Rumour: Next Tomb Raider Said to Be Open World, Set in India

I'm shocked the series has not been renamed "Tomb Appreciator." Jokes aside, I love a few of the TR games and I'm excited to see how this turns out.

I'm Jonesing for some Tomb Raider: Indiana 😌

I'll most likely stick to the old Tomb Raider games. With what Crystal Dynamics here is trying to push it sounds like it is gonna be a far cry from Tomb Raider.

Finally! Towers to climb to unlock a map with dozens of icons, generic quest givers, and hundreds of things to gather and craft stuff with. Can’t wait for 60 hours of bloated „entertainment“.

Sounds amazing! Looking forward to seeing some gameplay footage. Are there any rumors when this is releasing? 2025?

@Nepp67 The game doesn't even have a name yet let alone anything else and you're already crapping on it? "But but I saw a rumor on Reddit that..." 🙄

So with Amazon publishing is it part of their subscription or retail? I'll stay cautiously optimistic on this either way

@Tecinthebrain I think it was a Far Cry joke.

A Tomb Raider game needs tightly crafted level design, not an epic open world. If it contains both, it could work, but that's a tall order.

More than ready for a new tomb raider. Just hope it's not too damaged by various development and publisher issues behind the scenes over the past few years

It's been far too long, I hope we get an official announcement soon. I really hope they don't mess this up...

Wasn't Crystal Dynamics bought by embracer ?
So it will get about 70% complete and then scrapped " didn't meet our unruly expectations"

The tomb raider trilogy by CR was fantastic, especially the surprise of the first game playing as lady Nathan Drake. Hopefully they will succeed with the transition to open world. Wait and see...

"The world is her tomb"

Fallout has an ''open world''. Starfield has an ''open world''.

The difference is that Fallout is densely packed with things to discover, places to see, items to find, NPCs to talk to, treasure to steal, side-quests to start, minigames to play. An ''open world'' without the content is just a walking simulator. And I have been burned too many times to buy something that advertises itself as such on day 1.

@Sequel You had to pay for New World so I wouldn't hope for anything free.

Back to India, finally! TR3 was too difficult for the likes of me. But thoroughly enjoyed Uncharted Lost Legacy.

I’ve really enjoyed the rebooted series and hope that this new one keeps a lot of what made those great, while evolving the franchise too. Looking forward to this.

Sceptical about the shift to open world but let's see how it lands. The reboot trilogy was very good.

Yup, take.my.money.

Sounds cool to me. The reboot trilogy was already kind of tinkering with the idea as while I wouldn't classify them as open world they did start to experiment with that sort of thing on Rise of the Tomb Raider. I really enjoyed the reboot games and am looking forward to this one for sure.

They should have chosen a different location to be honest. Maybe something in south America. Uncharted lost legacy also has India as a location and Chloe is basically a sassy Lara. It might be compared a lot to it.

Looking forward to it though, it will be interesting to see how they move the franchise forward.

Sounds cool.

I thought the last trilogy was decent, but sort of diminishing returns for each game.

The story wasn't super engaging either so would like to see improvements here. I really liked Lara and the Maori guy in the trilogy, but thought they should have built more on their friendship. The voice actors bounced off each other really well I wanted more of them

I hope not all that Max_the_German is predicting comes true.
Also, dear devs, please lower the scale of the game world and story, to give a shorter but condensed excellent experience.

@Uromastryx Amazon bought Tomb Raider from Embracer, so there should be no worries even though Embracer still owns the developer.

I'd be down for a Tomb Raider riffing off of Elden Rings world design - Biiiiig open area, tiny bite size tomblets with small scale puzzles, bigger more complex catacombs that contain bigger interconnected puzzles and narrative chunks and then massive Temple complexes loaded with story, puzzles, set pieces, bosses. Put in some honest to goodness towns/villages that are vibrant with life that give Lara a place to relax and gather rumours/legends/folk stories.

Heck they could do the map population schtick by having Lara find old base camps for an explorer who came before her and use their notes to put points of interest on Lara's own map.

I gotta see gameplay because I dunno if TR fits open world game..

Tomb Raider: Zero Dawn lol.

Kidding. I’m looking forward to this. But not looking forward to when Lara Croft wears loose-fitting jeans and the games is review-bombed.

