Crystal Dynamics
Eidos Montreal (multiplayer)
Nixxes Software BV (PC)
Publisher(s)
Square Enix
Director(s)
Noah Hughes (creative)
Cory Barlog
Designer(s)
Darrell Gallagher
Artist(s)
Visual Works (CGI)
Writer(s)
Rhianna Pratchett
Composer(s)
Jason Graves
Series
Tomb Raider
Engine
Modified Crystal Engine
Platform(s)
Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360
Release date(s)
WW 5 March 2013
25 April 2013
Genre(s)
Action-adventure
Mode(s)
Single-player, multiplayer
Media/distribution
Optical disc, download
Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game. Published by Square Enix, Tomb Raider is the fifth title developed by Crystal Dynamics in the Tomb Raider franchise. As the first entry in a new Tomb Raider continuity, the game is a reboot that emphasises the reconstructed origins of the culturally influential lead character Lara Croft. Tomb Raider was released on 5 March 2013 for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows
After the release of Tomb Raider: Underworld
in 2008, Crystal Dynamics began development of Tomb Raider soon after.
Rather than a sequel, the team decided to completely reboot the series,
establishing the origins of Lara Croft for the second time, following Tomb Raider: Legend. Tomb Raider is set on Yamatai,
an island from which Lara Croft must save her friends and escape, while
being hunted down by a malevolent cult. Gameplay elements focus more on
survival, although exploration is used within the game when exploring
the island and various optional tombs. It is also the first game in the
series to have multiplayer and the first game to be published by Square
Enix, after the latter's acquisition of Eidos Interactive in 2009. Camilla Luddington was announced to voice and perform as Lara Croft in 2010, replacing Keeley Hawes.
After a delayed release from late 2012 to March 2013, the game received much anticipation and hype.Tomb Raider
received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the
gameplay, Camilla Luddington's performance as Lara and Lara's
characterization and development with many critics agreeing that the
game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism
went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary.Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.
Multiplayer
The fourth episode of The Final Hours of Tomb Raider, which
went live on YouTube on 8 January 2013, announced that the game would
have multiplayer features. The multiplayer mode was created by Canadian
video game development studio Eidos Montreal, known for making Deus Ex: Human Revolution.
According to the game's developers, there will be three types of games
for multiplayer, played in five different maps. Many things available
for the single-player campaign, are also added into multiplayer. In each
game, there are two enemy teams: Four survivors and four scavengers,
and they either try to eliminate the opposite team or attempt to bring
medical supplies to certain points in the map. The player can also set
traps or activate special features, according to the map the game is set
in.
Plot
Characters
The player takes on the role of Lara Croft, a young and ambitious archaeology graduate whose theories on the location of the lost kingdom of Yamatai
have convinced the Nishimura family—descendants from the people of
Yamatai themselves—to fund an expedition in search of the kingdom.
The
expedition is led by Dr. James Whitman, a celebrity archaeologist who
has fallen on hard times and is desperate to avoid bankruptcy and
divorce, and is accompanied by Conrad Roth, a Royal Marine
turned adventurer and close friend of the Croft family who serves as
mentor to Lara; Samantha "Sam" Nishimura, Lara's best friend and a
representative of the Nishimura family who films the expedition for a
documentary; Joslyn Reyes, a skeptical and temperamental mechanic and
single mother; Jonah Maiava, an imposing and placid fisherman who is
willing to believe in the existence of the paranormal and esoteric;
Angus "Grim" Grimaldi, the gruff Glasweigan helmsman of the Endurance; and Alex, a goofy and bespectacled electronics specialist.
Story
The game begins with Lara setting out on her first expedition about the ship Endurance, with the intention of finding the lost kingdom of Yamatai.
By her suggestion and against Whitman's advice, the expedition ventures
into the Dragon's Triangle, east of Japan. The ship is struck by a
violent storm and split in two, leaving the survivors stranded on an
isolated island. Lara is separated from the others when she is captured
by a strange, savage man and trapped in his cave home. She manages to
escape while her captor is killed as the cave collapses around them. As
Lara tries to locate the other survivors, she finds more evidence that
the island is inhabited, complete with strange carvings, dead bodies,
and ritual sacrifices of animals. She eventually finds her friend Sam
and a man called Mathias, who claims to be one of the passengers. As Sam
tells Mathias the legends of Himiko, Lara passes out; when she wakes,
Mathias and Sam are nowhere in sight.
