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In the first part of the material, I spoke about the achievements of the original Tomb Raider, And in the second – about how Core Design And Eidos They buried oue under a pile of annual sequels with Angel of Darkness As a tombstone. Now we will talk about the miraculous revival of Lara Croft, which, alas, was followed by another fall.
Tomb Raider: Legend. Second coming
After Fiasco with Angel of Darkness Core Design, she lost the rights to the franchise, and Tomb Raider was given to his hands Crystal Dynamics , known in the series Legacy of kain. The studio understood a great responsibility assigned to her: the team was first engaged in intellectual property of such a scale. The series turned the wrong way, and it had to be returned to the correct course. For this, the developers called as a consultant a person who knows what Miss Croft should be, Toby Garda.
In the seventh part of Lara – again “legend”, and this word entered the name itself. She plays with death again and takes on crazy adventures. She is fearless, merciful, educated, resourceful and witty. Lara is again superheroine, and the developers directly show this in the first minutes of the game, starting from the screensaver itself.
But on creating a spectacular image Tomb Raider: Legend does not stop. Now Lara’s interlocutors do not disappear after the Rollino Casino Katsen, as in the first part: her comrades ZIP and Aliste remotely monitor all the adventures of the girl, give her advice and comment on what is happening. The comrades shade the crazy tricks with their remarks, which the heroine makes, and their mundane perspective allows Lara to prove herself even brighter. Still, in Legend, the focus of attention is, not tombs. And that's right: the catacombs are full in video games, and Miss Croft is one.
Once again, tombs, pseudo-archeology and the secrets of ancient civilizations, which, as always, are inevitably connected with each other. Tomb Raider returned to its essence, changing, however, the motivation of the heroine. This time it is digging in ancient ruins not out of sports interest, but for personal reasons: because of a girlfriend who was considered the deceased, and a mother who was missing just under the influence of ancient artifacts. On the one hand, this makes the narrative more dramatic, and the slopes of ancient secrets are important for the heroine. On the other hand, it exaggerates all its motives for family affairs. In addition, Lara's line and her close relatives (father) had already met in the film with Angelina Jolie – and was far from the best part.
So that the game does not consist of tombs alone, the developers decided to diversify the locations and added Tokyo and Kazakhstan there – the most controversial and most saturated levels in the game. Tokyo can be justified by the fact that it is very short, and in Kazakhstan there is a spectacular pursuit of the train, but it is still noticeable how much these stages are knocked out of the general row. However, they really introduced diversity. Legend had an ideal balance between spectacular action-models and relatively calm segments with platforming and puzzles: there were few of the first, and the second, as the Tomb Raider supposed, is the majority.
Separately, we note the level in England, in the homeland of Lara. It would seem that the least exotic setting of all, but here Legend is better than many predecessors intertwining its pseudo-archeology with reality. The beginning of the stage is either a museum, or an amusement park, allegedly built on the grave of King Arthur. Staging, humor and entourage allow you to feel much deeper than if it were the fresh story of a historian. The situation becomes even better when it turns out that under the building is really a real tomb of Arthur, and even with a monster in the lake!
Compared to the classics of the series, Legend abandoned the square levels in favor of something more realistic, and this entailed a change in mathematically accurate jumps for jumping. The need to calculate the length of the run and the angle of the jump disappeared, and with it the honesty of the platforming. If the developers decided that Lara could make this jump, then she automatically reached the desired ledge; if not, it is useless no matter how much try. On the one hand, the passage has become more natural and dynamic, on the other hand, transparency has disappeared, the opportunity to evaluate where you can jump. There were not so many problems in Legend itself, but the mechanic had them, and in subsequent issues it became completely obvious.
The puzzles remained traditionally simple, but now Lara has a scanner that illuminates all interactive objects – conveniently! The battles again became rudimentary – they emphasize that the journey is full of dangers, but they never abandon too serious a call. The exception is disgusting battles with bosses, which have become the weakest element of the game.
Tomb Raider Legend can only be reproached for trifles. She took the perfect course, returning the correct, real Lara Croft and devoting the whole game to her; She found the correct balance between the action and the adventure component; She pulled all the elements of the Tomb Raider gameplay to the standards of the middle of the zero. Legend has become an exemplary restoration of a deadlock franchise, a standard, which should be guided by the subsequent parts of the series.
But none of them did it.
Tomb Raider: Anniversary. Great gift
The plot Legend clearly hinted that the story was not finished yet: in the finale one could see the boxes with the logo of Natla Technologies, and the denouement directly hinted at the sequel. The first flowed into a prequel Anniversary , And the second – in Underworld , Direct continuation.
Tomb Raider: Anniversary It became a remake of the first part, which not only remade the gameplay under the realities of Legend, but also adjusted the plot to the roofing of the Croft family: the initial goal of the heroine is no longer a sport, but the search for places that interested her father. Anniversary also shows the first murder of Lara and emphasizes how difficult it is to take away her life.
Otherwise, in terms of script, this is the same first part. So, the main advantage of Legend – constant dialogues with the participation of Lara – there is no. Compared to Anniversary's predecessor, it seems ringing empty.
She also loses in the variety of locations. Almost all TR1 took place in closed rooms, and the remake transferred them to the modern engine, without really changing anything, which is why the game against the background of Legend seemed gray. Anniversary inherited the strengths and weaknesses of the original – in particular, simple, but not quite honest jumps. The movement around the world became easier, but the search (often the only) correct route in the buried decorations became more complicated.