It's 2024 and people are still excited about open world games with useless collectibles, generic side quests, and soulless worlds?

How all of that will be different with Tomb Raider? I thought they would turn to its root, but nothing has changed.

@Max_the_German Reading that killed all my hype for a new Tomb Raider. Why everything must be open world these days? Just a small percentage usually works well as an open world, most of it's just a generic world with useless collectibles and generic side quests.

Her adventures seem too vast for open world. But if done right, could be great. I just doubt it will be, and I'm not sure how it can be done right.

When you think about it... classic tomb Raider games were just linear fetch quest lol

Why is this being published by Amazon? I hope the character resembles the recent trilogy. I'm very cautious.

Finally some news on this. Honestly thought they had canned the series with the way everything was shifting.

It's fine that it's open world so long as they do it right. It's fine that it's in India so long as they don't simply try to emulate Uncharted Lost Legacy. I look forward to seeing an actual announcement and trailer.

@Uromastryx @KilloWertz Supposedly CD will separate from Embracer in 2025

It could work if they adopt an approach with smaller tombs accompanied by large scale ones. We’ll have to wait and see.

@Pushsquare

I'm going to have to turn my adblocker back on.
The ads are grossly implemented, tired of them taking up my whole screen

@CallMeDuraSouka sorry to hear that, they shouldn't be taking up your whole screen — can you share a screenshot to help [at] pushsquare . com? We can then share with the ads partners.

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Hopes of actual tomb raiding and puzzle solving being the main focus of the game again are slim then....

I'm skeptical of Tomb Raider working in a true open world, and frankly, the open areas in Shadow kind of ruined that game for me. I got so overwhelmed with the side quests and villages that I just gave up.

I loved Reboot and Rise, so Crystal Dynamics has the chops. I'm curious how it'll turn out.

For those who don't know who King Ashoka was (I am Indian myself so if this rumor is true, then I am quite happy), let me give you all a bit of background (from Wikipedia so its mostly general knowledge)

Emperor Ashoka aka "Ashoka the Great" was the third Mauryan Emperor of Magadha. He was credited with spreading Buddhism across ancient Asia.

He was a Hindu before becoming Buddhist but he WAS also a very violent emperor. Ashoka loved to fight in wars. He was also apparently stated to be quite cruel as well before converting to Buddhism according to both Sri Lankan and North Indian traditions.

Then came a war. The war is known as the Kalinga War. It was at this war that Ashoka saw the violent, bloodshed and destruction that he felt he was the cause of all of it. And thus he converted to Buddhism and began preaching and devoting himself to ahimsa (non-violence) and dharma vijaya (victory through dharma). He ended the military expansion of his empire and then began an era of peace, prosperity and harmony.

Ashoka's symbols are used in the national flag of India which has the Ashoka chakra in the middle. The state emblem of India is an adaptation of the Lion Capital of Ashoka. I found this all on Wiki and looked up on other sources. History can differ from one source or the other but this is how I saw it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_Emblem_of_India

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Capital_of_Ashoka

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashoka_Chakra

@Tecinthebrain It's not a rumor that I read on reddit it was Crystal Dynamics themselves, don't be an ass.

@0niguy Was TR Reboot not an open world game though?

Hopefully they redo her look instead of having her look like a guy in a wig. That screenshot is terrible.

I hope they go back to unrealistic gigantic tombs to explore instead of what the last 3 games had.

Interesting, if they're sticking with their original plans to merge the timelines this might be treated as a revisit to India. Since Tomb Raider III was Lara's first arrival to the country.

And another gaming franchise ruined, why the F**k does everything have to be open world FFS.

The good thing about the TR games is the suspenseful atmosphere most of the places have. That isn’t as easy to implement in an open world game. Hope that they get help from the people who did the Arkham games for reference.

i really liked the 3rd person shooting in the last 3 games, i want much more of that in this.

This sounds incredible.....ly bad.

Day 1. Loved the last trilogy

Keep all the parts and just write a new story and stunning world for me to explore.

@Nepp67 I wouldn't say open world right maybe opened levels or sections

awesome news, love the whole series!

The motor cycle worked well for Days Gone, if we get a modest sized map like that filled with temples, tombs and ruins then consider me interested.

No no no... Open world killed so many franchises so I won't support it anymore.

