Shadow of the Tomb Raider Showcases the Series' Largest Ever Hub

Less story and liveservice yeah i dont have it in preorder. Ill wait i think i rather get the RE 2 Collectors Edition. I rather had a Claire statue though. 😁

This would so be an area in PS Home if that were still a thing. Reminds me of the Uncharted area.

@Flaming_Kaiser Me too, i am very very hyped for RE 2 very much right now. i wish we use time machine go forward to January 24, 2019 lol.. By the way, this game look great so far. i already pre-ordered this is Croft Edition cost 99.99

I think it looks great. Graphically, I am impressed so far. I love the colors and textures of the jungle. I’ll reserve judgment on the large hub approach, but I can’t wait to try it.

@get2sammyb what are your most anticipated games in 2018 and 2019 for right now ? Mine is Spider-Man, Red Dead Redemption 2, this, Resident Evil 2 remake and Days Gone. that's it.. i have no clue about The last of us 2 and Ghost of Tsushima because both didn't tell release window at end of their trailers during E3

@get2sammyb Thumb up. see my avatar

"Largest Ever Hub" already makes me feel queasy. Nothing against Tomb Raider, I'm just tired of open worlds, pseudo or otherwise. The way TR '13 was structured worked well enough I think.

I enjoyed playing the large hub worlds in ROTTR more than the first game so I'm pretty stoked for this one. It looks so lush.

The game looks good.

I think it's perfectly fine that the scope increases in a sequel, since they're just building on the previous games.

Also....them's some gosh darn good lookin' environments, consarn it!!! This game wasn't on my radar at all (Rise of the Tomb Raider is still untouched in my backlog), but these jungles are shootin' my interest through the roof!

This is what I want from a modern Tomb Raider game and it worked very well in the previous 2 as well. Admittedly, I would have liked more 'tomb raiding' but then Uncharted seemed to more about reaching that '1 treasure' after following clues, solving puzzles etc along the way.

The Tombs in Tomb Raider have been more 'side quests' with a focus on 'puzzles' - not combat or particularly taxing puzzles but still more of a side quest.

I can't wait for Shadow of the Tomb Raider and pre-ordered the Croft edition. I love the more open world feel and completed every area to 100% multiple times on various consoles and fully expect to do the same with this. I love the more RPG elements that Tomb Raider has nowadays rather than the more linear story of past Games.

What I've first loved in old Tomb Raider games was all the different places that we were visiting. Since the 2013 remake, I find it boring to always stay in the same place...

Those animations are hard to watch.

I'm not really opposed to it per se, but I want TOMBS.

The ever changing face of Lara Croft continues.

Well, since half of that video focused on an incredibly elaborate tomb (which looked to rival some of Uncharted's set-pieces and is one of at least eight, judging from the claims of having more than previous games, with six more promised as part of the DLC, too), I'm confused by comments suggesting that the new Tomb Raider games are lacking something.

After everything we saw, I fully expected the video to end on Lara finding her objective; even in comparison with Rise, that tomb had gone on longer than ever. Instead, she finds a massive ancient mechanism to tackle, and the narrator says "we don't wanna spoil this, so we'll cut it there". Holy cow!

@get2sammyb, you've ended your article on a somewhat-vague, open-ended question hinting that there's some kind of "cost" to featuring an open world hub area between all the tomb raiding and action-adventuring, but you don't say what.

Personally, I can only see a gain. Whereas previous games in this and other franchises have been victim to criticisms of "rich white person rocks up and tramples all over indigenous culture to nab shiny thing", including a thriving village can only strengthen the emotional connection we're supposed to have with this place, giving us additional narrative and an important ethnographic perspective (along with side quests for upgrades, of course). It's context for all the tomb raiding we'll be doing.

Heck, one of my biggest surprises in the video is the "vocal immersion" thing, where all of the NPCs have their native language recorded alongside English, and it's up to us which we wanna hear. In a genre so ready to just provide us with dodgy Bond villain accents (or, at best, convoluted reasons as to why all the locals have gone and been replaced by English-speaking mercenaries), this is a big deal, and an awesome one at that.

This story isn't just about the bigger and better hub, it's about how Shadow is gonna have bigger and better everything, including tombs filled with puzzles and treasure. If we were still playing games with a linear "raid this place, raid that place" structure, we'd all be complaining about how they hadn't evolved.

The poor girl can't catch a break!

The tombs look much much better

Why do they keep changing her face? It was perfect in the first game and it seems to be getting worse with each new game.

@adf86 I thought they looked fine. Which ones are you referring to? Laras climbing and running animations or the NPC conversing and moving about the village animations? Nothing stuck out to me as poor in that department but maybe I was too busy gawking at the beauty of the jungle and the environment.

