Rebooting a legend - Tomb Raider

Amidst the chaos of a wrecked ship on jagged shores, 21 year-old Lara Croft and a motley crew of haggard and underqualified would-be tomb raiders find their feet and cough up sea water. Separated, Lara ekes her way across cliff-faces in some of the most beautiful environments seen at this year’s E3 - with an attention to detail placed on the animations and the contours of her skin which sucks you right in. Her arm reaches up to touch the mossy walls as rain slides down it in waves, she flinches in fear as lightning strikes, and is almost paralytic from cold, shivering and weeping as she lights her first campfire.

We’ve seen a lot on the new Tomb Raider game at this year’s E3 and last. It’s all still hands-off, but we’ve seen Lara use her tricks and straps to escape from a pirate’s den after having been tied and beaten (last year), seen her using pitch-perfect aim to utilise environmental elements to take down enemies in huge action sequences on stage at Microsoft this year, but the behind closed doors showing left those sequences for dead, putting Lara through a harrowing experience at the very beginning of the game.



Kyle Peschel, Senior Producer on the game, was on hand to answer some questions. “For clarity, I’d call it survival-action, rather than survival-simulation. It’s an action game about a woman and survival situations learning how to survive.”

Lara has to pry a bow and arrow from a hung corpse, skin a deer which hasn’t yet died from the wounds she’s inflicted, fight for her life with one leg caught in a rusty bear trap, fend off a savage pirate from the threat of sexual assault, be the only member of her party brave enough to head straight into harm’s way to find an escape route - and all while being subject to having her less competent party members talk her down and make bad decisions.

No, Crystal Dynamics aren’t being kind to young Lara, looking firmly to break her in order that she may be rebuilt.

Peschel continues, “I look at Batman Begins and I see a guy who’s not yet ready to be Batman. He’s trying to understand how to be that person.”

“Last time [at E3], we showed her in the middle of this den – it was this scavenger den – and she’s having to misuse this machine and use her own resourcefulness to get out, she reaches out onto that vista, that hook, that breath of fresh air and you’re thinking ‘phew’, then she looks out onto that graveyard of ships and you’re just thinking ‘Out of the frying pan and into the fire’.”
“So in this story, you see a girl. One who’s just trying to gather the will to survive - to overcome the odds. She sees things, endures things that shape her, that change her as a character.”



Being as the series has always been about using intellect to solve puzzles in an action-oriented environment, taking out enemies while being rather unfairly armed, the reboot is taking it even further by having the humble bow as an old-faithful weapon (even up against firearms), having Lara be physically weak (as well as the side-helping of being starved, cut, bruised and beaten while enduring the indignity of being frequently covered in dirt and various peoples’ blood), and having her unable to take charge of the situation on a social level due to her relative youth.

The E3 demo this year spent a significant portion of time showing you what Lara can do in pseudo-open environments. Tasked with an assortment of smaller quests in the opening section of the game we were privy to, we saw Lara have to create fire, find the other helpless members of her party, fend off wolves, find and fashion basic weapons and much else besides. The game varies play between bottlenecked one-path-only moments (wherein most of the action and danger happens) and periods of slower-paced resourcefulness wherein you’re given a small but open-ended area to roam around and equip Lara for her next ordeal.

The culmination of this year’s demo represented an ordeal where, cornered and alone, Lara fends off an horrific assault which carried overtones of getting much worse from a huge pirate, and finds herself pinned against the ground and being choked nearly to death, barely able to grasp his gun in a fleeting instant and tilt it up towards his head and pulling the trigger.

Peschel asked me how I felt, our discussion taking place immediately after those events.

“It was pretty harrowing.” I offer, and ask what he hopes players will get out of that experience.

“I hope they feel speechless!” he proclaims. “I hope they feel that they understand that threat coming at her and how she’s dealing with it!”

“In this gameplay, we don’t go through all the permutations of it, right? We’re under a clipped amount of time, so you see us succeeding as the option. You may choose to play that a little bit differently and see the consequences of those actions and how they play out, but you’re watching this girl who is surviving that.”



“Afterwards, she stands up and you look at her and she has a determination in her eyes which is like ‘THAT’S not going to happen again’, a kind of certainty that no one is going to close that kind of distance and get that close to her again, there’s a certain shedding of her innocence in that moment that transforms her into ‘No, that’s not ok’, and ‘No, that’s wrong’, and ‘I need to keep my defences up as a form of dealing with people who are not friendly’.”

Crystal Dynamics’ push seems to be of a protective nature. The camera is frequently pulled in very close to Lara, and you’re often in a situation where you’re observing her fear, her frustration and her resolve in a manner where you’re still in the position of power as you control the action, but where you’re acting as a guardian to a girl on a path of self-discovery.

“We hope that gamers, as they play, are threading their own needle through this narrative and how they’re reacting to it”, Peschel adds. “As you watch her go – it’s that zero-to-hero arc. You’re seeing where this arc goes (from what we’ve shown the other day). You’re seeing how she reacts, and where she goes, and she learns how to wield weapons and she’s ready to go.”



“It’s a similar thing. Watching her on that heroes’ journey is engaging because you drove it, and because you see what the possibilities are on the other side.”

The team at Crystal Dynamics have truly created some stunning set pieces, chilling moments and fast-paced action sequences, weaving them together in a narratively driven game with a stronger focus on one character’s journey than we’ve seen from much else recently. Whether or not they can walk the fine line they’ve adopted and make Tomb Raider more than the sum of its parts remains to be seen, but there’s no doubt this will be one of the biggest and most cinematic splashes of the early ’13 lineup.