A few thoughts on... Rise of the Tomb Raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix.

I've just finished playing through Rise of the Tomb Raider (ROTTR), the sequel to the 2013 reboot of the franchise. The lengths that Eidos, Square and Crystal Dynamix have gone to in order to improve on the visuals of the 2013 are very impressive, and it’s the small things that do it rather than the big obvious ones but we’ll start with the biggest and most obvious first, Lara’s hair.

To put it mildly, the Pure Hair technology used is amazing. Strands of hair fly across Lara’s face, the wind blows her hair all over the place, just like you’d expect. Visually, it’s stunning, and when you compare it to not having it, it is very noticeable, but with it, it stands out precisely because it doesn't stand out, it doesn't remind you that you are watching a character in video game.

Rise is a much subtler game than its predecessor. The 2013 reboot had to recreate the character of Lara, and it did this very well, giving the character a naivety and allowing her to grow into the Tomb Raider that we all knew. This wasn't required now, people knew who Lara was from the first game, they came to this title with an expectation that now, this time, we were going to get a “proper” Tomb Raider game. The developers took on board what was apparently the biggest complaint players had about the first game, not enough tombs, and rectified that this time round with plenty of opportunities to delve into the hidden depths of Syria and Siberia.

The subtleties in this game carry through in so many ways. From the first stumble as Lara is walking through snow that is deep, hugging herself and shivering in the cold of Siberia, warming her hands by a camp if you move close enough. Even to something as simple, and dare I say as human, as Lara putting her hand out to steady and guid herself when close to a wall, exactly the sort of thing a person would do in that circumstance. All of these things lend Rise a degree of “reality”, of groundedness in it’s story and environment. Sure, you still jump across chasms, leap from dizzying heights and scramble about madly when trying to not get eaten by the local fauna, yet these are the things we expect to find, not a stumble in deep snow, or a hand run along a wall or ledge.

But perhaps the most subtle of changes is one that the player won’t see until they complete the game, one that could quite easily be missed if the player isn't focused on the final cut scene or has skipped it entirely. And this subtle change is once again in the character of Lara. For the entire game, Lara has been doing things in memory of her father, a man who at the end was considered a fool for chasing after myths and legends. The final change we see in Lara’s personality is simply that after seeing what she’s seen previously and now here, there are secrets that are hidden all around the world, secrets that could benefit us all, secrets, that may well be the basis for the myths and legends. Lara now wants to explore the world for these secrets, not for her father, not for the memory of her father, but for herself, and if we are to draw any inferences from this, then perhaps the next adventure of Lara Croft will be in the jungles of Honduras investigating something Mayan perhaps?

The final post credits cut scene (seems the developers have taken a leaf out of the Marvel Studios playbook) teases us a little more with further conflict against Trinity or perhaps some other organisation. We learn that Anna wasn't responsible for Lord Croft’s death, even though Trinity ordered him executed, what we don’t yet know is who is responsible. I'm sure that this will be explored further when we see Lara next though.

Personally, I would have liked to have spent more time in the Syrian environment, it seems such a pity that only having what amounts to the tutorial is covered in that environment. Hopefully we’ll see more at some point as historically it’s such a rich area for Lara to explore. I would also like to have seen more than just Jonah included. While I understand that the characters included all have their place within the narrative, Sam, who was already a close friend of Lara’s before she saved her is conspicuous by her absence. I certainly wouldn't have expected her to be trailing Lara out to Siberia, but some contact at the start, say after Lara gets back from Syria would have been a nice link back to the 2013 title.

I really enjoyed my time in Rise of the Tomb Raider, it took the formula that made Tomb Raider such a great reboot and tweaked it just a little to improve on what in my opinion was already a pretty strong foundation. With the availability of the Hut of Baba Yaga and the imminent release of the next DLC pack that deals with an outbreak of some kind in an abandoned Russian facility I can see that I’ll be spending a few more hours in the wilds of Siberia exploring what else it has to offer.