Tempered by tragedy, Lara Croft has grown into an experienced treasure seeker. Now she’s hot on the hunt for the secret of immortality in one of the coldest places on earth. By Ben Reeves
The world’s secrets are hidden in the most remote and hostile places on the planet. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t need people like Lara Croft to find them. Lara’s previous journey taught her how to adapt – how to fight for her own survival. But in Lara’s next outing, the globetrotter is no longer reacting to imminent danger; she is actively throwing herself into a series of harrowing situations, putting her life and credibility on the line as she faces off against a secret society in the forgotten corners of the world. Everything that came before has been a training ground for this journey. Lara is about to embark on her first real tomb-raiding expedition.
Booted up and running
The Tomb Raider series needed to change. By the mid-2000s, the onceiconic video game franchise started to slump. On course to deliver the same exaggerated platforming sequences and lock-on shootouts year after year, Tomb Raider’s graphics looked modern, but its gameplay and sexy heroine were still rooted in 1996.
After releasing Tomb Raider: Underworld in 2008, Crystal Dynamics held meetings intended to address Tomb Raider’s middling success with a series of dramatic design changes. However, it wasn’t long before the studio realized Tomb Raider needed a complete reboot. Throughout that iterative process, Crystal Dynamics experimented with turning Tomb Raider into a horror franchise, played with Shadow of the Colossus-inspired horseback riding, and even temporarily gave Lara a monkey companion before settling on a more grounded and brutal story of survival.
Lara Croft became a young archeology graduate who narrowly survived a shipwreck only to find herself on a mysterious island called Yamatai located within the uncontrollably savage Dragon’s Triangle off the coast of Japan. Not only was Lara forced to survive the dangers of an unforgiving wilderness, she also fended off assaults from criminals, mercenaries, and other shipwreck survivors who had formed a vicious sun-worshipping cult.
“The project was definitely a bit of a gamble,” says franchise creative director Noah Hughes. “I was amazed at how onboard everybody was in preproduction, even when we didn’t have the answers yet. We had a franchise that was among the most recognizable in gaming, and people wanted it to feel like a fresh and modern offering again. There was a lot of stress with that; a lot of anxiousness to see where we would end up.”
When Tomb Raider released in 2013, it was critically lauded for its emotionally charged journey, thrilling set-piece moments, and polished gameplay. Square Enix sold more than one million copies of Tomb Raider in less than 48 hours, and the game has shipped more than seven million copies to date.
But that success wasn’t without its cost. Several members of the team burned out during the last stretch of development, working 18-hour days for nearly a year. The needs of a top-tier video game forced its developer to sacrifice personal hobbies, friendships, and time with family. Through that pain and sacrifice, however, Crystal Dynamics delivered the best Tomb Raider to date. Now, they just have to do it again.
Crazy like a fox
Lara carries the scars of Yamatai with her wherever she goes. Her new character model literally reflects battle wounds she received during the last game, but many of Lara’s scars are actually psychological. When Crystal Dynamics revealed Rise of the Tomb Raider last year during Microsoft’s E3 press conference, it showed a trailer of Lara fidgeting on a therapist’s couch. This scene won’t necessarily appear in the game, but it is an accurate representation of Lara’s psychological state. On Yamatai, Lara experienced things that still haunt her – she was forced to kill in order to protect herself and her loved ones, and that kind of ordeal makes it hard to reintegrate back into normal society.
“She’s being called crazy as much as she is crazy,” says Hughes. “People think she’s crazier than she is. If you came back and started talking about an immortal being and a secret sun-worshiping cult, that’s a tough pill to swallow. So Lara feels like an outsider in the real world. Her next expedition is a way of dealing with the trauma she’s been through, but it’s also a way of finding peace by chasing any shred of evidence that what she saw was real.”
On Yamatai, Lara saw something that she’ll never forget, something that might easily drive someone crazy: an immortal soul. Lara saw a creature that had been alive for centuries, and she believes a discovery like that deserves to be studied more closely. Lara spends the year after Yamatai researching immortality myths – desperately trying to find some shred of evidence that lines up with what she saw. It doesn’t take her long to stumble across the legend of the invisible city of Kitezh.
As the legend goes, back in in the early 13th century, the Grand Prince of Vladimir built an enlightened city deep in the frozen wilds of what is now Russia. Decades later, when an invading Mongolian army marched against the walls of the city, the army was surprised to find it had no military fortifications of any kind. Instead, many of Kitezh’s townsfolk were quietly praying in the streets for salvation. Before the Mongolian army could even set foot in the town, it began to sink into a nearby lake, taking all of its treasures and secrets into the depths below.
