Tomb Raider: Underworld - First Look Preview

Having made what can only be described as a recovery of near Lazarus proportions with Tomb Raider: Legend in 2006, work on Lara Croft and Crystal Dynamics' next globe-trotting adventure is already well underway. Recently pushed to a Christmas 2008 release, which delivered a knock to Eidos not unlike a well-placed kick to the privates (the shareholders have been the left reeling on the floor nursing themselves), Tomb Raider: Underworld returns Lady Croft to the present, following her flash-back to the mid-1990s in last year's Anniversary release.

TVG recently attended the UK unveiling of Underworld to see for ourselves how the 'true' next-gen Tomb Raider is shaping up so far...

Lara Croft's Apocalypto

For now, Eidos are keeping the storyline close to their chest, but expect the usual mix of locations from around the world. The short hands-off presentation, played with the Xbox 360 version of the game, took place in the heart of some Mexican ruins - right in the middle of what looked and sounded like a perfect storm. Flashes of lightning followed seconds later by the foreboding rumble of rolling thunder, not to mention the unforgiving blanket of rain belting down to the ground, instantly created a mass of atmosphere to the demo that was largely unseen in previous instalments. Extra details to the gameworld are also being built into Underworld, adding further visual gloss to proceedings, thanks to the introduction of the new game engine. Many of them however, such as the footprints in wet mud or the fact that environmental destruction and bodies remain for the course of mission, are details that should be expected more than two years into a platform cycle...but Eidos seem to be more than enthusiastic to promote them in Underworld. The game also uses what the publisher describes as 'Hybrid Lighting', using both dynamic lighting maps with dynamic shadowing (showed off by the ferocious movement of the storm clouds overhead), together with the scary sounding spherical harmonics technology on Lara herself.

Lara's also been given a new character model, wholly mo-capped animation by an Olympic gymnast to ensure the archaeologist is at her most agile and flexible best. The bread and butter wall-climbing, beam-balancing, and swinging from bars, are of course set to return, though her reactions to vertical climbing and reaching for difficult ledges showed a more realistic physical strain. The studio is also working hard to improve the number of contextual animations and animation blends, further enhancing what is already looking like the most impressive Tomb Raider to date - arguably on par with Naughty Dog's Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. With the improved interaction between Croft and the environment at large, aimed at grounding the heroine better to the world around her, fans of the series should notice the extra step that Crystal Dynamics are taking during development. For instance, she can now pick up bars to shove in key places, enabling players to carve their own 'character paths' through certain areas of the maps - within reason, naturally. After all, this is Tomb Raider, not Assassin's Creed.

On the subject of Ubisoft's Medieval Free-Running release, Eidos' Senior Producer Sarah van Rompaey also explained during our look at the game that Lara will be able to use 'Free Climbing'. Whilst in the demo the definition largely meant that Lara traversed convex and concave walls and not just straight ones, the use of 'free' throws up the notion of how open she will be to climbing the majority of surfaces. If an extended range of climbing surfaces aren't available to Lara - and let's face it, there have been times in the past where she's refused to clamber over even the most accessible ledges because Crystal Dynamics haven't wanted her to - then it certainly calls into question why the ability is 'Free' and not just regular climbing. Though staying a tad quiet on the subject when asked by TVG, (despite reassurances that it'll work at credible occasions in the environment), let's hope that 'Free Climbing' isn't just spin-talk; we'll have to wait to see how it pans out over the coming months.

If the thought of Lady Croft performing her acrobatics even more lithely than previous adventures is an exciting prospect, then the fact that she'll now get down and dirty from rolling around the in mud and look even wetter than she did in Legend and Anniversary should get the heart pumping even more vigorously. Anyway, enough of the tiresome cheap thrills - what about the adventure itself?

Welcome To The Jungle.

Back to the Mexican rainforest, with the lovely Lara getting soaking wet in the thunderstorm (right, enough of that - I promise). Taking place towards the end of a sequence of puzzles, the hands-off demo allowed us to see this evolved Lady Croft at close quarters, showing off her more natural moves as she made her way through to the heart of a ruined Mayan temple. Facing hunters/natives and panthers along the way, a chance for Eidos to show off the fact that a level of threat is being built into the enemies' emergent AI (in words, stay back and watch the hunters take it to the big cats), it seems like Crystal Dynamics are a bit more hell-bent on crafting a more 'realistic' feeling to the game world. Lara will also gain a new skill in Underworld with the ability to dual target, which proved handy when encountering a couple of panthers on the prowl.

Another instance of the drive for increased realism was pointed out with the grapple points. No longer buffed up with industrial-grade metal cleaning fluid, the new points in Underworld will be much more subtle, fitting into the environment whilst at the same time not disappearing totally off the radar. That said, there's going to have to be clever balancing on the part of Crystal Dynamics to ensure that the grapple points aren't so inconspicuous that players are left tearing their hair out during Christmas. One of the better-late-than-never features of Underworld rests with the physicality of the grapple line. Hitting an object with the line in past games would cause it to repel back into its casing; in Underworld, the line can bend around objects. Not only a sliver of the real-world dynamics that the developers are building into the eighth Tomb Raider, the addition will also be used to solve puzzles, something that was demonstrated during the demo itself. Throwing a grapple line to the other side of a room, and using it to knock a solid block of stone off its mounting was a clear display of the feature, and we can only hope that similar dynamics are making their way into the game in its entirety.

Touting expansive environments with chains of puzzles, van Rompaey offered some sort of reassurances that there won't be excessive travelling between puzzles. Stating that "the entire environment is an adversary, which involves puzzles" we hope that Underworld refrains from open-world for open-world's sake. That said, with the introduction of ever greater interaction between Lara and the fauna of her environment, we hope that we're wrong about reaching for the switch to set off the alarm bells. The Tomb Raider titles have always seen expansive puzzles within puzzles, so how Underworld's 'epic' structure differs from the well-established formula remains to be seen. The effect of the weather on Lara's abilities, for instance causing the stone walls of the ruins to become increasingly slippery for Croft to clamber over, will also be key if Eidos/Crystal Dynamics are to realise the integration between their most famed protagonist and the world around her.

That said, as the demo proved, there is plenty about Tomb Raider: Underworld to get excited over.