http://tombraiderbiz.tumblr.com/

This site is yours if you want it

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 20:26:00 +0800

If you want it, you can have it. Just mail us at raiderization@gmail.com. Tell us why we should give it to you and what you’re going to do with it once you have our password. If our inbox doesn’t get any ping by the end of the week, the website’s off for good.

Thank you.

Lara getting shit-drenched is one thing, blood-drenched,...

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:07:00 +0800

Lara getting shit-drenched is one thing, blood-drenched, another

Seems Crystal D, at one point, had the balls to beat up Lara’s face this much. During stage of concept for Lara’s GI cover, she had the scandalous look of a woman with a face a ship just got wrecked on. She was a passenger, for Winston’s sake.

[Image credit: Pietras of Tomb Raider Forums]

Reinventing the Life Bar: Harder, better, faster, stronger [Part 2] An hour into her search for the...

Sun, 09 Jan 2011 22:22:00 +0800

Reinventing the Life Bar: Harder, better, faster, stronger [Part 2]

An hour into her search for the radio tower to set up S.O.S., Lara feels dizzy, her hurried pace slowing to cautious steps. You feel a little frustrated she’s not running as fast as she’s supposed to, because there’s this ticking thing telling you how long you’ve left to find the tower before its signal goes kaput.

Two more minutes.

You point the left analog stick forwards all the way, but her animation doesn’t change; she’s still doing that silly walk like she’s about to fall over any minute. Slower, even, than the walk she does when you push the analog stick only slightly forwards.

Ok, uh, dumbass, may be there’s something wrong?

You hit the X button to bring up the menu screen, where you look at Lara’s stats on the Cure window. Leeches! You recall having walked Lara across a swamp, half her body soaked in the murkiest of jungle waters (ew). There are about three leeches that somehow got inside her cargo pants, one dangerously right below her v-part. Gasp!

I knew this game would be glitched; heck, it’s Tomb Raider, you think to yourself. The game didn’t tell me Lara already had leeches on her.

Were you looking for a thought balloon telling you, “There are leeches on my legs and it’s making me nauseous and slow”?

The game isn’t “glitched,” you skeptic, purist gamer looking for excuses to hate the game. Lara shows you how she’s “feeling,” sometimes even to the extent of crippling some of the abilities she normally has. Pretty much how the game “tells” you that a leech is probably pervving its way up Lara’s vajayzone.

So you test it out. You hit the A button in-game to hop up a rock. She does it. But you hit the A button to jump up and reach a tree’s branch, somehow, she can’t. You figure — finally — that those damned leeches might somehow be affecting her, and you by extension.

Back to the Cure screen. Pointing the cursor where it’s highlighted to be any sort of injury (see broken circles) brings up a display of info on Lara’s condition and how to make her better. Foremost thing those blood-suckers affect? Lara’s stamina. That’s why she doesn’t respond to controller inputs for “run” and “jump” — at least, not properly.

The info box also suggests that the leeches can be burnt off. Fortunately, you found a box of match sticks in a dilapidated cottage on your way to the radio tower. Button display shows you can access Lara’s inventory by pressing LB. You do.

There’s the solution.

See, it’s one thing to get Lara hurt and show it (i.e. through slight changes in animation and “wardrobe evolution”), and it’s another to get Lara hurt and play by the rules of the fact. Thankfully, Crystal Dynamics seems to acknowledge that there is indeed a difference.

“We’re working on making injuries a part of the gameplay rather than just tonal,” says Tim Longo, Team Lara franchise director.

This goal of the studio is reflected in play details earlier revealed in GI #213. Lara will “[gather] food, water, and other valuable resources” in order to survive; Redwood HQ is quick to clarify, however, that this “scavenging mechanic” won’t necessarily go as far as to simulate “picking berries” and, say, doing a Cooking Mama. It will largely be a means to facilitate exploration and getting rewarded for doing so; that is, not only ensuring Lara is in top condition, but also “uncovering new items, resources, and clues as to the island’s mystery.”

Lara, or perhaps more precisely her progress in the game, will also be “hurt” by the fact that she won’t necessarily start out with Olympic-standard acrobatics. The entirety of the island won’t be readily accessible to Lara in the beginning, not because there are invisible walls to keep the game from crashing (more on that here), but because Lara “has physical limitations or scarce supplies.”

In order to reach the un-reachables, then, Lara must not only scavenge food and water and stuff to survive — as in, to keep them leeches of her vajay-z, but also to survive — as in, to run, jump, and axe-climb her way out off the fecking island in one piece.

