Disclaimer: What follows is a discussion between Cam Shea and Luke Reilly from the IGN Australia editorial team. Their opinions are not representative of those of the wider editorial group.
Cam: The new Tomb Raider reboot wowed a lot of people at E3 this year. Hell, it won IGN's game of the show, and that's voted on by our entire editorial staff. You and I, however, Luke, came away thinking that this isn't necessarily the direction we'd like to see Tomb Raider go in. There's obviously a lot to like: the detailed visuals, the exploration of Lara's origin story, the polish evident in every aspect of the game, but I can't help but feel that everything we've seen simply points towards an experience that's going to be more Uncharted than Tomb Raider.
That may seem like an odd thing to complain about, given how much fun the Uncharted games are, but those experiences are very, very guided. Drake basically follows a path and cinematic awesomeness happens around him. The only times they open up is during combat, and that's the weakest element. Combat is traditionally the weakest aspect of Tomb Raider too. It's the exploration and the open traversal that makes Tomb Raider. Walking into an enormous tomb and having to puzzle out what you're meant to be doing, how you're meant to get around it. Take that away and replace it with – from all we've seen so far – what is effectively a linear path and what do you have?
Luke: You have Uncharted.
It’s quite the conundrum, I feel, because I absolutely love the Uncharted series. I just didn’t expect Tomb Raider to lift from it so liberally. I agree; Tomb Raider to me was always a more patient game than something like Uncharted. Uncharted is all about the ride. It’s about running across rickety balconies under heavy fire from a helicopter knowing you just have to stab the jump button at the right time and you’ll make the gaps, because the paths aren’t really designed with jumps you can’t make. Uncharted is about thrills and excitement, not so much about actual danger. If there are moments during the Uncharted games where I suddenly feared I was going to fall short on a jump I don’t remember them.
Remind you of anything?
Tomb Raider was different. There was always more risk in Tomb Raider. You couldn’t just sprint and leap, safe in the knowledge the designers wouldn’t screw with you. You had to size up gaps. Can I make this? Do I need a running start? Making a vast gap by the skin of your fingertips in Tomb Raider was enough to shrivel your sphincter.
There’s obviously still a lot to see here in this Tomb Raider reset, but I’m not seeing that same spirit. I’m seeing Uncharted, and we already have Uncharted. I’m with you. I can see what people are adoring about this game. It looks tight and well-produced. It has a lot of the hallmarks of a confidently constructed video game. It wasn’t nominated in the Best in Show category for the Game Critics Awards by accident.
I’m just not quite on board, is all. This push to cut a game from Uncharted’s cloth has resulted in a game with what appears to be a real identity crisis. On the one hand we’ve got a whimpering, young and inexperienced Lara Croft, scared and alone. We’ve got her killing for first time, sobbing over the corpse of a deer and disgusted by the sight of the insides of a man’s skull oozing out of his freshly shredded face. Different, and interesting. It’s emotionally charged stuff. Confronting. Love it. On the other, though? We’ve got Liam Neeson in a tank top. In the Microsoft press conference demo we’ve got her wading through a horde of goons, blasting them away from the hip with a shotgun and stabbing them in the head with one of her arrows. Mindless, really. Typically indiscriminate third-person blasting.
Cam: Yep, and this actually gets to the heart of a real disconnect in modern video games that's a whole lot larger than just Tomb Raider. The more our characters become nuanced and believable as people, the more it stands out when the actual gameplay is so at odds with that characterisation. Seeing Lara straight up killing enemy after enemy simply does not gel with the character that Crystal Dynamics is trying to establish. And you know what? It doesn't have to be this way.
Think about the original Tomb Raider game. How many people did you kill in that? A handful at most. It was all about the wolves, the bears, the T. rex. Wouldn't it make more sense for Lara to be facing those kinds of foes once again? Why does she have to be a serial killer? Why is this the heart of the gameplay? And if that's not the game Crystal Dynamics wants to make, then why not give a little more meaning to the kills? Sure, the first couple impact Lara greatly, but by the section showcased during the Xbox conference demo she's a killing machine. This series may be aping Uncharted, but maybe it should also be trying to move things forward, like The Last of Us, where killing is a core part of the gameplay, but it's brutal and it requires skill and it has potency.
To me the combat in Uncharted was largely filler and it's looking like the same could be true of Tomb Raider. And if that's the case, what are you left with? What actual skill will be required of the player? From the three demos I've seen (including the 20 minute behind closed doors session at E3), not very much. Run a few feet along the only path, watch a cutscene or quicktime event, run along the only path a little more, make a jump it's impossible to fail, watch a cutscene.
Even when the game appears to open things out a little it seems entirely superficial. Remember when Lara decides she needs to eat? You get the bow and arrow and you're told to head into the forest to kill a deer. It's a more open area, but it's not like there's anything for you to do, other than stroll about until you find and kill a deer then get back to being ushered every step of the way. Same when Lara decides she needs to upgrade her crowbar dealie. How does she do that? By collecting enough 'salvage', i.e. running about smashing crates unaccountably stashed throughout the forest. That's not gameplay. That's not interesting. That doesn't even make any real sense. You know what it reminded me of? Angel of Darkness. I feel stronger now.
Lara needs food.
To be fair, there's an awful lot more of this game to be revealed, and it's entirely possible that Crystal Dynamics is showing content that's very directed because that makes for good demos. Could the game be more open than it looks? Could it – at some point – become a Tomb Raider game? I sure hope so, but I can't help but worry that this could be another victim of the trend in modern video games to pursue cinematic presentation at the expense of gameplay.
Luke: Your point about content well-suited to demos is a fair one; IO Interactive has been deflecting criticism for some time about the action-oriented nature of the Hitman: Absolution footage it’s been showing since the game’s announcement. It only became clear at E3 last month, with a few deeper demos, that Absolution has indeed retained those classic Hitman gameplay tropes.
However, I just wonder if Tomb Raider has already become a victim of the way Crystal Dynamics seems to be framing it. Comments during E3 from executive producer Ron Rosenberg regarding how they find gamers don’t project themselves into Lara – that they’re there to protect Lara as her helper – are kind of worrying, to be honest. I don’t want to play Tomb Raider as some kind of omnipotent puppeteer; I want to play Tomb Raider as Lara Croft.
It doesn’t matter that she sits down to pee. I played through the Mass Effect series as a female Shepard and I still felt like I was living her adventures. What’s the difference between a man, or a woman, or a Lombax? I don’t want to help the hero, I want to be the hero. Is there something about the nature of the gameplay here that’s going to make me feel like an observer instead of the star?
I know you and I are very much on the same page regarding the new Lara – she’s intriguing and well-characterised – but I hope the insane combat we saw during the Microsoft presser is rare and exploration is daunting and dangerous. I’d hate to get to the end of Tomb Raider simply via a lot of risk-free jumping and a few quick-time events, and with a bodycount as big as an Uncharted title.
Cam: Damn straight. Here's hoping this Tomb Raider winds up being great to look at and great to play; conscious of Lara's heritage and what makes her adventures compelling, while also forging ahead.
What do you think of the new direction Tomb Raider's taking? Let us know below.
Cam Shea and Luke Reilly are editors on the IGN Australia team. You can follow them here and here on IGN, and why not join the IGN AU Facebook community too?
Source : ign[dot]com
