Rise of the Dumb Raider

After an arduous couple of hours of reluctant queuing, there I was, pushing the joystick half-way to make Lara walk, and thus savour my precious instants with the second instalment in the latest Tomb Raider reboot. But just like after playing the first one, I was crestfallen, being able to sum up my experience with that half-hearted joystick push. In fact, my disappointment turned soon into apathy, for every mechanical or narrative foundation that any previous game had built was knocked and trampled over. And hey, I give up on Lara. Nostalgia may be blinding but in this case, it’s eye-opening, to the point that it highlights the features that shone in the first few Tomb Raiders — probably up to Chronicles – but these latest ones lack.

The showcased demo started with a big cutscene summarising how Lara ends up in a car wreck somewhere near the Syrian border, because that proves that she’s braver and a bigger adventurer than any other archaeologist alive — although archaeologist would imply that what she does for a living is within the moral norm. Such an over-the-top setting needs an equally over-the-top narrative and artistic style; however, this is not the case. Here lies one of the main issues that this second instalment refuses to fix: it’s unaware of its equity to a Michael Bay film. It forces empathy through nonexistent character depth in a psychopathic Lara, who’s still hungry for blood despite her life-changing murderous spree in the paradisiacal island of the Yamatai. Can you see the irony here?

The prodigious amount of pain and suffering inflicted in Lara is really the only empathy trigger of the game, besides being less of an asshole than any other character. Even though 1995’s Lara was a bigger one, her cocky impertinence and cheesy one-liners never made her feel real enough to be related to. It was the invincible embodiment of adventure and all-guns-out female empowerment, which is far from an attainably real personality — and thus never feels real. We never pity Lara as she’s self-sufficient and shows no vulnerability, and is there anything more empowering than that?

This may not be the deepest or most complex personality development, but it’s all self-aware over-the-top stereotypes that congeal perfectly and result in classic mid-nineties action, with no ambitions beyond being a setting for the framing of mechanics. That’s why a setting so precarious like the Syrian border would not feel out of place in 1995’s Tomb Raider, as it’s not making a point, but rather flowing with the overall thematic. In Rise of the Tomb Raider, choosing Syria as the location given the current situation seems a bit problematic as it serves to remark on Lara’s self-adoring need for thrill. The same goes for raiding tombs and declaring yourself an archaeologist. New Lara’s intended relatability is way too shaky to consider raiding tombs legitimate.

 Not this Peru though Coming back to the demo, I’m given control as Lara enters caverns in the mountains of Syria. An on-rails segment asks you to push the joystick forward for over a minute while Lara advances through a narrow crevice-like entrance to the system of caverns. She trips over, her chemical light stick goes off and as she breaks the next one, a scorpion on top of a skull tries to delight us with some jump-scares. I very much doubt that keeping us on rails is the best way to scare us. Compared to games like Amnesia or Bioshock, this feels like cheap popcorn cinema. By not giving me resources to deal with enemies, the game’s letting me know that there’s nothing to be afraid of. A raptor popping out of nowhere in the middle of Peru was considerably scarier in 1995.

As we progress, I find collectibles and crates with coins and experience. Whereas collectibles are a good addition in order to enrich the narrative, experience is an RPG-style level up system following trends that will eventually allow you to unlock certain weapons and upgrades. The intricacy of this system, compared to old Lara’s straightforward and varied arsenal makes new Lara give the impression that she’s trying to make up of some lackadaisical combat system which would otherwise get old too soon.

In 1995, the barren environment with characteristic edges, rugged models and low level of detail makes for bleak levels that feel unwelcoming and desolate, with enemies that present real threats. The management of ammo and medkits intensifies every single encounter with enemies, rather than allowing Lara to curl up behind cover and refill her health bar. The awkward enemies’ attack patterns and your lack of combat moves makes up for a bizarre dance, particularly in Tomb Raider: Chronicles, where you have to waltz your way behind enemies, getting out of their line of sight and bullets. Some more in-depth thoughts about how mechanics have changed in this series can be found in this article here.

