Shadow of the Tomb Raider will let you adjust the difficulty of a variety of parameters independently, meaning that you’ll be able to tune the title’s challenge to your particular tastes. Among the options are Combat Difficulty, Exploration Difficulty, and Puzzle Difficulty. While the first is self-explanatory – enemies will take more or less damage to defeat, for example – it’s the other two options that demand closer inspection.
If you set Exploration Difficulty to ‘Easy’, for instance, climbable surfaces will stand-out a little more clearly in the world. It seems that, as with previous games, Eidos Montreal is using bird poo to mark ledges – but turn up the challenge and it’ll be mostly washed away. Meanwhile, if you set the Puzzle Difficulty to ‘Easy’, you’ll be given greater guidance from your Survival Instincts.
Exploration Difficulty
Puzzle Difficulty
Do you know what? This isn’t the worst idea in the world. You’ll be able to toggle waypoint markers on and off, while there’ll be additional accessibility options such as the ability to play with a single analogue stick. All of this aims to make the title easier for more casual gamers to enjoy, but it’s worth noting that you can crank up the challenge as well if you want a more hardcore experience. The best of both worlds, then? Nothing wrong with that.
[source tombraider.square-enix-games.com, via eurogamer.net]
Comments 23
Fair plays - I did always wonder how the birds knew to poo on the exact ledges that were climbable. Or maybe they just don't like Lara and poo there knowing she uses it as finger grips.
More games should do stuff like this. Replaying The Witcher 3 (again, I know) and appreciate all the little things you can turn on and off to make gameplay more straightforward.
Ultimately I think giving players choice is really important. Difficulty levels, accessibility options, everything.
That title though. 😅
Will they be charging by the pound for the bird droppings? Micro transactions at their finest.
@ShogunRok One of these days I'm really going to remember to start TW3. Maybe after Mafia 3. And DQXI. Just remembered I still need to play RotTR sitting there in it's steelbox. The poop may be waiting a long while. Maybe the TR trilogy in 4k on PS5. Gotta. Stop. Buying. Games.
@rjejr Skip Mafia 3! That'll help.
This I really like. Shadow is climbing higher and higher on my wanted list.
Makes you wonder what the birds eat in Naughty Dog games as a lot of the markers for climbing are yellow....
@BAMozzy Chips from Bilston!
Good ideas though.
I know a lot of people hate having all of the stuff highlighted for them, so a lot of people will appreciate this.
@KALofKRYPTON @BAMozzy Vindaloo!
@Kidfried My guess is I'll play a couple of hours and then get bored and stop, but I need to play it first to decide for myself.
You know me so well Square.
Pretty nifty idea to suit everybody's different play styles. Now if only we could tone down Lara's thirst for violence. That girl has more murder death kills than Simon Pheonix.
This shouldn't be news; games with varied gameplay should've been offering difficulty sliders for each element since the very beginning. I'm good at scrambling and puzzles, but not the greatest combat gamer, and in games like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, I've always hated how I've felt right at home one moment and then out-of-my-depth the next.
Combat to easy, everything else to hard. Can't wait!
@ShogunRok yup, I agree. I like the choices here. But I’ll probably go with normal difficulty for all of them.
@rjejr You might. I'm way too obsessive over game completion though. Once I play, I really need to finish it. It's why I'm playing Unraveled now. I had enjoyed my time with the game at launch, set it aside. But it kept staring at me from my backlog, goin 'youve never finished meeeeeeee'
@Kidfried I used to be that way. Then about 10 years ago I got to the final boss in FFX-2, the worst game I've ever played, was severely under leveled, so quit. Then the same thing happened in FFXIII, under leveled for the final boss fight. So I told myself as long as I make it to the final boss I can stop, watch the rest on Youtube, which I've never actually done. Then with Arc Rise Fantasia I got to some optional boss about halfway thru and used up all my items, followed by a mandatory boss who I could barely beat, but then explodes when you beat it and kept killing me, so I quit that too. After that I pretty much stopped caring.
Though I suppose it's easier for me, never been anything near a completionist, I just like to play through a game to the end, no replays, remasters, sidequests or game+. And with PS+, since they are all just rentals anyway, I care even less, I'm just playing them to see what they are like. Killing time. I think there was a year on PS3 where I played a ton of demos, never felt the need to play most of those games, so it's kind of all just demos to me now. Except for the rare occasions I really enjoy a game, then I'll finish it. God of War and Zelda BotW come to mind. ABZU but that whole game only took 2 hours. And Batman Arkham PSVR, which took 90 minutes and I borrowed from my library.
I mm close to the end of H:ZD, last chapter, probably shouldn't have spent 12-15 hours on the DLC midgame, but I paused that to play GoW, and after that I started Mario and Rabbids, which I'm halfway through but stopped that to play Ni No Kuni 2, which I have 1 chapter left. And DQXI releases in a month, so I'll be busy then. Maybe I can squeeze in the end of H:ZD between NNK2 and DQ. Mario and Rabbids was just ok.
@rjejr Ouch. You remind me that I've never finished Paper Mario 2, because of that terrible final boss. I cry about it sometimes.
Let us know about it somewhere in the forums. Love reading your impressions always.
@Kidfried Oh, forgot about Paper Mario on Wii U. That game was going along great, then I had to guess 4 out of 7 matching cards. And I got 4 out of 7. Then later on we had to get 7 out of 7. Never could get past that, will never try again. Too many other games to play.
And I don't go in the forums, afraid once I go in I'll never leave as I tend to get carried away once I start typing.
Funny! Before reading this I read an article about features that should revolucionized games but didn't...and one of them was EXACTLY this, from the game System Shock.
Spooky coincidence
hahahahahaha this is why i come here
LOL always wondered about the bird poop, thanks guys.
@ShogunRok Yes! games like Dark Souls & NiOh need to have Easy mode as well!
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