Editorial | Tomb Raider: "It belongs in a museum" (not in a bad way).

By Sam Coles:

Tomb Raider, a game that was a household name, and still is to a certain extent but not as much as it did in the 1990s. From its humble beginnings to its reboot in 2013, what made it so special that we’re still playing and talking about it over 20 years later? Well let’s talk about it.

What stands out when you think about the series? Well first off Lara Croft, she alongside Samus Aran was one of the first prominent female protagonists in video games and she could hold her own where she would raid tombs (pun intended) while gunning down opposing forces and the wildlife. She wasn’t particularly a complex character as she just wanted to find artefacts for the glory and not for preservation; she is basically Bruce Wayne and Indiana Jones mixed together.  If one were to examine the old Tomb Raider games Lara comes across as a bit of a psychopath, she slaughters everything that gets in her way, whether it is animals or humans that get in the way of her goal as she spouts her dry wit. Yes one could argue that she was used for cheap titillation which I would agree to a certain extent for obvious reasons, however you wouldn’t say things like that to her face as she would blow your head off with a shotgun.

Now it wasn’t just the character that people loved about the games, it’s the games themselves from the early growing pains on the PS1, the plunge to hell on the PS2 in the early 2000’s to the fantastic reboot in 2013. They weren’t anything particularly ground breaking; they were 3D action games with an emphasis on exploration and platforming, with sprinkles of combat here and there. Think of them as Prince of Persia in 3D before Prince of Persia did its 3D interpretation in the late 90’s,  you have to be precise with your platforming as Lara has weight to here she is not floaty. She can grab ledges do flips, she may feel clunky in the older games, but honestly it just works because the controls require you to take your time as this is a slow pace affair.

Now this may come across as laughable today, but the visuals were ahead of their time. The reason why I say this is that most games at the time on the PlayStation would usually have 3D character models sat on top of a pre-rendered background, however Tomb Raider renders everything in 3D. It was something that developers didn’t do often, this due to the PlayStation’s inferior capability of producing 3D, as it has texture warping, unlike its later competition the N64 which was more capable of rendering 3D environments. It is certainly crude by today’s standards, but put yourself in the shoes of a teenager in the mid-90s and it is mind blowing!

After the slew of PlayStation games in the 90s the series started to show its cracks, this due to Eidos wanting yearly releases from Core design since the release of the second game. However it wasn’t until the PS2 release of Angel of Darkness is where it went downhill quickly, a cobbled together mess of a game that stained the Tomb Raider license for a decade. Core Design were taken off the Tomb Raider projects, and then shortly after that shut its doors, however a few years later when the dust settled and a developer called Crystal Dynamics picked up the mantle.

Crystal Dynamics took on the Tomb Raider license during the mid-2000s, where they put out the remake of the first game aptly named Tomb Raider Anniversary. This was a full remake of the original 1996 title to celebrate 10 years (god that makes me feel old), and it was good and after that they made a few more titles, however it wasn’t until 2013 where they would reboot the franchise and put a mature spin on it.

In 2012 Crystal Dynamics announced Tomb Raider (yes they did that annoying trope), which was a complete reboot of the series which was gritty and mature. This was telling a story of a more naïve Lara, she was less of a strong woman and more scared as she is thrown straight into the deep end. Written by Terry Pratchett’s daughter Rhianna, she put a new spin on the titular raider and was nothing short of amazing.

It didn’t lose sight of what made Tomb Raider well…. Tomb Raider. It took some ques from Naughty Dog’s Uncharted, while not losing its identity where you still explore, find items and craft to help you survive. While at the same time, it improved the combat greatly as it took influence from other third person shooters at the time but it was rather challenging as you couldn’t just sit there in cover. No the enemies would find ways to flush you out of cover, where they would flank, charge your position or just throw explosives or Molotov Cocktails at you.

After the success of Tomb Raider (2013), Crystal Dynamics got to work on a sequel that would release just only two years later. However there was a very strange deal between Square Enix and Microsoft, which saw the sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider release in 2015 on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 exclusively, but this was only a timed exclusive for one year. This understandable got a lot of people worked up, because up to that point most Tomb Raider games have been multiplatform experiences. This felt like an odd decision, however Square would redeem themselves by releasing it on the PS4 just in time for the 20^th anniversary.

Rise of the Tomb Raider was basically an enhanced version of the first game, but with some additional features such as being able to craft traps, coupled with a more open ended design with its levels. Visuals were given a massive bump too due to the power of the Xbox One, where they could use they advanced hair effects on console for the first time which was present on the PC version of Tomb Raider (2013). The scope of the entire project was amplified by ten where everything just played better with tighter controls and more intense combat scenarios.

The third game in the reboot series was a bit of departure, this was because it was not developed by Crystal Dynamics but instead Eidos Montreal. Crystal Dynamics did supervise the project; however main development duties were handed to Eidos, as Crystal Dynamics were focusing on their Avengers game (which has not been released at time of writing). This is not a bad thing, as Eidos Montreal brought us the reimaging of the Deus Ex series in the form of Human Revolution. However Shadow of the Tomb Raider didn’t gel with critics and a lot of players as it felt more of the same and it wasn’t as polished as its pre-assessors. It wasn’t bad per say, but there was something that wasn’t quite right with the game.

Tomb Raider is a series that is hugely influential, it paved the way of how third person adventure games were created in the 90s. Yes it had its stumbles during the early 2000s, but it managed to rise from the ashes with the reboot series of games, it is a series that belongs in the museum of video games.