In the first games, there was a strange delay between you pressing the forward button and Lara actually moving. Moving around in new Lara’s flesh feels like controlling Crash Bandicoot, where measuring inch-by-inch your jumps and ledges to hold onto is not as important as the fluidity of the motion anymore. There’s a particularly delusional feature in the new Tomb Raider, also present in Rise of the Tomb Raider, where Lara bounces off walls allowing her to jump vertically and reach a higher ledge, in a very Spider-Man fashion. The heaviness of the combat is replaced by a bouncy Lara that, while stumbles, never loses momentum, reacts instantaneously to your commands and is never short of ammo.

All in all, trends are forcing Lara towards smoother movement and auto-regenerative life, weapon upgrades and overall, ‘survival’; pretending to give Lara a more realistic approach while still making her attire quite inappropriate for such environments. As it was back in Peru, but Core Design were aware of what kind of character and demographics they were working for, making it never feel serious enough to be challenged in that regard. And this is the crucial element when comparing the narrative aspect of the originals and its latest reboot.

Coming back to the showcase, admittedly the visual design of the environments is on point in terms of how beautiful and impressive everything looks, but the interactivity of this level of fidelity decreases in an inversely proportionate way. And I, for one, don’t feel that Tomb Raider II had anything to look up to in this new reboot. On top of this, key objects such as levers or ledges to hold onto are given a shiny silhouette so it’s easier to spot, plus the ‘survival instincts’ that pretty much tells you how to solve puzzles. There’s quite some charm in the despair that you can find running around overwhelmingly large and silent levels trying to find a key, a lever, or any string to pull from. Needless to say, that feeling of solitude and being a minutia in a grand ancient construction is no longer present like it was in places like the Tibet or Egypt.

As we solve platform puzzles in a very linearly-designed level, we are drowned with a litany of in-game scripts that take control off of us for some seconds, only to return it when the ‘danger’ has disappeared. The music’s orchestral design does not even intensify these moments the way it used to, by contrasting it to the breath-taking silent and barren vistas of The Great Wall. Not to say that the soundtrack isn’t good, as the main theme is sublimely cathartic, but it lacks that simplicity, giving the sense of solitude and mystery that the first games used so eloquently.

But as we advance through the over-cluttered cavern, we find one of the most notable inclusions in this latest release: the swimming segments, which are included in some of the puzzles we have to solve. However, as much anticipated as this addition may be, it can’t help to fall short. Swimming at the surface can be a relatively painless affair, but diving underwater allows you to only swim at certain level, being impossible to go deeper to reach for the bottom. Not only does this feel like laid-back design that can’t even do service to its origins, given that the underwater segments were such an iconic element of the first games, but it’s also a ridiculously absurd idea, for which I can’t find reason to be.

There are clear examples of Square Enix’s tendency up to this point with Tomb Raider. They have restricted the controllability of Lara, imposing more and more scripted events and rules that force you to play it safe. Yes, of course, the narrative overweighs the mechanics now, which is not necessarily bad, as long as it is consistent and it makes sense, which it does not. We’re perhaps only talking about a demo, a glimpse of the game that doesn't cover it fully, but it looks to me as if every single change to the 2015 Tomb Raider’s formula has been for the worse.

The ending segment in the demo is very representative of new Lara’s entirely erroneous attitude. In the demo, when the baddies blast through the roof, they approach the tomb Lara had found empty seconds ago, only to open it and see Lara pop out of it. Lara’s young, very young. In the conversation that they have she’s always in the dark about so many important pieces of information, and her needy but brave behaviour is like seeing Simba face the hyenas for first time. To her embarrassment, when threatened with a gun, her smartest idea is to steal a detonator off the baddies and blow up the whole set of caverns and crypts, while shooting some guys in the head on her way out.

 Offshore Rig; does it ring any bells? To finish this unprovoked rant, I’d like to play a little exercise with all those who have found themselves stripped of all weapons in what it’s called ‘Offshore Rig’ in the middle of the ocean, about a quarter through in Tomb Raider II. If you remember well, the amount of tension and intricacy to recover your dual pistols is quite a highlight of that level. Let’s imagine how many QTEs, or scripted events taking control of you there would be if it were to be redone following the latest reboot’s fashion. Ouch, my head hurts.