Battle with mountains and snow
Icy winds howl over frosted peaks as Lara Croft trudges through knee-high snow. A year’s worth of planning has brought her to the glacial cliffs of Siberia. At her side stands Jonah Maiava, whom fans of the last game will recognize as the affable cook of the Endurance before it crashed on Yamatai’s shores. Jonah is one of Lara’s few fellow survivors, and has remained loyal to her in spite of her almost suicidal need to push herself past her limits.
However, unlike Lara’s last adventure, where she had to scrape and scavenge for all her equipment, she is now outfitted for the trek ahead. As they approach the summit, Lara withdraws two climbing axes and begins her ascent up the ice sheet. The glaze beneath her shudders and gives way before sending her into a freefall. Fortunately, Jonah tightens the slack on her line and assists in swinging her over a gap, where she regains purchase. It was a close call, the first of many.
Jonah makes it to the top of the mountain first and yells out, “Lara, wait ‘til you see this view.”
As Lara mantles over an icy knife edge, she is treated to a splendid panorama of azure mountains. In the distance she can see a golden city nestled in the foothills.
Suddenly, the sky crackles and an ominous wave of black rolls over the mountainside. The wind picks up.
“Storm’s getting closer, we have a couple hours at most,” Jonah yells through the squall.
Lara’s not worried; she’s determined – and she’s closer than ever to answers. Unfortunately, strong winds and subzero temperatures aren’t the only thing Lara and Jonah have to worry about. As the two begin their descent towards the ruins, the mountain shivers. It sounds as if the stones themselves have cracked in half, and a moment later a tidal wave of snow comes barreling towards the explorers.
In a flash, Lara takes off. Bounding over a gap in the ice, Lara scrambles across creaky wooden walkways. During the chaos, Lara loses sight of Jonah. She doesn’t have time to go back; she dashes forward just out of reach of the churning snow. Lara passes by the wreck of an old airliner and uses a discarded cable to zip line over a large chasm. She’s in a race with the snow. And she loses.
The roiling snow catches up with Lara and sends her tumbling down the side of a cliff. Fortunately, Lara put enough distance between her and the avalanche’s initial push to prevent her from getting completely buried alive.
After digging herself out of the fresh powder, Lara’s radio sputters to life. She can hear Jonah’s garbled voice crackling through the airwaves.
“Jonah, if you can hear me, go back,” she responds. “Please don’t try to find me. I need to do this alone.”
Improvised munitions
Lara’s avalanche escape is an example of how Crystal Dynamics aims to fill Rise of the Tomb Raider with more of the harrowing action set pieces that were popular in the 2013 reboot. However, Lara will have a more persistent battle to fight as she marches through the wilds of Siberia. Storms whip up out of nowhere at a moment’s notice, and the forest is populated with hungry wolves and territorial grizzlies. Crystal Dynamics wants Rise of the Tomb Raider’s world to feel like a hostile and formidable character – the environment itself is Lara’s main antagonist.
“The goal is to raise the stakes against her,” Hughes says. “Lara learned a lot in the last game, but she doesn’t have unflinching confidence. She can’t face unlimited opponents unscathed. She’s in a life-and-death situation, so we want to capture a certain amount of humanity by showing that Lara is continually challenged as a character. It’s important for us to capture those moments where Lara is uncertain about her identity, her direction, or her ability to come out alive.”
Thankfully, as Lara becomes more proficient in her survival skills, she learns to exploit the environment to even the odds. Her main means of this is through a detailed crafting system. In the 2013 Tomb Raider reboot, Lara collected salvage, which she used to upgrade her weapons, but in Rise of the Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics has greatly expanded on Lara’s survivalist toolkit.
Lara now collects a variety of different resources such as plants, minerals, metals, clothes, hides, and other rare relics, and can then use these components to create a variety of new tools and weapons. For example, we watched Lara upgrade one of her climbing axes into a makeshift grappling line that allows her to swing over deep ravines. Meanwhile, a piece of cloth and some herbs can be used to bind Lara’s wounds. Other resources let Lara craft poison ammo, construct traps, and even make Molotov cocktails or grenades.
As in the last game, Lara is able to upgrade her weapons, but now she has more than one of each weapon type to choose from. For example, Lara can craft a variety of different bows with different properties. A compound bow might have greater stopping power than a traditional longbow, but it might also take Lara longer to prime each arrow to fire. Furthermore, some upgrades apply to all weapons of that type, while other upgrades only apply to a specific weapon.
Once Lara has the components she needs, crafting new tools and gear is easy, but Rise of the Tomb Raider’s ambient weather systems make gathering certain resources a challenge. Some animals might go into hiding during a storm, others will only come out at certain times of the day.
