E3 2008: Tomb Raider: Underworld

Mon, Jul 21, 2008

At last week's E3 Summit, we stopped in to visit Eidos, and check up on what Lara Croft has been up to since her anniversary. It would seem she's staying active, which is nice for a franchise her age. Eidos treated us to a sneak peek at Tomb Raider: Underworld, showing us a few of the moves and locations in Lara's repertoire, and we share our impressions with you after the jump.

Tomb Raider: Underworld is the third of Lara's adventures to be developed by Crystal Dynamics, who re-launched the franchise to critical and commercial success with Legend and Anniversary. A representative, during our demo, explained that Underworld represented a combination of the two elements gamers had favored from those games: The updated gameplay and action-oriented pacing of Legend, combined with the classic Lara Croft "solo adventuress" mood of Anniversary.

Underworld, thus, places Lara on her own in a number of remote locations, where she has only her own wits and top-notch physique to see her through. There won't be quite so much human interaction as there was with her support team in Legend, though when I asked if Lara would be interacting anti-socially with others, I was assured Ms. Croft would likely have to kick assorted human asses. Despite Lara's tendencies not to play well with others, we were also told that the majority of her enemies in Underworld will be of the non-human variety -- natural beasties and unnatural horrors. We saw examples of both in our brief demonstration.

We started out at the beginning of the game's first level, sitting on a boat in the open waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Lara, as promised, was certainly isolated, alone for miles in every direction. Well, every direction except down, of course.

Lara Underwater Lara put on her SCUBA gear and hopped out of the boat, diving deep beneath the sea in search of ancient ruins which were said to be at these coordinates. We didn't have far to go; the ruins slowly and steadily emerged out of the murky depths, fading gradually into view as Lara swam ever closer. I really had to admire how this sequence was handled; I have an advanced open water certification and I've been on a couple of wreck dives, and it looked real to me. You don't really appreciate the magnitude of what you're swimming towards until you're right on top of it, and that's how it looked here. Of course, as a SCUBA diver, I was also able to note a flaw or two in Lara's execution.

Lara Sharks Fins, Ms. Croft. You need some fins. To be fair, on the other hand, I've never had to contend with hostile giant sharks who were trying to kill me, so maybe Lara knows something about maneuverability that I don't. Thankfully, she also knew to prepare for this eventuality, and proceeded to dispatch the sharks with her spear gun.

Lara looked as nimble as ever in this underwater environment, which we had plenty of time to explore thanks to her limitless air supply. We were told that this new level represented a long desire by the design team to make an expansive underwater area that Lara could take her time in -- players could admire the scenery and explore all of its hidden nooks and crannies, rather than having that panicked feeling of surviving from air pocket to air pocket. Lara had a new tool at her disposal, as well, to help with this endeavor: An abstract 3D mapping tool, operated via sonar. Lara, at any time, could send out a pulse which would map the area around her, which players could then rotate and view from any angle; helpful indeed for finding hidden temple entrances obscured by kelp forests. These same forests also helped to show off Lara's contextual animations, reportedly motion-captured for the first time in Underworld, as Lara raised her hands and pushed through the kelp as she swam through.

A few standard-fare underwater puzzles later, we found ourselves in the first Tomb; a sunken temple filled with ancient machinery and hidden treasures. Also, this guy:

Kraken He would be sitting right in front of the inner sanctum. Fortunately, this massive kraken had also chosen to make his home directly under a massive, chain-suspended chunk of heavy masonry that was covered in spikes. Krakens, it would seem, are not masters of foresight. We were thus introduced to the first of Underworld's puzzles. In order to lower the boom on our tentacled friend, we would need to find the release lever. To access that, however, we'd first have to free up a few gears which had been entangled by kraken tentacles. To deal with those, of course, we'd need to trigger some suitable motivation for our friend to let go, and to do that, we'd need to traverse some slippery, narrow obstacles, and so on. Tombs, we were told, now took the form of over-arching meta-puzzles; objectives which would send us all over our new environments as we explored for lesser puzzles which would all combine to reveal the final key to each quest.

Halfway to one such objective, though, we were ambushed. A massive tentacle swooped out of the water, and smashed the platform we were crossing, in an effort to send us to our death. It was here that we saw another of Underworld's new features: the "adrenaline moment." In prior games, such do-or-die perils would match the player against a Quick-Time Event, forcing them to input the correct sequence of buttons in order to save Lara. In Underworld, however, Crystal Dynamics wants the player to retain total control of Lara at all times. Her normal moves are still in play, but time slows to a crawl as Lara's adrenaline kicks in. The game uses these events to signal to the player that this is a mortal situation, and the camera will typically point in a direction which signals the way out -- but it's still up to the player to manually guide Lara to safety. A quick dodge and leap later, and Lara escaped certain doom.

Lara Balance Tomb Raider: Underworld still needs a little polish before it hits stores -- we saw a few holes in the program as Lara missed a critical leap and didn't fall, and a few of the transitional animations still needed work. Still, if Crystal Dynamics and Eidos can deliver on their promised improvements to Ms. Croft's latest outing, stay-at-home spelunkers everywhere ought to be in for a fun romp. Lara's motorbike is back, and not as a mini-game sequence; the vehicle will be a fully functional get-on/get-off piece of in-level gear. Players will be able to take photos and share them online with friends; an ideal method to show a pal where you're stuck. Getting stuck, too, won't need you to get up and fetch a FAQ online anymore -- Lara herself will be more than happy to provide help on-demand, sharing hints and suggestions with the player through inner monologue.