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EXCLUSIVE Tomb Raider: Angel Of Darkness Feature

Stephen Leyton

21/02/2003

We chat with Adrian Smith, Operations Director at Core to get to latest insight into the next Tomb Raider.

There seem to be a lot of sniping at Eidos regarding the delayed release of the latest in the Tomb Raider series. Some are saying the team is struggling to get things right and is looking for a hook and better ideas to captivate the public whilst others are saying Core, the development team, is merely ensuring they get it pixel perfect and there are no fears about this not being another great title. Whatever way you look at it, 3 delays so far mean this will come under even closer scrutiny than any previous Lara Croft offering. Now pencilled in for an April release we are 100% sure this will be the month of its release.

TVGâs Derek dela Fuente caught up with Adrian Smith, Operations Director at Core, to get a fix on the latest news on Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (AOD).

The one question briefly touched on which Core was eager to answer was - How increasingly hard has it become for the team to write a new game based around Lara Croft? Is it all about ideas, angles, and being even more innovative? Also, do they spend hours ensuring continuity so that people familiar with the ethos of Lara feels they know and understand her? âIf youâd asked me this question after The Last Revelation I would have said yes. With AOD we have gone back to the basics of what made the first game such a success. Itâs a relatively new team, a new engine, and weâve brought in a lot of new elements, something that we wanted to do for a long time. So for us it is like going back to the first game when we had a very clear vision of what we wanted to do and it was very cutting edge. One misconception about this game is that Lara has become a different person, admittedly she has got a slightly harder edge but not to the extent that some articles have claimed. Instead what they have done is introduce a darker theme than in previous Tomb Raider games. We wanted to put Lara in situations she has not faced before to see how she reacts. Continuity is essential.â

It did appear that they (Core/Eidos) didnât think a six-month delay could be considered âlongâ in this industry. âWe want to deliver the best Tomb Raider game ever and by putting the release date back gave us the extra time to help us achieve our goal. We simply werenât prepared to compromise on quality by rushing the game out for Xmas.â

âThe story is very much on an epic scale from 14th Century Alchemists to serial killers in modern day France. To create something on this scale it was necessary to take ideas and production values from the film industry â“ in the way they research the subject, the back story they create for their characters, the depth of the visuals. When we wrote this story we wrote a book, AOD is only the first chapters of that book. The game opens a lot of doors, and only closes a few of them.â

So it appears Lara has been remolded, even reinvented but done with a subtle hand. It does appear that every single area of the gameâs development has been looked at long and hard and this goes right down to the gameâs all-important technology. Lara Croft has always looked great but possibly the last offering looked slightly stale. With this in mind, expect to see lots more eye candy graphics and be prepared for the âwowâ factor

âThe first Tomb Raider game was revolutionary in terms both of graphics and gameplay. In the past with previous games we have always been limited by the technology available, however this certainly hasnât been the case with AOD. For a start off Lara is now made up of over 5,000 polygons as opposed to just 500 in previous games. The level of animation is breathtaking and the new engine enables some amazing graphical effects for weather, lighting and reflective maps.â The lowest PC spec on this offering is expected to kick in at a minimum of PIII 733 128 Meg Ram, which is very high!

There are many new and interesting features to watch out for. For the very first time in a Tomb Raider game Lara has the ability to talk to characters in the game. You are given choices of how you interact with these characters, the choices you then make will affect Laraâs route through the game making the game less linear.

You will also need to think more about how you react with NPCs, however there arenât multiple endings; it certainly isnât a âDeus Ex styleâ of game. However what they do have is the ability to affect Laraâs route through the game. You must get Lara from A to B, however there are different ways of doing this. For example, in one of the early exchanges Lara needs to speak to Madam Carvier, a colleague of Von Croy. If Lara speaks to Madam Carvier in a certain way, she will receive Von Croyâs notebook, which will help Lara through the game. However, if she is dismissive of her then she will have to manage without the notebook and try to locate the notebook another way. The more you found out and saw, any previous reservations you had with the title melted away.

For those not au fait, the game starts in the back streets of Paris, and ends in the hellish depths of Prague. Setting some parts of the game in real-life locations introduces different sorts of challenges for Lara. This is the first Tomb Raider game where Lara can use stealth. At the start of the game Lara must use stealth to avoid detection by the police. She is on the run after being framed for the murder of her former mentor Von Croy and if she gets caught it will be âgame overâ for the player. There are certainly some weird and wonderful locations, but I donât want to ruin the surprise by divulging too many details.

Another cool implementation is that for the first time in a Tomb Raider game you are able to play as another character - Kurtis Trent. He is an extremely cool character who brings a new dimension to the game as he has his own distinctive moves and gameplay mechanics, including the terrifying Chirugai blade. There are further plans for Kurtis, however these depend on how well he is received in AOD.

Already if you list the new ideas and see the direction this game is taking it has more innovations than any of the previous titles and there are lots more as Adrian went onto establish. âA lot of the new features in AOD we have wanted to do in previous games but have been limited by technology. We want to try to keep the game new and exciting by introducing new features that will complement the existing gameplay but we donât want to move too far away from what the Tomb Raider experience is fundamentally about.â

With over 28 million copies sold worldwide of the previous 5 games Eidos already has quite a large captive audience. The aim with AOD is to target the existing fans but also the new gamers who perhaps havenât experienced a Tomb Raider game before. Core aim to achieve this by adding new gameplay features without alienating existing fans and by producing a shorter more intense gaming experience. The Tomb Raider movie will certainly help bring in a new audience, it has helped project Lara Croft and Tomb Raider well and truly into the mainstream.

We eagerly look forward to this arrival!