The combat system was supplemented by a new feature: angry opponents, flashing their eyes, violently rushed to the heroine, and Lara, dodging, could hold a murderous counterattack. This naturally led to the fact that dancing with somersaults had to deal with almost every enemy, otherwise the battles were delayed. The game also ducked into the then fashionable qte pool, becoming more spectacular, but not a drop is no deeper.
Anniversary turned out to be a good remake of a much more outstanding game. While TR1 was a breakthrough for its time, Anniversary was more like a fan service, rather than a full part of the series. It was more linear than the original, but this linearity was not accompanied by neither cinematography, nor a rich plot, in which at the same time she successfully made a name for herself Uncharted.
Tomb Raider: Underworld. Old rake
IN Tomb Raider: Underworld The developers decided to demonstrate the power of the new generation of consoles and launched the locations in breadth, turning their passage into a traction. Previously, a quick change in levels brought pleasure, because the player felt progress; In Underworld, each location begins to tire long before you pass it. The environment is so spacious that it is sometimes simply incomprehensible what to do and where to go – even the tips of the Lara did not help too much.
If in the Tomb Raider 2 she, finding herself on the seabed, sailed to the ship’s victim half a minute and began to explore it, then in the Underworld in a similar situation, you first need to collect several keys under water, and at least half an hour can go for this. Underworld destroyed the dynamism of the predecessors, giving nothing in return.
When you need a motorcycle just to move in level, this is an alarming bell
On the contrary, only from the game. Giant puzzles are solved painfully slowly, in addition it is often not clear where you can jump, but where – no. In Legend and Anniversary, Lara clung to the right ledges herself, but here it was as if she had forgotten how to do it. The locations are filled with invisible walls, slippery surfaces and ledges, which the heroine flies past-to break five meters lower if the scripts require that.
Underworld did not have either the simplicity of Legend or the honesty of the old parts. Perhaps the only thing you can praise with Underworld gameplay is the replacement of QTE with "adrenaline moments", when the time slows down with danger, but magical buttons do not pop up on the screen. It is necessary to independently figure out what is happening and do something logical within the framework of gaming mechanics.
The developers even managed to make the interface confusing and unobvious! In Tomb Raider! Look at the left top of the screen and try to guess without hints why Lara is four health indicators and what they mean
There was no less disaster with the plot than with the gameplay. Remember the first Legend scene and compare it with how Underworld begins. The first thing we are shown is the explosion of the Kroft family mansion. Look, the game shouts, how serious I am! How gloomy I am! How high the bets are! This is not a single Tomb Raider before he allowed himself! The game has not really begun, and strained attempts to make the audience an akhta are already striking. Lara's friendship with Zip and Alister, thanks to which all these wonderful dialogs were in Legend, threw overboard the sake of dramatism spraying through the edge.
The whole plot eventually smoked to the same heritage of Atlantis, what kind of topic we seemed to closed in the first part. Therefore, Underworld does not manage to intrigue with its false archaeology: we learned about the connection of cultures and community of artifacts in Legend, and the sequel did not bring anything new. Lara voices her discoveries, just a tambourine under his breath: there is nothing epic in this. No revelation, no emotions.
The culmination of the plot arch with a family, which served Lara, the main motivation in the last games, is also lushingly prose: in the other world she finally meets her mother in the form of a walking dead man. And kills her. That would end in the search for Lara if on the Natla had not confessed to the reprisal against Lord Croft. More hatred! More squeezed teeth! With all its pathos, Underworld completely drained both emotional peaks; The game – and with it and the whole trilogy – ends literally nothing: dropping the cut into the blue slurry, Lara and Amanda spat at each other and parted. At the same time, the developers hid the real (and completely useless) final of the legends about Lara Croft in DLC, which came out only for Xbox 360.
In general, the story repeated: between Legend and Underworld the same abyss as between TR1 and ANGEL of Darkness. The creators of the New Lara – with Toby Gard at the same time – betrayed her in the same way as Core Design betrayed the previous one. If on the release of the first uncharted someone also called Drake “Lara Croft in Pants”, then after Underworld the situation has changed to diametrically opposite: there is nothing more to say about Lara Croft. Next to the charismatic Dobryk Drake, an empty and embittered British looked like a misunderstanding.
Cooperative spin-offs
Before re -raising Lara for the second time, Crystal Dynamics returned to the origins of the series in the game, whose gameplay was very different from the game process of classic tr. The cooperative Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light There are not even the words Tomb Raider in the name, but at the same time she caught the essence of the franchise than Underworld much better. Guardian of Light was a small sketch about how Lara once again found an ancient artifact and defeated the evil deity, simultaneously rash with ironic worship.
After the release of Rebut, the studio released a much less successful continuation, Temple of Osiris. If the Guardian of Light was designed for two players and two characters, then Osiris was growing up to four – more precisely, allowed to play at least together, even though the four of the four. This was poorly affected by gameplay because the characters lost their individuality. Lara in this crowd faded, and three new heroes did not have a single chance to arouse interest.
Apocrypha: Tomb Raider
- Why the first game about Lara Croft was the best
- How Core Design diluted its greatest creation
- Renaissance and sunset of classical Lara Croft
- Reload that ruined everything
