Rise of the Tomb Raider, the sequel to the Tomb Raider reboot, has been announced to be much larger than the previous title. The world will be roughly three times the size of the last game; furthermore, the game won’t have any loading screens. Brian Horton, Game Director of Rise of the Tomb Raider, stated in an interview with GamingBolt.
Just like the last Tomb Raider we’ve created a seamless experience. As soon as you start a new game if you never died or don’t quit you will have a seamless streaming experience throughout the whole game. We want to immerse the player into the world as soon as possible and flow from mission to mission in a very seamless way.
The studio has created a very interesting puzzle system in the new game. Crystal Dynamics call their new system the “Nested Puzzle Approach.” In order to solve one big puzzle, multiple smaller puzzles must be solved. Solving these puzzles in the tombs will make the player feel that Lara Croft is becoming or is a tomb raider.
The new puzzles will no doubt make traversing through the tombs more complicated and satisfying. As a fan of puzzle games, I can’t wait to see what kind of difficulties await Lara in the tombs. In an interview with Game Informer, the creative director Noah Hughes informed, “Puzzles are an important part of the tomb formula, so we’re excited to have more tombs in the game, featuring more puzzles.” It’s good to see Hughes trying to make the tombs more of a challenging and memorable experience. The tombs will certainly be much grander than the previous title.
It is likely that there will be a much wider range in Lara’s weaponry. In the E3 demo, Lara is shown creating poisonous arrows that help her quickly dispatch her foes. This is just one of the new arrows that will be in the game. It will be exciting if Lara is able to obtain more different types of weapons because in the last game she only had a bow, a shotgun, a handgun, and a rifle. However Lara was able to upgrade these weapons, so we can expect many upgrades for whatever weapons are in the new game.
Lara can also grab certain objects, and turn them into dangerous weapons quickly. She does this when she grabs a gasoline container, and turns it into a bomb. I’m excited to see how Crystal Dynamics plans to further make use of this tactic.
It should be interesting to see if Lara’s finishing kills and stealth kills will be even more brutal and satisfying than before.
I’m curious to see how smoothly the player can maneuver through the terrain because in the E3 demo she swiftly climbed trees and jumped to others. I hope her movement will remain as seamless with other terrain as it was in the demo.
The enemies Lara will be facing on her journey will no doubt be interesting. Who knows what kind of ancient evil awaits Lara in this game? But I can’t wait to find out.
I’m eager to see Lara Croft’s character develop because, after all, the game is called Rise of the Tomb Raider. I believe Crystal Dynamics will do a fantastic job on Rise of the Tomb Raider.
Those of you who are interested, there is a Tomb Raider novel called Tomb Raider: The Ten Thousand Immortals. The novel picks up immediately after the reboot.