today’s clip shows Lara slinking around in a camp full of bad guys at night — waiting for one of them to isolate themselves from the rest of the back before sneaking up and quietly assassinating them.
The gameplay looks familiar for players of the last Tomb Raider, which isn’t a bad thing by any means. But it’s also a tad more… aggressive than the original reboot (yes I realise how ridiculous “original reboot is as a phrase).
Lara seems much more comfortable going through the killing motions than she did in the last game, when every passage of stealth gameplay was driven (at least partly) by fear. Now, she reminds me more of the bearded badass Joel from The Last of Us. But maybe that’s just because of the way she wields a shotgun:
There are also a bunch of new types of kills on display in the trailer: stealth attacks Lara can perform when coming out of the water, for instance, or jump down on an enemy from on high if she’s climbed up a building.
And then there’s her trusty bow, which can now kill multiple enemies at once with a special attack. This is all part of the new game’s “Guerilla Combat” system, which sounds rad.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a timed Xbox One exclusive that’s coming out for that console this November. Other platforms will have to wait until 2016.
Comments
21 responses to “Lara Croft Has Gotten Over Her Fear Of Murder”
By the end of Tomb Raider, Lara was a goddess of deathmurder that the enemy mooks were terrified of.
Having a protagonist that’s uneasy with the idea of killing someone rarely works. Especially in games with achievements tied to killing enemies.
After that initial kill, there was never really any hesitance shown by Lara. She pretty much just killed every person she saw.
They could’ve done so much with this, to show her progression for innocent girl to killer extraordinare. Off the top of my head, they could’ve:
– had her bow draw strength gradually develop over the course of the game
– had her weapon drift improve as she gets used to guns
– had her randomly make mistakes to show her inexperience (shots miss, dropping mags when she reloads, really slow reload times with fumbling animations, occasional non-fatal melee attacks)
– had in action dialogue evolution a la Spec Ops The Line (“oh s**t, what have I done” becomes “… AND STAY DOWN!” etc.)
– had her climbing skills improve (not through game-like skill trees or anything, just faster and smoother and more efficient)
– had her occasionally break stealth accidentally (step on twings, bump noisy things off tables etc.)
A few of these things could have drastically improved the ludonarrative dissonance.
While I agree these things would have made more sense to the story, they would have been a huge pain in the ass. And I didn’t need any extra encouragement to watch those awesome death animations.
I disagree but then I value strong stories over “fun” gameplay. I appreciate that for most people compromising the former is acceptable to ensure the latter.
That’s a really interesting point, because I too value strong stories, but I would find the things you suggested would increase the difficulty, which means I would find it more frustrating to play all the gamey bits in between all the story bits. I see your point too though: make the gamey bits tie in with the story bits in a more logical and comprehensive way. They can’t all be winners I guess.
Maybe when Peter Molyneux joins the Tomb Raider team. 😉
Unless it was a wolf.
Yeah. If I remember correctly she outright says killing someone made it very clear to her that the decision to survive was easy. They added some depth to the character by making her feel concerned about her lack of concern, but at the end of the day she was fine with it.
I’m also going to assume that like the rape scene in the first game there’s more context to this than just Lara going Jason Voorhees on a bunch of friendly campers.
Yeah, I pretty much saw it as “I should feel bad about killing, shouldn’t I? Actually nah, screw these guys.”
Rape scene? I just replayed TR a few weeks ago and there isn’t anything close to rape in that game. A shite tonne of murder and violence, but nothing like rape.
But the guy totally implied something sexual in the 30 second footage of her being captured at the enemy camp. If that’s not a clear endorsement of sexual assault designed to titillate gamers into a rape frenzy I don’t know what is.
The rape frenzy is real…
It worked quite well in the original….reboot.
It explored the subject but didn’t bog the player down with it, we see her struggle with it before coming to terms with the fact that both her survival and that of her companions was more important.
I was so pissed about the exclusivity thing after enjoying the reboot so much, I knew it wouldn’t be permanent, wasn’t in SquareEnix’s best interest to do an exclusive, they are a big publisher, they don’t need to do exclusives. But I knew it would be at least a year until it came out on PC like with Ryse and Dead Rising 3, now that it turns out the PC gets it earlier and the PS4 needs to wait a year, I’m super excited for it!
thanks for rubbing that one in.
I think if you talk to anyone who’s killed as many people as Lara did in the reboot, they’ll tell you it loses its impact, too.
Note to self, stay on transient’s good side. He apparently has dangerous acquaintances.
=P
I really don’t need to watch anything about this game to know I want it. I will still wait for release and make sure there is not a buggy mess of a game before buying it immediately, but I will be buying eventually.
Speaking about the character development in the TR Reboot though, I think it was handled well and was quite emotional in different parts. I mean it was acted out quite well.. the anguish, the frustration, the pain etc..
Why have they turned Lara Croft into a merciless killer? Must they transform every video game protagonist into a murderer?
Lara has been a coldhearted gunslinger in every game shes ever been in. Its only with the reboot that the morality of her acts was even considered.
The only problems I even heard of with Lara’s ability to murder people was from game journalists and developers… Lara herself didn’t seem to mind massacring people… Quite the opposite.