When Lara finally reunites with the other survivors, she and Whitman
decide to break off from the main party and search for Roth, who is
still missing, while the rest of the group (Reyes, Jonah, Alex and Grim)
set out to find Sam and Mathias. As Lara and Whitman explore, they
discover that the island's inhabitants are worshiping Himiko, confirming
that the island is, in fact, Yamatai. Upon discovering a shrine erected
in Himiko's name, they are captured by the islanders and taken to a
settlement along with several other survivors of the Endurance
wreck. When the survivors attempt an escape, the captors turn on them,
hunting them down and killing them. Lara is separated from Whitman and
tries to hide, but is found by Vladimir, one of the leaders of the
inhabitants. Vladimir attacks Lara, but she fights back and is forced to
kill him to save her own life. She fights off the remainder of the
inhabitants as she desperately works her way up the mountainside to meet
up with Roth. Eventually, she locates an injured Roth in a nearby
abandoned village. Using Roth's equipment, Lara sets off for a
communications relay at the very top of the mountain, in hopes of
contacting the outside world and calling for aid.
After successfully hailing a plane that was searching for the Endurance
and setting a signal fire for them to follow, Lara witnesses a fierce
storm materialise out of a clear sky and strike the plane down,
accompanied by a mysterious voice saying "No one leaves" in Japanese.
Feeling responsible for the fate of the pilots, Lara is powerless to
stop the island's inhabitants from killing them. Lara is contacted by
Alex and Reyes, who reveal that Sam has been kidnapped by the island's
inhabitants, a violent cult known as the Solarii Brotherhood. Lara, who
is closest to Sam's position, tries to rescue her, but is foiled by
Mathias, who orders her killed. Lara is saved by the intervention of
strange samurai-like creatures—referred to by the islanders as 'Oni',
demons in Japanese folklore—and taken to an ancient monastery in the
mountains. Escaping again, Lara stumbles onto a ritual chamber, where
she learns that a "fire ritual" was used to choose the Sun Queen's
successor as part of a ceremony called the "Ascension". A terrified Sam
manages to contact Lara and informs her that the Solarii intend to put
her through the fire ritual, which will burn her to death if it is
unsuccessful. Lara makes for the Solarii fortress, meeting up with Grim,
but the Solarii capture the latter and threaten to murder him unless
she surrenders. Grim attempts to overpower them, but is killed in the
process. Lara is almost killed herself, until Roth intervenes; with his
support Lara is able to infiltrate the palace, where she witnesses
Mathias putting Sam through the fire ritual. Lara interrupts the ritual
by trying to save Sam, but she is overpowered by Mathias and his men.
The ritual continues, but Sam is not harmed by the flames, which are
extinguished by a great gust of wind, marking her as the rightful
successor to the Sun Queen's throne.
Lara narrowly escapes captivity once again and doubles back to help
her friends, whose attempts to reach Sam have resulted in their capture.
Aided by Whitman—who has managed to negotiate some degree of freedom
with the Solarii—Lara returns to the palace to rescue Sam as Roth
commandeers a helicopter to get them out. Having witnessed the storm
that forced the search plane to crash, Lara sends Sam to escape by land
and tries to force the pilot to land as a second storm brews up,
striking the helicopter and forcing them to crash. Lara is nearly killed
in the accident and is revived by Roth. However, Mathias and the
Solarii arrive, and Roth is killed by a tomahawk meant for Lara. While
mourning over Roth, Lara accepts that the storms are not natural, but
are somehow connected to the Sun Queen and designed to prevent anyone
from leaving the island. She meets up with the other survivors, who have
evaded the Solarii long enough to secure a boat for escaping the
island, provided that it can be repaired. They are joined by Whitman,
who claims to have escaped, though Lara begins to suspect him of working
with the cultists. Lara heads for the wreck of the Endurance to
meet up with Alex, who had previously gone there to salvage the tools
needed for Reyes to repair the boat. She finds him trapped under
wreckage and, as she attempts to free him, they come under attack by the
Solarii. Alex decides to trigger an explosion and sacrifice himself so
that Lara can escape with the tools.
Finding an account of a World War II era Japanese military expedition
to the island that sought a way to harness the power of the storms as a
weapon, Lara decides to explore an ancient tomb on the coast, where she
finds the remains of a high-ranking samurai who had committed seppuku.
