Rise of the Tomb Raider, released in 2015, was an excellent game, so it’s no surprise that the new Shadow of the Tomb Raider being demoed at E3 looks and plays a lot like it. There were, however, three small changes that delighted me during the press demo I watched.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s behind closed doors demo showcased Lara Croft walking through a massive hidden city full of quest-givers, a change from the hostile surroundings of the last game.
In Shadow, Lara Croft has a new crisis to avert: Threat of Mayan apocalypse. Writer Jill Murray was on hand at E3 to narrate a playthrough they were demoing for journalists.
Murray mentioned that at a higher difficulty level, the game will reduce the number of markers there are in the environment that indicate what is climbable. So many games tip players off about what to climb by scuffing areas or displaying certain climbable objects in a specific colour. I’m intrigued to try a new Tomb Raider that doesn’t do that as much (she didn’t have specifics on if the markings go away completely).
Second, in the interest of increasing player’s stealth options, Lara Croft will be able to hide in vine-covered walls, go in and out of stealth more reliably, and, my favourite, put her hand in some mud and smear it on her face in a move that I guess must reduce her visibility. We saw that on display in the game’s stage demo during Square Enix’s press conference.
The third neat thing is that, while explaining and showing the game’s massive social space – a village full of people who had been isolated from the rest of the world for hundreds of years – Murray said that players will be able to activate an “immersion mode” that will change the villagers’ background dialogue from English or whatever the player’s local language is, to original Mayan.
I’m into all of that. More expected kinds of changes are coming with promises from the developers of more tombs, more puzzles, a rappelling system, and more underwater sequences. And that’s all mixed with familiar mechanics from the last game, including that neat thing where you can shoot a rope arrow at certain targets and make rope bridges.
This game is being made by Eidos Montreal, building on the work of collaborating studio Crystal Dynamics, which led the development of Rise of the Tomb Raider as well as 2013’s Tomb Raider. Shadow is slated for September 14 for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.
Oh, bonus detail for our own Nathan Grayson: There are llamas in the game, and you can pet them.
Comments
12 responses to “3 Small Ways Shadow Of The Tomb Raider Is Changing Things”
The biggest change they need to make is put some decent large-scale puzzles in the main storyline. Don’t relegate a handful of mediocre ones to side-quests. Is this tomb raider or not?
I’ve enjoyed the last couple but really miss the puzzles.
Ok, im keen.
Hoping after this they do some work to the engine, it feels like its getting dated with how the textures and animations were looking but still looks like its going to be a great game
Do it! Come on! Kill me now! I’m here!
Sounds a bit like The Forest. You can do the same, though you can find mud after rain and if it rains or you go for a swim it washes off.
I’ve always been a little bit puzzled by this.
Is the Predator deaf or what?
“There are llamas in the game, and you can pet them.”
Most important part.
Though not enough to guarantee GOTY status yet, since multiple games shown at E3 had doggos.
I found the last game terribly boring. Hope this is better.
You mean Rise? I also thought it was boring. My criticisms aren’t as strong as tslog’s comment below, but I just found it bland overall.
When I had put a good number of hours in I started to wonder if I was insane because I had heard that the plot was good or even great, but I found it totally uninspired.
I thought it went on way too long. Trying to turn it into this half-arsed open world game really didn’t suit it, it just felt like unnecessary padding in order to try and dilute it into this 40+ hour time sink that every game has to be these days. There was a really good, tight 10 – 15 hour long action adventure game buried in there somewhere.
Rise of the Tomb Raider Last game was below average.
had Bad cheap AI, crappy stealth, poor aspect of hunting animals, bland time wasting semi open world, possibly the worst assault rifle in history, and an embarrassing lead good guy….Some cut scenes were good and the start was good too.
I really hope they improve from the first game, because I never want to play Rise of Tomb Raider ever again
Yes please. I always feel cheated when an open-world game makes me look for something (or somewhere) but then makes it stand out like magical dogs bollocks, or worse, shows you where it is on the map. Especially when it’s a world that I’m already enjoying exploring. Horizon: Zero Dawn, I’m looking at you.
I would worry about how they do that. The issue I see with that is too many of these games have cliff edges or trees or whatever that look identical and should be easily climbable on 2 of the 3 are.
Has trial and error death written all over it with jumping across chasms
Another isolated village of people?