We join Lara Croft in St Francis\u2019 Folly \u2013 inspired by the Unesco-listed monasteries of Meteora in Greece \u2013 as the light shines through the cracked ceiling and a flock of bats glide across the vast ruins below. When Lara leaps down to the monastery\u2019s crumbling pillared courtyard, it becomes clear that these screeching, leathery creatures aren\u2019t just set dressing. As they lurch towards her with unpredictable movements, she dispatches the swarm with a flurry of gun fire and panicked punches.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a suitably cinematic reintroduction to our heroine and her very first adventure. Co-developed by longtime Lara custodians Crystal Dynamics and Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, Legacy of Atlantis is a reimagining of the classic 1996 game Tomb Raider<\/a>, and this familiar cliffside location is now brimming with new life and believable detail. Yet while our reunion gets off to an auspicious start, I have my concerns. It feels like reconnecting with an old friend at the pub, only for them to begin spouting conspiracy theories two pints in.<\/p>\n Where the \u201996 original forced players to rely on their wits \u2013 or a pricey strategy guide \u2013 to figure out what to do, Lara can now straight-up cheat. She\u2019s equipped with an environmental scanner, so a button tap reveals extra environmental lore or simply the solution to a puzzle. It\u2019s a change that feels somewhat sacrilegious, and may detract from the eerily isolating atmosphere that made the original so beloved.<\/p>\n Lara v the bats is now suitably cinematic. Photograph: ATL Gamescom<\/p>\n \u201cIf the devs from 1996 had the technology that we have today, what choices would they make?\u201d asks Raul Siqueira, game director at Crystal Dynamics. \u201cThe sense of isolation in the original game was largely due to the technological limitations of that time,\u201d says Arek Tomaszewski, art director at Flying Wild Hog, likening it to the fog in Silent Hill which was both an artistic decision and a way to cover up empty environments on the PlayStation 1. \u201cThe darkness and the feeling of being alone created an emotion that you remember. When I replayed Tomb Raider, my initial memory was the exact same. What we are trying to do now is build environments \u2013 like the spaces in Greece \u2013 where you feel as if you are the first person discovering them in centuries, entering places that have been left untouched.\u201d<\/p>\n Lara now crafts balms from a menu rather than finding anachronous first aid kits in centuries-old untouched tombs. Somewhat less believably, she can also pause her adventure to whip up stat-boosting stews, Breath of the Wild<\/a>-style. These additions are among a slew of modern flourishes that I feel unsure about. Is the original really improved by giving Lara a grappling hook, RPG-esque stats, skill trees and quick time events?<\/p>\n One area that Flying Wild Hog \u2013 the maker of Hard Reset and Shadow Warrior \u2013 knows well is combat. As Lara delves deeper into the dingy ruins of the Damocles chamber, she is ambushed by a familiar foe: a leopard. But this roaring beast now moves with convincing agility. As well as swiping at Lara, leopards now hide from her, retreating through holes in the walls before returning with an emboldened counterattack. Luckily Lara is fiercer too. As the beast lunges toward her, she draws her shotgun and blasts, causing the creature to crumple to the floor in Max Payne-esque slo-mo. The newly dynamic combat is the gameplay overhaul that looks most promising \u2013 a world away from the stationary shooting and \u201cdog scooting across the carpet\u201d backsteps of yesteryear.<\/p>\n The swords of Damocles puzzle area. Photograph: ATL Gamescom<\/p>\n Narratively, the remake promises a deeper story and some fan-pleasing easter eggs. For this iteration, Lara is played by Dragon Age: Inquisition and Cyberpunk 2077 actor Alix Wilton Regan. \u201cHearing her voice in the game now, she is Lara Croft,\u201d says Tomaszewski. \u201cThe sheer amount of character and depth she brought to Lara is unbelievable.\u201d The game\u2019s publisher, Amazon, is also the custodian of a forthcoming Phoebe Waller-Bridge-produced Tomb Raider TV show<\/a>, and the developers suggest there will be some connective tissue between the two projects. After hopping across falling swords and solving Damocles\u2019s puzzles, Lara emerges from the darkened tomb into a burst of sunshine, and my demo culminates with the tease of a vast, ancient civilisation.<\/p>\n \u201cI think this game changed our DNA as a studio,\u201d says Tomaszewski. \u201cIn our previous games, like Shadow Warrior, every second was filled with nonstop action. Here we wanted to master pacing, and we learned a lot from Crystal Dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n Gaming as a whole has undoubtedly transformed since Lara\u2019s first adventure. Tomb Raider\u2019s dodgy camera controls and questionable Playboy collaborations are thankfully now dusty historical relics themselves. Yet as visually impressive as Legacy of Atlantis looks, I can\u2019t help but wonder if a touch of Lara\u2019s brilliance lay in her original simplicity. By encumbering her with modern game mechanics, a bit of her soul may be lost. If Legacy of Atlantis offers the option to disable all of that for a purer Tomb-raiding experience, it could still be a winner.<\/p>\n Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is scheduled for release in February<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We join Lara Croft in St Francis\u2019 Folly \u2013 inspired by the Unesco-listed monasteries of Meteora in Greece…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":767145,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-767144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-gb","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=767144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/767144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=767144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=767144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=767144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}