“You might have a particular upgrade that requires an alpha-wolf hide, but wolves only come out at night in the valley,” says Holmes. “So you have this idea that the environment and the weather conditions might affect the gameplay. This will also apply to combat, so enemy line of sight or hearing might be impaired by things like fog or rain.”
Just as Lara gathers elements from the environment to improve her toolset, she’ll also need to make clever use of her surroundings during battle. Wolves and bears aren’t the only threats lurking in these Russian badlands, and she’s about to encounter the world’s most dangerous game: man.
Guerilla war isn’t fair
Lara isn’t the first person to make a pilgrimage toward the invisible city of Kitezh. At one point in the game, she climbs over a mountain range and gets a panoramic view of an abandoned Cold War installation, which has been largely reclaimed by nature. Lara discovered hub areas like this in the last game, but Rise of the Tomb Raider’s hubs are two to three times bigger. These areas offer Lara more opportunities to explore, plan her attack, and collect secrets and supplies.
As Lara makes her way toward the installation, a helicopter flies overhead and Lara spies the word Trinity written on the side. It’s a name she’s become uneasily familiar with over the last year. Trinity occasionally pops up among conspiracy theorists who research the myths Lara is risking her life to find.
Devoted Tomb Raider fans might also be familiar with the name Trinity. Crystal Dynamics dropped hints about the organization’s existence in the 2013 reboot. In that game, a set of secret GPS documents alluded to a secret organization that seemed to have enough knowledge and resources to send an agent to the island of Yamatai as early as World War II. Lara doesn’t know what the organization is doing in Siberia, but if they’re looking for clues to Kitezh that’s bad news for her. And she’s bad news for them.
As Lara moves deeper into the Cold War installation she discovers a group of Trinity soldiers looking for a map. Lara needs to find a way through their encampment. Fortunately, she has a couple new avenues to navigate through the environment; Lara can now scale trees, hide in small brush, and swim underwater. Although these aren’t particularly novel means of travel for a video game, they do give Lara a more diverse range of options with which to approach a group of enemies.
“Our goals for combat are to give players as many opportunities as they can to engage combat on their own terms,” says Hughes. “We wanted to push on the pre-combat phase, before Lara is spotted. The goal will rarely be for Lara to sneak past everybody, but there will be opportunities for her to sneak through a camp and gain a better lay of the land before engaging the enemy head-on. We wanted to give players more of those situations and more tools to use in those situations.”
Lara silently dives into the water and swims across the bank to where a guard stands watch. With snakelike fluidity, Lara wrenches the guard underwater, chokes him out with her bow, and then leaves his body at the bottom of the riverbed. Lara then uses a row of small bushes to circumnavigate the perimeter of the camp, where she grabs a gas can and a radio. The radio provides a perfect distraction to lure a group of enemies over to a bonfire. The gas can causes an explosion that takes them all out in one bang.
“You can lose guys once enemies are aware of your location, but it’s usually better to fight noise with noise,” says Hughes. “We try to keep the pressure on. We don’t want players to feel so dominant that they can always reset the guards to a dumb oblivious state. There are repercussions for getting caught, and it’s harder to evade once the fight is on. But that’s where chaos becomes useful. You might be able to distract the guards with an explosion or gas bomb and then escape for a moment to heal before diving back into the fray. We tend to put you in a pressure cooker once awareness kicks off.”
With a group of enemies closing in on her position, Lara puts her guerilla tactics to use with a gas bomb, buying enough time to put some distance between her and her foes. She swings off a tree branch and lands safely behind cover (at least for a minute), where she binds her wounds and then makes a poison arrow on the fly. Watching Lara navigate the environment and use discarded refuse as killing tools, it’s hard not to think back to Naughty Dog’s critically lauded The Last of Us and its gritty, improv-driven combat.
Thankfully, it doesn’t take much longer for Lara to clear out the enemy encampment, but this won’t be Lara’s last battle with Trinity. She has a long journey ahead of her, and now she’s in a race to find the secrets of Kitezh before an invisible society with enough bankroll to fund a private army can get their hands on them. Up ahead, amidst a rocky outcropping, Lara can see a small opening. Inside is a cavern no human has entered for centuries. Who knows what she’ll discover inside: human remains, deadly traps, priceless knowledge… or perhaps immortality?
Survival of the fittest
When Lara was shipwrecked on Yamatai she was forced to live like a scavenger, fighting for her life. She emerged a stronger and more capable woman, but in many ways she became a broken soul. To Lara, the secrets of the lost city of Kitezh are a tantalizing salve. But her psychological healing won’t come cheap. To overcome her personal demons, she’ll have to best nature’s savage elements and compete with one of the most powerful secret organizations on the planet.