I always hated open world games. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one anymore.
Love Tomb Raider but 0 interest in this if it's true.

Well... it makes sense.

But, i don't really want more of the gameplay in the reboot, so we shall see what they cook up.

The board game part aside.

Every series getting their open worlds I guess?

I am not into open worlds and even then the hub based ones of the 2nd reboot trilogy aka 2013+ entries are fine enough but I got bored of them quick. I bet 2013, but Rise I just got sick of and Shadow is probably fine but just didn't play it even though own it.

To me if an open world balances aspects well I'll play it, as someone that hates the genre/formula I enjoy what 3 out of the 100s that exist out there and played about less than 10 and won't pick up them because I hate most of their design because the cities/open spaces aren't playground fun enough for me to want to care and the moveset of the characters are so generic I might as well go outside and climb a tree then mimic their basic moveset in game. Give me an interesting moveset, interesting world to climb around and good missions I'll play but most of them are so boring.

I play linear because the enemy/level design and abilities or weapon balance is usually better, open worlds the balance is just lost for me most if not all times because of how uninteresting they can be.

Why would I want to have to travel a recreation of a city, boring, they aren't gameplay fun just wow a city recreation. Who cares. Give me an obstacle course or a fun spin on the location (or just not set it in cities set it in the middle of nowhere like linear games build their levels around the general sense of the location, maybe a city if needing some refills or whatever even then that'd be terrible) not a holiday destination seriously.

Especially RPG quests, get rid of them. The Crystal Dynamics survey I still have my responses for and well like they'd care I'd rip into them if they offered another one for how generic this open world could be of content I bet.

I mean to me even then the tombs were fun but to me the same reason I played BOTW the Shrines. The rest, eh.

Even 3D platformers with hub worlds, I hate most of them because they are just the same thing but smaller open world/hubs. Why would I want to play them. Unless they had minigames or decent tasks to do, most are just boring.

So the problem stays as most of them I don't like because the missions don't compel me, the side content is just eh and the collectibles/use cases for them aren't much fun either and just formulaic skill tree nonsense I didn't sign up for and a trend I want killed because menu use case laziness developers.

Yes 2013+ has skill trees but I find you can ignore them in those games if you wanted. I did Ratchet ToD and probably may if I replay the others. Most games force them. I hate them, the perks/stats are garbage of an increase and I don't like the format as it is/jumping to a menu all the time. I know from Gran Turismo how much jumping around a menu can be and they got rid of the quality of life menu hopping elements so that's their fault.

But most games PUSH for them and I hate skill trees, I find them lazy design because well the rest of the game can scale that way then other things found in the world right, right, ok? Yeah no I never signed up to that yet devs expect me to agree with them and other trends. No I expect better design in other areas, old trends or new not this trend design. Think outside the box more.

This is a concept that could go great, or horribly wrong.

I found Tomb Raider 2013 to be the best of the reboot trilogy, by far, which is kind of unfortunate as it is the first one released in that group.

My pipe dream for the series is to pivot towards being a dungeon crawler survival game with puzzle elements.

Let's hope they won't make her "ugly" too!!1 Am I right, am I right guys??!

Anyway, on the one hand.. Literally everything has to be open world, ugh.
On the other.. Still looking forward to it very much. Great main character, nothing else with that setting and genre (adventure), motorcycle sounds awesome (Please, do it like in Days Gone). Just hope it will keep the more "realistic" approach instead of going too much fantasy (or animal fighting or something).

Can't believe it's already 10 years since the first Tomb Raider (The first good I mean by that, those "classics" were awful obviously).

An open world setting sounds interesting and who knows it could be really good. It's going to be divisive for sure as you can already see from the comments already but I'm hoping it turns out great for all the tomb raider fans. I got a bit bored after tr3 but I did enjoy the reboots.

A new TR game would go straight to the top of my wish list.
Tomb Raider and Uncharted tick all the boxes for me.
✅Third Person
✅Gun Fights
✅Exploration
✅Puzzle Solving
✅Story
✅Traversal Climbing
✅Single Player
✅Great Graphics

I wonder if we have to buy the ultimate edition to get a car? Otherwise we're going to be forced into taking a crowded train to the next destination

I personally would prefer a linear story myself. I just lose interest in open world games really quickly.