Tomb Raider Legend Preview

Lara Croft. The name sounds familiar. It should, since we’ve heard that name eight times before – Six times in games and two in movies. Lara Croft can be regarded as video gaming’s first and most well known computer generated celebrity. Her first appearance in the original ‘Tomb Raider’ game rocked the gaming industry like an earthquake without warning. The game became so popular that Lara became a star overnight. Especially in the minds of male gamers. A female Indiana Jones was what she came to be known as. After all, in those days, the concept of being able to control the actions of a young and shapely archaeologist and make her do whatever you wanted was brand new. In fact, people loved her so much that they wanted more. The only thing that went wrong was that Eidos Interactive and Core Design didn’t exactly know how much more. Tomb Raider II came along quickly to let us take Lara out to fancy places like Venice and China. In Tomb Raider III, Eidos allowed the players to bring her right here to India and show her around. Lara was happy doing the things she does best, like jumping wide spaces, climbing high rocks, shimmying across ledges and of course, kicking butt. The gamers were also happy to have her around. Unfortunately for Core and Eidos, that didn’t last.

One time too many?

It’s in human psyche to get bored with seeing and doing the same things over and over again. As soon as ‘Tomb Raider IV : The Last Revelation’ came to a hard disk near you, monotony also started kicking players in the shin. The next in the franchise came ‘Tomb Raider : Chronicles’, which fared no better. People had seen the same thing too many times to even lift any eyebrow at the game. Just when the series famous for archaeological relics had almost turned into one, Eidos announced the sixth in the series after a long hiatus. Tomb Raider : Angel of Darkness was an ambitious decision by them and they hoped to induce a spark of life into Lara again. The game promised improved graphics, a new look for Miss Croft, and more importantly, refurbished gameplay. Sadly, the game turned out to be a mess with poor interaction, horrible AI and bad controls for both the PC as well as consoles. Eidos Interactive decided that it was time for a drastic change and it wasn’t makeovers that they had in mind.

To the Crystal…

At E3 2005, Eidos confidently displayed the seventh Tomb Raider game, titled ‘Tomb Raider : Legend’. The first ‘new’ particularity of this game is that it is not being developed by Core Design, but by American developers Crystal Dynamics who have some great games like Blood Omen, SoulReaver:Legacy of Kain and Project:Snowblind on their portfolio. The new guys have scrutinized the series and have announced that they will be taking it back to where it started. Tombs, Caves and Catacombs. It looks like they weren’t quite impressed with the city-based action of the previous game either.

Something old, something new

Original TR fans will love the fact that the game is heading back to raiding tombs instead of fighting besides an ATM. However, that does not mean Crystal Dynamics have ignored the other gamers who want to see things they haven’t seen before. To start things off, the game will have an all new Lara Croft. She’s been redone, reanimated and re-textured to make her look more realistic. The first thing most people would probably notice by looking at her in the game is that something has been toned down a lot, probably to add to the realism. No prizes for guessing this one. Other than that, the new character model has twice the number of polygons as the one from TR:AOD. The developers have spent quite sometime on the finer details regarding her model. When you use stuff from her utility, you can’t see them over there anymore. She’s also got a nifty little flashlight attached that turns itself on automatically when it gets dark. These may pass off as unnoticed during regular play but it definitely is an improvement in any case. The graphics are a plus point in this game. While they definitely aren’t the photo-realistic type that could start new benchmarks, the visuals do look gorgeous. Crystal Dynamics have opted for fantasy-styled graphics with great lighting a la Guild Wars and Prince of Persia rather than trying to imitate Half-Life 2 or Doom 3. In this way, they’ve managed to retain the ‘Tomb Raider’ look as well as make everything from Lara to the environment look very pretty. The fluid animation for her moves are pretty slick too. The physics have been updated as well and will play an important role in the game.

The Himalayan Adventure… Where it all began.

Not much detail is known about the game’s storyline at the moment but we do know that Legends will really take you back to Lara’s roots… back to the Himalayas for an adventure that made her what she is today. You will also travel to other places but the mountain range seems to be very important to the plot. Of course, a mountain provides you with a hundred caves to explore and a few puzzles to solve. We also know that the story has Lara searching for a rare artifact yet again and encountering an nemy long thought to be dead.

Tomb Raider, Improved.

Lara Croft is not Lara Croft without Dual Berettas in her hands. The pistols are coming back along with a new range of weapons. This time around, you can even steal weapons from your enemies after making quick work of them. She’s also equipped with high-powered binoculars, frag grenades, communication devices and n all new magnetic grappling hook. Lara can also shoot a few objects like barrels to make them go kaboom, injuring nearby enemies. The clunky control system from the previous games have been reworked to make them better in every way. The developers have even gone as far as implementing an A.I into Lara so that she doesn’t fall off cliffs and ledges inadvertently. The focus of the game will most probably not be combat-oriented like Angel of Darkness was and will require you to solve a lot more puzzles just like the first game.

Predictions

Even with very little faith left in the Tomb Raider series, the E3 trailer appears very interesting and promising. With eye-catching graphics and smooth animation along with a promise to return to the essence of Lara Croft, this game just may be what hardcore TR fans have been waiting for all these years.

Ashwath Ravee