To this end, Lara will have base camps throughout the game to “combine salvage from her inventory to create new items, and access a skill system to enhance her abilities.” Hopefully, one of those abilities will be to simply have the right mind to know that open wounds plus open air and murky waters are terrible, terrible combination. Think flies fest, rotting flesh on the leg, candidate for amputation to stay alive. In effect, Lara one-leg hopping onto the final boss.

But of course, that won’t happen. There will be limitations.

“At one point, we thought about having her bones break and she would be crippled in some way,” art director Brian Horton tells GI. “And while we realized that it would be fantastic from a fiction standpoint, it would hurt us in gameplay.”

Perhaps then, it depends on the degree of “hurt.” Lara nursing a broken leg definitely wouldn’t lend to a functional survival-adventure game where you’re supposed to jump around and reach places. But stamina-draining, run button-impairing leeches (as mocked-up in MGS-inspired screens above) still would — one that will even add variety to the gameplay, levelling up how you manage Lara’s life bar.

Because it isn’t simply one fall off a high ledge and it’s minus 20% off the life bar; that won’t do anymore. Depth is what the studio’s aiming for now — an authentic experience of survival.

Hughes puts it best: “We aren’t treating survival as simply not dying.”

And if you still don’t know what he means by that by now, you probably missed reading our two-part Reinventing the Life Bar feature. Go read.

Tomb Raider Trilogy continues HD collection boxart ewness...

Sat, 08 Jan 2011 21:20:00 +0800

Tomb Raider Trilogy continues HD collection boxart ewness trend

You know how game compilation covers usually suck? Yeah. Here’s the cover art for The Tomb Raider Trilogy HD collection for the PS3. Whatevs, they’re leaving it behind for the new era ‘Raider brand anyway (right?).

The compilation was pre-maturely outed by an Amazon product listing, and was alter on confirmed to be in the works by Crystal D. The pack will be released on March 22 for $39.99, with bonus content exclusively for PS3 detailed here. (Hint: 360 Underworld DLCs still exclusive.)

[Game Informer]

Meet the honchos of Lara’s home base in Japan Meagan Marie...

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 21:50:00 +0800

Meet the honchos of Lara’s home base in Japan

Meagan Marie (second to left), cover story writer of Lara’s GI debut, and Karl Stewart (right), global brand director of Tomb Raider, poses with Visual Works leads Kazuyuki Ikumori (second to right) and Takeshi Nozue (left).

Aside from 3D-modeling Lara as she appears on GI’s January cover, the Japan-based studio is reported to be also working on cutscenes for the reboot.

Ikumori and Nozue have been directors of CG cinematics/movies for various Final Fantasy titles, most notably for Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers and Advent Children respectively. Nozue is also currently doing dev duties on Final Fantasy Versus XIII as movie director.

Now you know what we’re in for.

[Image credit: Game Informer Issue #213 - Meagan’s Blog]

Come ye, be awed by the marvelous art of Bren Adams...

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 20:35:00 +0800

Come ye, be awed by the marvelous art of Bren Adams [Updated]

[Original July 1, 2010 post] We’ve here the awe-inspiring art of Brenoch Adams, Tomb Raider dev house concept artist. Adams joined Team Lara in 2008 and is still currently involved with the group; he provided additional concept art for Tomb Raider Underworld. Having worked on THQ title Conan, Adams has created art that showcases environments not too far in looks to places raid-worthy for Lara (see here, if you don’t believe us).

Update: Bren is confirmed to be involved with the reboot, most notably for doing the concept stage and some finishing touches for Lara’s look as she appears on GI’s January ‘11 cover, for which he “literally didn’t leave his desk for a straight twenty-four hours.”

Video: “Team Lara” isn’t just Redwood HQ...

Thu, 06 Jan 2011 09:15:00 +0800

Video: “Team Lara” isn’t just Redwood HQ anymore

Count ‘em. Three studios. One Lara. Drool-worthy stuff on click-through.

[Game Informer - Making the Cover: Tomb Raider]

The sexiness isn’t with the shit-drenching, this fan art...

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 08:58:00 +0800

The sexiness isn’t with the shit-drenching, this fan art proves

It appears that a huge part of the fascination with the new Lara Croft is based on the fact that she’s all muddied and bloodied, or “shit-drenched,” as we endearingly call it.

Now with less fecal matter on her face, courtesy of this fan art by PH-based artist Paolo Ramirez (click on the image the view the full thing), we’re pretty sure that underneath all the filth, it really is the Hilary Swank face that has gamers world-wide captivated.

[An Art Everyday by Paolo Ramirez]

Official Tomb Raider website teases “new...

