So, we’ve just watched you play the opening level to the new Tomb Raider, and it’s surprising to see such a radical overhaul for a long-running series. It seems like something that will appeal to even those who wouldn’t normally play a Tomb Raider game.
That’s great. Obviously I meet a lot of Tomb Raider fans, and it’s great that they accept it, but there’s a whole new audience that we’re trying to introduce the series to. There are people who’ve never played Tomb Raider, who’ve let the series pass them by. So for people to look at this and go ‘this piques my interest, I want to play it,” that’s perfect.
Crystal Dynamics has been the custodian of the Tomb Raider series for about seven years now. We imagine that every time you come to create a new entry you ask yourselves how far to push it, how much to change, and this is by far the most dramatic so far. So in what particular way did the stars align to allow such a big change this time?
We inherited Tomb Raider from Core Design when we did Legend, and we continued on in our vision; it wasn’t a reboot, it wasn’t a re-imagining. As a studio we always had the trilogy of Legend, Anniversary and Underworld in mind, and when we finished Underworld we always had it in the back of our minds that, although we’d inherited this character, we really wanted to show a side to her that we’ve never shown before. Show her personality, show her origins and the foundations for how she becomes who she is. But the more we looked at it the more we realised it wasn’t so much about setting the foundations for this girl but setting the foundations to make her culturally relevant today.
For us as a studio, it was a great opportunity to say, ‘Let’s show people that we’re not this one trick pony that just builds this one version; let’s try and do something really cool, completely different.’ I think Guardian Of Light was a step, something partway between where we are now and where we were then. We took the character into an isometric space, did something different and pushed the engine. As a studio we wanted to step out on our own and say, ‘Hey, we’re capable and this is truly our vision. Nobody else’s.’
There’s still some platforming and combat in this Tomb Raider but there are also elements more reminiscent of old-school survival-horror. What label would you personally put on the game in terms of what genre it is? Is it even a platform game any more?
It’s not really a platform game, but then I know the rest of the game and it kind of is and it isn’t. In terms of a genre, I’d say ‘survival action’. I think action adventure is great, adventure is phenomenal, but survival definitely plays more of a dominant role throughout the entire game. It’s the foundation for everything, not just the island and the situations Lara finds herself in but also the character evolution. There’s something raw that everyone can associate with the survival notion, that it’s not just physical but psychological. So I think survival action is the genre we’d most like to be associated with, although I did just make it up.