It is revealed, in a message he left, that he was the general of the
queen's Stormguard, the Oni that defend the monastery, and that the
Queen's successor took her own life rather than receive the Sun Queen's
power, leaving the Sun Queen trapped in her body after death, and her
rage has manifested in the form of the storms. Lara realises that the
Ascension is not a ceremony to crown a new queen, but rather a ritual
that transfers the original Sun Queen's soul into a new body, and that
the process will destroy the host's soul. Himiko's spirit wants to
escape its current body, and Mathias plans to offer Sam as a new host.
Lara returns to the survivors on the beach to find that Whitman has
betrayed them, abducting Sam and handing her over to Mathias.
Lara, Jonah and Reyes give chase, heading up a river to the
monastery, with Lara arriving just in time to see Whitman killed by the
Oni. After fighting her way through the queen's guards, Lara arrives at
the top of the monastery in time to see Mathias start the Ascension
ritual. She works her way to Mathias, confronting Solarii and guards
alike. Lara kills Mathias when she shoots him from the roof of the
monastery using two pistols, sending him plunging into the abyss below,
before destroying Himiko's remains to save Sam. With the storms
dispersed, Lara, Sam, Reyes and Jonah leave the island and are picked up
by a cargo ship. As she and her friends sail home, Lara decides that
there are many more myths to be found and resolves to uncover them,
stating that she isn't returning home just yet.
Gameplay
Tomb Raider uses an interconnected hub-and-spoke model that combines action-adventure, exploration, and survival mechanics.The game is presented in third-person perspective,
and the player takes control of the lead character, Lara Croft.
Karl
Stewart said that the game's campaign will last between 12 and 15 hours.
Along with the main story, players will have the chance to do multiple
side quests, explore the island, revisit places, and search for
challenge tombs.
Development
System requirements
Minimum
Recommended
Microsoft Windows
Operating system
Windows XP Service Pack 3, Windows Vista, 7, 8 (32 or 64 bit)
Windows Vista, 7 or 8
CPU
Intel Core2 Duo 1.86 GHz (E6300) or AMD Athlon64 X2 2.1 GHz (4050+)
Intel Core i5-750 or AMD Phenom II X2 565
Memory
1 GB Memory (2 GB on Vista)
4 GB RAM
Graphics hardware
DirectX 9 graphics card with 512 MB Video RAM, AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT or nVidia 8600
DirectX 11 graphics card with 1 GB Video RAM, AMD Radeon HD 4870 or nVidia GTX 480
Following Tomb Raider: Underworld, Crystal Dynamics was split into two teams; the first beginning work on the next sequential pillar of the Tomb Raider franchise, while the second focusing on the newly created spin-off Lara Croft series (debuting with Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light in 2010).
Following pre-announcement media hype while the game's title was under
embargo, in November 2010, Square Enix filed for trademark of the slogan
for the new Tomb Raider game; "A Survivor is Born". On 6 December 2010, Square Enix announced Tomb Raider had been in production for nearly 2 years; "Square Enix Ltd. is excited today to announce Tomb Raider, the new game from Redwood City based studio Crystal Dynamics". Studio head Darrell Gallagher said, "Forget everything you knew about Tomb Raider, this is an origins story that creates Lara Croft and takes her on a character defining journey like no other".Game Informer
website and magazine ran a world exclusive cover reveal in its January
2011 issue, as well as exclusive coverage of emerging details directly
from Crystal Dynamics from 12 December 2010.Tomb Raider was the first game in the series to receive a M rating in the United States.
In January 2012, when asked if the game would be available on Nintendo's Wii U
console, Crystal Dynamics global brand director Karl Stewart responded
there are no plans to have the game available on that platform.
According to Stewart, the reason for this is that "it would not be
right" for the game to simply be ported, as the developers built the
game to be platform-specific before the Wii U was announced, and goes on
to mention that if they started building the game for the platform
"[they] would build it very differently and [they] would build it with
unique functionality."
In May 2012, it was announced by Darrell Gallagher, the studio head of
Crystal Dynamics, that the game has been delayed and is now due to be
released in the first quarter of 2013. He said: "We're doing things that
are completely new to Tomb Raider in this game, and the additional
development time will allow us to put the finishing touches into the
game and polish it to a level that you deserve. We believe this is the
right choice, and I guarantee it will be worth the wait."
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