Tue, 04 Jan 2011 21:34:00 +0800

Official Tomb Raider website teases “new videos”

Also, notice the newly re-fonted “A Survivor is Born” tagline. Much better.

Reinventing the Life Bar: Yellow means bruised, orange means bleeding [Part I]

Sun, 02 Jan 2011 17:08:22 +0800

Red, dying.

And you’d know she’s close to dying, as it were in previous ‘Raider games, by the percentage left of her life bar, or its color after getting into a hair-disheveling fight with a panther. In Underworld (see picture below), Crystal Dynamics’ latest pillar Lara-starrer, for instance, this specifically was the case.

The health indicator, as with any game, would tell the player how close Lara is to dying. If Lara’s silhouette (and her vertical life bar) had a shade of orange, three more scratches from a panther would mean Game Over screen — unless you had a medipack to heal her with.

But apart from the occasional pop-ups of these HUDs, the player pretty much had no idea of Lara’s condition after getting slapped in the gut by a kraken’s tentacle, if there’s even any tangible, physical condition to speak of at all.

There was none.

Gun shot in the shoulder? Lara’s free to do a handstand the next second. Forty-feet fall from a cave ceiling? Lara barrell-rolls and moves on. Scratched on the face by a frickin’ tiger? Nope — my skin is Beverly Hills-made, dear; it’s practically cement.

“Teflon beauty,” they call it — the invulnerable “feel” to the character of Lara the studio is “trying to get away from” in the reboot. To this end, Crystal Dynamics wants Lara to feelthat she’s hurt when she’s supposed to be hurting, and more importantly to actually look like she is.

“It’s putting the feeling of a real human character into those situations,” global brand director Karl Stewart says. “When Lara gets injured, you will see her being injured for a period of time, and that will affect her ability to play […] in particular ways.”

One direct manifestation of Lara “feeling” is in her animations. In Game Informer’s debut preview of the game, it’s detailed that Lara “instinctically reaches to hold her side, [as she] squeezes through a particularly narrow opening [and] grazes her wound.”

Lara had fallen onto a metal spike that skewered her side in an effort to free herself from her cocoon-like restraints (pictured above). It appears that pulling the damned thing out (top left image, first picture) isn’t the end of it, however, as the wound will affect how Lara animates in certain situations throughout the game.

Probably the worst part of it though is the stain it’s leaving on Lara’s clean, grey top (top right image, first picture). No, she won’t just change wardrobes because of it; she’ll have to bear looking bloody filthy throughout the island adventure (with emphasis on “bloody”).

“The most important thing to me is that we not have wardrobe changes, but rather wardrobe evolution,” Brian Horton, art director, tells GI. “The cumulative damage and wear and tear on the clothing is where evolution comes through in the outfit.

“Lara is just surviving from beginning to end. Through her situation her outfit is going to show the accumulation of that survival story. That is going to mean discoloration and rips and tears (bottom left image, first picture). That will sort of progress throughout the entire adventure.”

There will also be “gears and items” that will accumulate on Lara’s model throughout the game. Presumably, examples of such items are the bandages Lara puts around her wounds (bottom right image, first picture).

While these visual cues have not been confirmed as direct indicators of Lara’s remaining percentage of health (as in, whether it’s close to Game Over or not), it certainly goes a long way to make Lara become more believable and vulnerable as a character, driving away from what’s been referred to as her Teflon image.

Although not much has been detailed about the implications of Lara’s physical life bar on her abilities in the game, Crystal Dynamics says they’re “working on making injuries a part of the gameplay rather than just tonal.” To that end, the studio has confirmed that a new healing system will come into play to aid Lara in her survival story, a subject we’ll delve deeper into for Part II of our Reinventing the Life Bar feature.

Because really, the moment Lara’s in the red zone and you somehow manage to keep her alive, that’s when you know she’s become an actual survivor.

We say bring it.

Lara’s biggest downfall, and why her character needed the...

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 22:59:00 +0800

Lara’s biggest downfall, and why her character needed the reboot

Her Teflon coating. In the words of Meagan Marie, cover story writer for Game Informer’s unveiling of Tomb Raider.

[Game Informer #213; Lara art by Omri Koresh]

These concept artworks show you the target feel of the...

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 18:00:00 +0800

These concept artworks show you the target feel of the island

You be the judge if those screenshots are anywhere near it.

[Game Informer - Tomb Raider Bonus Gallery]

A closer, sexier look at Lara’s new BFF, the blood-red...

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 17:24:00 +0800

A closer, sexier look at Lara’s new BFF, the blood-red climbing axe

In case you don’t already know what it’s for — raid through here.