@Th3solution In all fairness, the side quest dialogue sequences with the local population were a little stiff; lots of standing in place and stoic faces, but then they're side quests, and bigger, more popular games have done far worse. The main storyline cutscenes (at least the ones we've seen thusfar) have featured lavish facial and motion-capture animation.

Many of the climbing and running animations are identical to those found in Rise (why fix what isn't broken? Lara was a human gazelle). In fact, the only new ones I noticed were ones connected with new methods of traversal, like the full-control swimming (yaaaay!!) and the rope descent.

@kyleforrester87 Whilst I have really, really enjoyed the reboots thusfar (and will probably adore Shadow), I have to agree that I'd like to see a little more of the fantastical, over-the-top edge return in whatever the franchise does next.

Crashing planes and crazy temples are great an' all, but nothing beats taking on a T-Rex with a pair of pistols.

@JoeBlogs @get2sammyb As long as these modern Tomb Raider games are held up as a shining example of the perfect blend of both, I'd be happy with that.

But it'd be written by Sammy, so...

I say all this, by the way, as somebody who generally prefers linear adventures to open-world sandboxes.

Well done CD you've screwed up me buying this at launch and I expect micro transactions and loot boxes too

@RogerRoger Yeah, I guess I didn’t see anything severely out of line with the current games out there. Like you said, the side quest / NPC animation is usually downgraded as compared to the main story events. Since I’m currently playing Yakuza 0 and Horizon Zero Dawn (I just realized, that’s a lot of zeroes. Maybe I should replay MGS Ground Zeroes or start Zero Time Dilemma to keep the streak going... but I digress) and the side quest animation is a significant step down in these games, especially Y0. The graphical quality of the Kiryu and Majima rendering is very good, showing even the pores of the skin on their faces during the major story scenes, and then the side quest NPCs and enemies look last gen at best. (Still loving the game btw) It’s less jarring in HZD, but I am recently going back to this game after playing at launch and the first time around I didn’t realize when conversing with NPCs how stiff and uncanny valleyesque the animations are. Even Aloy’s facial movements are robotic. So I guess this TR footage didn’t seem any worse by comparison, as you say.

@Th3solution What, no love for Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward, Resident Evil Zero, Perfect Dark Zero or Metroid: Zero Mission? And... that's all the zeroes I can remember. I have zero more. Zero zeroes. Stop saying zero. I said zero. Zero.

Funnily enough, I was gonna mention Horizon in my previous reply (and glad you're loving it, too). Fantastic, gorgeous game with pretty stiff side quest dialogue. It happens.

@RogerRoger Lol. I’m trying to refrain from saying that numerical digit that represents an absence of value. 🙊

And actually, I’m kinda feeling a HZD vibe from Shadow of the TR. Except less open world / Ubisoft tower map opening and more hub world, kinda openish Lost Legacy on steroids feeling. I could be totally wrong, but the little caves you do in HZD to learn the over ride mechanics feel a little bit like Tomb or Crypts in the TR games. It just looks like the tombs in Shadow will be much more fleshed out and a major part of the gameplay. It’s a great way to show the progression of Lara becoming the tomb raider she is in the later installments.

the only tomb raider i've played is the 2013 reboot, so i've no attachment to how the lara croft games used to be. the premiss /structure sounds ok to me for a modern action game , but I can't muster any enthusiasm for it, having not played the second part.

@Th3solution What, you mean there's a similarity between Horizon's "female protagonist (armed with bow and arrow) enters old, forbidden underground structures to upgrade her skills" gameplay and Tomb Raider's "bow-and-arrow-carrying protagonist (who is female) enters underground structures, which are old and forbidden, to upgrade her skills" approach?!

Seriously, the first time I entered a Cauldron in Horizon, I chuckled to myself and continually referred to them as Optional Tombs.

@adf86 ooohhh.... I missed that. 😂 That was a good one.

I thought the hub concept in the last game ruined what was so fun in the first game not looking forward to this at all.

what I want from them is to remove the skill leveling, scavenging/crafting, just give us straight tomb raiding experience ala uncharted starring lara croft

@RogerRoger Optional challenge tombs, regardless of intricacy, are far less interesting to me than a game based around tombs as part of the main/primary quest/objective. I am not a completionist, and I do not have tons of gaming time, so I find it hard to do optional content. Never mind the fact that optional content lacks the sense of urgency to motivate me to engage in it, once the main game is beaten.

@Lekzie1 What I want is for them to go back to the old Tomb Raider formula, or something in-between, like Legend or Underworld.