“We talk about games like Uncharted 2 or Assassin’s Creed II, series that in their first outing had a really inspiring new gameplay proposition, but didn’t fully realize that experience until the sequel,” says Hughes. “That’s what our team is aiming to do – really trying to outdo ourselves.”
Considering the popularity of the last Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics has a lot to live up to, but the studio seems on the right track. Rise of the Tomb Raider’s hostile environments, resource-rich ecosystems, and ruthless guerilla combat aim to raise the stakes on a formula the studio established only two years ago.
Lara once saw herself as a survivor; a woman who had to do the unthinkable to save herself and her friends. She once saw herself as an archaeologist; now she realizes that archaeology isn’t just about artifacts and ruins; it’s about mankind’s lost secrets. Lara is ready to crawl through the world’s cracks and reach through time to retrieve those secrets. She’s no longer a survivor. She’s a tomb raider.
Jumping back a generation
Some might be surprised to hear that Square Enix plans to release Rise of the Tomb Raider on both Xbox One and Xbox 360, but Crystal Dynamics says it is sure that work on the 360 version won’t limit the studio’s development of the Xbox One version. In fact, an entirely different studio, Nixxes Software, is handling the 360 port.
“We’re wholly focused on Rise being an Xbox One title without limitation, without even thinking of the Xbox 360 version,” says head of western studios Darrell Gallagher. “At the same time, the Xbox 360’s ecosystem is still super strong. There are millions of players out there who have an Xbox 360 and those console translations take time. So we did a test. Nixxes put together a tech demo of Rise of the Tomb Raider content running on the 360, and we were totally blown away by what they achieved. But the existence of that game isn’t limiting our work on the Xbox One version.”
Say it ain’t snow
Tomb Raider has always been known for its globetrotting adventures, but in the reboot, Crystal Dynamics pinned Lara Croft to one location for an entire game. The studio received a few complaints from fans on this point, and promises that Rise of the Tomb Raider will take Lara to at least two different locations across the globe. And while the studio isn’t ready to reveal the coordinates of that second location just yet, it has promised an even greater breadth of terrain across its locales. This means that Lara won’t be trudging through snow the whole time she’s in Siberia. During our demo, we got a brief glimpse of dusty sandscapes, dense forests, and underwater caverns.
Ancient decoder rings
The 2013 Tomb Raider reboot tasked players with discovering hidden GPS caches, which contained extra salvage and buried manuscripts that offered a deeper glimpse into the series’ lore. Lara will continue to uncover hidden caches in Rise of the Tomb Raider, but she’ll also run across various writings on ancient Mongolian obelisks that she might not be able to read at the beginning of the game. These obelisks function like treasure maps, but will require a bit of decoding. As Lara collects fragments of ancient scripts she can start to piece together the ancient language written on these obelisks and will eventually be able to read these markers, which in turn will lead her to new narrative elements or an ancient store of secrets.
Room for tomb
For a game called Tomb Raider, many of the 2013 reboot’s tombs felt like side projects. Most of these puzzle rooms were fairly short, and some of them were optional. With Rise of the Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics wants to put a greater emphasis on these underground puzzle chambers. Sadly, the team wasn’t ready to showcase specific tombs from Rise of the Tomb Raider, but they did talk a bit about their philosophy behind tomb building.
“We’ll have more tombs in the game featuring a full spectrum of puzzles,” says franchise creative director Noah Hughes. “Some tombs are much larger than in the last game. We really do celebrate puzzle design as a unique facet of our gameplay. We want to deliver on people’s use of their wits and encourage them to suss out how to unlock each tomb’s secrets while leveraging real-world systems and physics.”
The studio also wants to return to the concept of nested puzzles. This was actually a common tactic in classic Tomb Raider games, where a player might have to solve multiple sides in a multistage puzzle before the final pieces clicked together and the larger secret unlocked. This gives players the opportunity to tinker with different elements around the environment so when they get stuck in one section of the puzzle, they can jump over to another area and try to solve that sequence before going back to the place they got hung up. Crystal Dynamics is also working to integrate more traversal challenges or even combat sequences into the middle of environmental puzzles.
“It’s a challenge to create puzzles that make sense for a realistic world,” says Hughes. “The push this time will be to make sure that a lot of the spaces are ancient spaces that feel awe inspiring. We want puzzles to make logical sense, so the solutions to the puzzles in this game won’t always be some confounding security system of the ancients; it might be that Lara just needs to navigate the space in a way that subverts its original intent.”
Hughes talked about layers of history. During Lara’s journey she’ll pass the remains of dozens of previous explorers. The Mongols weren’t the only people to search for the lost city of Kitezh. Its legend tantalized a host of treasure seekers, so throughout the centuries there have been numerous explorers attracted to Kitezh’s ghost. With every step Lara takes into these tombs, she gets further than one of these previous waves.