[Game Informer - Tomb Raider Bonus Gallery]

In screenshots, the flames and blood and water (and massive HUDs) of Tomb Raider

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 14:11:00 +0800

Courtesy of Game Informer’s Tomb Raider hub. Thumbed for your viewing pleasure below the jump. Loads more through.

Onwards to the new year, we’ll tell you what we think in detail, screen by screen. Heck, we’re even counting the skulls.

So much to be said.

[Game Informer - Tomb Raider Bonus Gallery]

How open-world is Tomb Raider's "open world"?

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 22:33:00 +0800

Crystal Dynamics clarifies.

“We’re not an open world game by any means,” says Tim Longo, franchise director at Redwood HQ, but it “won’t [also] be the traditional Tomb Raider structure for sure.”

So what kind of progress structure is the game supposed to have?

Think of it as — in Tim’s words — “macro-beats.” There is an overall structure to the game, defined by “specific moments [happening] at certain times for everybody” that literally contextualize where, why and how Lara is in the game, which area she’s supposed to be in given one particular plot prompt.

In these areas (where there will be differences in climes/weather per region — a different topic altogether), global brand director Karl Stewart expounds, players “will have freedom to explore,” but only within a certain context area, or macro-beat, so to speak. “We’re not giving [players] the ability to just go from one side [of the island] to another,” Karl says.

Further, Tim says this structure is paramount to telling Lara’s survival story, in that they needed to “have enough control over the pacing of the game” to effectively relate Lara’s “character arc” to the players.

And to that we lend a thought, a serious one: Lara’s first kill — closing beat, starting beat? Eyebrows are furrowed.

[Game Informer - Special Edition Podcast]

How would you like your iPod shit-drenched Lara style? Reboot...

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 21:00:00 +0800

How would you like your iPod shit-drenched Lara style?

Reboot the look of your iGadgets with Speck-brand CandyShell iPod cases, limited edition Lara Croft CandyShell iPod cases, and exclusive Tomb Raider/Game Informer iPhone 4 cases. GI’s giving ‘em out. Raid through below to get the deets.

[Game Informer - Speck/Tomb Raider Giveaway]

My, Lara, how small your boobs have shrunk! Here, we let the boobies do the talking. Save for some...

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 20:40:00 +0800

My, Lara, how small your boobs have shrunk!

Here, we let the boobies do the talking. Save for some quick captions. Left: Lara Croft’s Tomb Raider Underworld model, posed by TRJTA using XNA Lara; Right: Lara Croft as she appears in the reboot.

Please do not OST this for the debut trailer, or — know...

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 22:29:00 +0800

Please do not OST this for the debut trailer, or — know what? — do

You know it makes sense. Plus, Lara dancing — now that’s a reboot.

The first in-game look at Tomb Raider, and why it’s...

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 17:00:00 +0800

The first in-game look at Tomb Raider, and why it’s raising eyebrows

Ok, this block of post isn’t nearly enough to summarize the reaction to this piece of screenshot, released last week by GI as part of its TR Hub wallpaper offering. So instead here’s a raid-through to the discussion itself at Tomb Raider Forums.

Sure, it’s raising eyebrows, but it’s raising heart rates, too. Ours, to be specific.

Thanks, TRJTA!

Immediate Music composer to helm score for first Tomb Raider trailer [Update]

Mon, 27 Dec 2010 12:58:00 +0800

But before we give you the 411 on our new guy Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, hit play so you get an idea what we’re all in for. (Clue: epic.)

[See update below]

Recently, Aleks’ work “End of Days” (embedded above) — a track he composed for music production company Immediate Music — was featured in one of the trailers for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

His other Immediate Music compositions have also been featured in over thirty film trailers over the years. Angels & Demons, Pirates of the Carribbean, War of the Worlds, and Transformers were given epic boosts, courtesy of Aleks’ tracks scored into their respective trailers.

Aleks has recently confirmed his involvement as one of the composers for Tomb Raider to the forums. “I’m the composer who wrote new Tomb Raider music you heard in the podcast,” he shares. “Thank you each and all for such an overwhelming response to this little snippet of Tomb Raider music.”

He goes on to invite fans to visit his Facebook page for more info on his previous works (as we’ve, already!).

So while we dig deeper into his past involvements, expect to see and hear more about Aleksander Dimitrijevic here on BIZ. Can’t help that we’re such big, fat music junkies.

Thanks, H4RR76!

Update: Karl Stewart, global brand director of Tomb Raider, clarifies, “Alex Dimitrijevic is scoring the [not-that-far-away] trailer. We officially haven’t announced the composer for the game.”