Tomb Raider Reboot Shows Heroine's Painful Origin - Preview
by Gordon Bryant , posted on 07 June 2012 / 3,294 Views
Sadly there were no hands-on demos for Tomb Raider here at E3, but we did get to watch a rather extensive gameplay demonstration at a VIP Booth.
The demo starts on an island overlooking a rather tumultuous sea, showing you a ship that had just crashed and left you stranded on the island. Immediately, Lara made her way down a pathway leading into the island's inner jungles, where she saw a derelict airplane dangling over a waterfall, which she needed to climb to get to her next destination. To this point, it's already clear this is heavily inspired by Uncharted, with gorgeous, lush environments and now this plane, which you are expected to climb much in the same way you climb the train in Uncharted 2; likewise, as soon as Lara started climbing it, pieces started falling off and she fell, landing heavily on a rocky outcropping.
After situating herself, she once again began exploring, emerging from between two rock walls to an open jungle area, where a prompt informs the player that Lara needs to seek shelter from the growing storm. After finding a cave and lighting a fire, the scene changes to a calmed environment presumably many hours later, where lara emerges from the cave and informs the player that she's hungry and needs food. After only a moment of exploration, she chases down some deer to no avail; eventually, she runs into a corpse that's dangling upside down in a tree, bow wrapped around his torso. Lara decides she needs the bow, so she heads out on a limb to get it, falling in the process, but succeeding in getting the bow. Immediately after getting her weapon, she searches around until she finds enough arrows to continue. This bow is told to be her signature weapon in the game, which is evident by the gameplay videos and the entirety of the demo that relies on utilizing its many uses. Not only is it for killing enemies, but also for hunting for food, which she immediately does, tracking down a deer, killing it, and eviscerating the meat. The demo leader explains that this area is one of the open exploration areas throughout the game that encourages and rewards players for looking around before continuing.
After collecting the meat, Lara has to return to camp, which is her campfire. Here, she can expend the experience she's received thus far on skills and abilities, which the demo leader spent on an ability to retrieve more arrows from fallen corpses. Once she's expended her points, she explores some more and finds a little shack that takes her underground to some sort of ritualistic chamber; oddly enough, throughout the demo it appears the scenes jump around a bit, because I distinctly remember seeing a video with Lara in this same locale, hanging upside down, and this demo didn't showcase it. After searching through the underground ritual chamber, she uses fire to clear an obstacle and finds a pry-axe to open a door she couldn't get through before.
Eventually, she emerges from the shack to find a friend of hers, who is huddled over a fire with some tweaked-out looking guy who claims to be a teacher and a friend. Lara isn't deceived, and tricks him into exposing himself as the enemy, forcing him to take Lara's friend as a hostage. Lara tries to attack him with her bow, but is caught in a bear trap and he gets away. As she lay there, leg stuck and her friend gone, there's a rustling in the bushes and she's attacked by a pack of wolves, where she has to fend them off with her bow, unable to move. This scene was particularly powerful because it really showed her helplessness in the situation, and the moonbeams that pierced the jungle around her were very atmospheric and ominous.
Once she fends off the wolves, some of her friends - fellow shipwrecked colleagues I imagine - find her and help her out. She explains about how the girl from earlier was taken by the crazy person, and they all go after her, leaving her alone with one of her friends that I imagine is a mentor or good friend, as he seems to genuinely care about her. They head back to base, where her friend insists he needs to go check something out. Lara, seemingly healed from the bear trap wound, follows him and finds him at the opening of what looks like a ruined tomb of some sort that requires two people to crank dials at the same time. She tries to use her pry-axe, but it's not strong enough so she has to go out and find salvage littered about the second open-exploration area, where it's made apparent that she can get experience and meat by killing wolves and harvesting them. Salvage in this game can be used to upgrade weapons and tools, and in this case Lara uses it to upgrade her pry-axe to handle more pressure, which she subsequently uses to crank the dial and continue on.
Once through, Lara and her friend/mentor are ambushed by what look like mercenaries or other unbecoming figures. Her mentor has a gun, but opts out of the violent path and submits to the assailants under the demand that they not hurt Lara. She protests, but he drops his gun and they are overpowered, tied up, and taken back to the enemy camp. Once there, they find these rebels or whatever they are have captured all of their friends, and are holding them hostage. One of Lara's associates tries to run and is shot in the back. Panic ensues and Lara is almost able to evade capture, while still bound, but one of the enemies finds her and tries to force himself on her. After a series of quicktime events, Lara is able to strike him, bite off his ear, and tackle him to the ground, somehow releasing her of her binds in the process. They wrestle on the ground and Lara grabs a gun; another struggle ensues where you press X repeatedly until the gun is aimed at the assailant's head, then you pull the trigger.
Lara is shocked, but pushes the enemy off her, watching as he draws his last garbled breaths, then he finally collapses, and she lets out a cry of agony. Lara gets up, visibly shaken and disturbed, covered in dirt, mud, and blood; she looks terrible and upset; the entire demo was watching her quick descent into madness, and this was the final straw. After finally coming to her senses, she grabs the gun and stands defiant, epic background behind her as the demo ends and the player showing the game to us announces the game's release date is pegged for March 5th 2013.
I have to say, this Tomb Raider reboot may very well be the first time I get visibly excited for a Tomb Raider game. While clearly not yet complete and still in need of polish, the gameplay and RPG elements all look solid, and every aspect of the demo was absolutely gorgeous and emotional. Being a reboot/prequel combo of sorts, it's very interesting to see the character weak and ineffectual; it will be very nice to see her develop from a young, more traditional archaeologist into the badass woman we all know and love, and I think that if the game delivers as consistently as this demonstration we could have a real winner on our hands.
