Dubai Weekly
W e join Lara Croft in St Francis’ Folly – inspired by the Unesco-listed monasteries of Meteora in Greece – as the light shines through the cracked ceiling and a flock of bats glide across the vast ruins below. When Lara leaps down to the monastery’s crumbling pillared courtyard, it becomes clear that these screeching, leathery creatures aren’t just set dressing. As they lurch towards her with unpredictable movements, she dispatches the swarm with a flurry of gun fire and panicked punches.
It’s a suitably cinematic reintroduction to our heroine and her very first adventure. Co-developed by longtime Lara custodians Crystal Dynamics and Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, Legacy of Atlantis is a reimagining of the classic 1996 game Tomb Raider, and this familiar cliffside location is now brimming with new life and believable detail. Yet while our reunion gets off to an auspicious start, I have my concerns.
It feels like reconnecting with an old friend at the pub, only for them to begin spouting conspiracy theories two pints in. Where the ’96 original forced players to rely on their wits – or a pricey strategy guide – to figure out what to do, Lara can now straight-up cheat. She’s equipped with an environmental scanner, so a button tap reveals extra environmental lore or simply the solution to a puzzle.
It’s a change that feels somewhat sacrilegious, and may detract from the eerily isolating atmosphere that made the original so beloved. Lara v the bats is now suitably cinematic. Photograph: ATL Gamescom “If the devs from 1996 had the technology that we have today, what choices would they make?” asks Raul Siqueira, game director at Crystal Dynamics.
“The sense of isolation in the original game was largely due to the technological limitations of that time,” says Arek Tomaszewski, art director at Flying Wild Hog, likening it to the fog in Silent Hill which was both an artistic decision and a way to cover up empty environments on the PlayStation 1. “The darkness and the feeling of being alone created an emotion that you remember. When I replayed Tomb Raider, my initial memory was the exact same.
What we are trying to do now is build environments – like the spaces in Greece – where you feel as if you are the first person discovering them in centuries, entering places that have been left untouched.” Lara now crafts balms from a menu rather than finding anachronous first aid kits in centuries-old untouched tombs. Somewhat less believably, she can also pause her adventure to whip up stat-boosting stews, Breath of the Wild -style. These additions are among a slew of modern flourishes that I feel unsure about.
Is the original really improved by giving Lara a grappling hook, RPG-esque stats, skill trees and quick time events? One area that Flying Wild Hog – the maker of Hard Reset and Shadow Warrior – knows well is combat. As Lara delves deeper into the dingy ruins of the Damocles chamber, she is ambushed by a familiar foe: a leopard.
But this roaring beast now moves with convincing agility. As well as swiping at Lara, leopards now hide from her, retreating through holes in the walls before returning with an emboldened counterattack. Luckily Lara is fiercer too.
As the beast lunges toward her, she draws her shotgun and blasts, causing the creature to crumple to the floor in Max Payne-esque slo-mo. The newly dynamic combat is the gameplay overhaul that looks most promising – a world away from the stationary shooting and “dog scooting across the carpet” backsteps of yesteryear. The swords of Damocles puzzle area.
Photograph: ATL Gamescom Narratively, the remake promises a deeper story and some fan-pleasing easter eggs. For this iteration, Lara is played by Dragon Age: Inquisition and Cyberpunk 2077 actor Alix Wilton Regan. “Hearing her voice in the game now, she is Lara Croft,” says Tomaszewski.
“The sheer amount of character and depth she brought to Lara is unbelievable.” The game’s publisher, Amazon, is also the custodian of a forthcoming Phoebe Waller-Bridge-produced Tomb Raider TV show , and the developers suggest there will be some connective tissue between the two projects. After hopping across falling swords and solving Damocles’s puzzles, Lara emerges from the darkened tomb into a burst of sunshine, and my demo culminates with the tease of a vast, ancient civilisation. “I think this game changed our DNA as a studio,” says Tomaszewski.
“In our previous games, like Shadow Warrior, every second was filled with nonstop action. Here we wanted to master pacing, and we learned a lot from Crystal Dynamics.” Gaming as a whole has undoubtedly transformed since Lara’s first adventure. Tomb Raider’s dodgy camera controls and questionable Playboy collaborations are thankfully now dusty historical relics themselves.
Yet as visually impressive as Legacy of Atlantis looks, I can’t help but wonder if a touch of Lara’s brilliance lay in her original simplicity. By encumbering her with modern game mechanics, a bit of her soul may be lost. If Legacy of Atlantis offers the option to disable all of that for a purer Tomb-raiding experience, it could still be a winner.
Source: The Guardian
