Gamescom 2016: Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration is a Voyage Through Lara's History

Gamescom 2016: Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration is a Voyage Through Lara's History

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Lee Abrahams

In order to go deep into the murky underbelly of the latest Tomb Raider game (for those that didn’t play it on Xbox One last year) we engaged in a trifecta of opportunities; hands on with the new co-op endurance mode, hands on with the swanky new VR chapter of DLC and an interview with the team behind this latest edition. It’s a triple threat of fun, knowledge and walking awkwardly into chairs and the wall. Our pain is your gain.

First of all what’s in the box? Assuming you are buying Rise of the Tomb Raider for the first time on PS4 then you get the base game, all of the DLC released to date plus the new Blood Ties chapter (also playable using PlayStation VR), the Lara’s Nightmare mode (think Resident Evil Mercenaries), the co-op endurance mode and a bunch of unique skins and a new difficulty mode for the main campaign.

It’s basically the whole shebang in one lovely package. If you’re an Xbox One owner and already have the Season Pass, then you’ll get all the content for free on 11th October – barring the VR version of Blood Ties, you’ll just have to play it in the regular way. Sorry.

The Blood Ties DLC delves into the backstory of Lara and her parents, letting you explore Croft Manor in a bid to find evidence to substantiate her claim to her ancestral home against the money grabbing attempts of her Uncle Atlus to seize it. It’s only an hour or so of content but is fairly deep in terms of lore and story to flesh out the series as a whole. Obviously there are puzzles to solve, clues to find and random events to discover. Plus you can play the whole thing in VR – which we did. Well, up until a certain juncture to prevent spoilers.

The Blood Ties level also plays host to the Lara’s Nightmare content which sees our heroine trapped in the manor against a host of deadly, zombie-like foes. Weapons and gear randomly spawn throughout the level and you have to find them to defend yourself and last as long as possible against increasing odds. It’s a fun idea, and one that Resident Evil did so well in its Mercenaries mode, but with only one map to test yourself against it may prove to be slightly limited in appeal.

Next up we got to dabble in the co-op Endurance Mode which certainly piqued our interest. This mode sees two players team up to survive the elements and discover hidden relics and treasure. You spawn in a randomly-generated frosty wilderness, so every attempt is completely unique to the last. You have your bow and a few items, but you have to forage for the rest. Stripping bark from trees lets you craft more arrows, or horde the wood until you find a fire.

Enemies aren’t your only peril, as you need to eat and acquire warmth at regular intervals too. So be on the lookout for wildlife to hunt or campfires to set ablaze if you want to succeed. Find a tomb and you need to work together to navigate the traps and find the booty hidden within. Then book it back to a signal fire and airlift your prize to safety. You could theoretically play indefinitely, but the longer you last then more enemies emerge, less food is available and generally more difficult it becomes. Essentially the devs want to make sure you die after 45 minutes or so, which is nice.

Rise of the Tomb Raider: 20 Year Celebration is certainly a compelling package as it includes the already great single-player experience plus a host of additional goodies for no extra cost. You'll be able to nab it all with the Rise of the Tomb Raider Season Pass on 11th October.

After all the hands-on stuff we also got to chat with Will Kerslake, Senior Designer at Crystal Dynamics, about Rise of the Tomb Raider's past, present and future.

So this is the complete package? No more DLC after this for ROTTR?

This is it, everything that is going to be in ROTTR is going to be in this one package. Coming to PS4 as the complete package. If you bought the X1 or PC version beforehand, and bought the Season Pass, then you’ll get Blood Ties, Lara’s Nightmare and the rest on the same date. Bam – it just shows up. Obviously you won’t get Playstation VR because... you can’t.

Obviously ROTTR came out exclusively on Xbox for about a year, were you happy with how it performed?

We’re very proud of how it did on Xbox. Microsoft was a great partner to help work and focus on making a great game, it reviewed quite well and we’re really proud of that title. Now we’re looking at this 20 Year Celebration and not many games can make it that long and so it’s like, “wow”. We wanted to make sure the PS4 version was special and had extra content, because it’s the 20 year anniversary and we wanted to give extra stuff. But we also wanted to make sure everyone that played the game gets to have it too as it’s a celebration for all Tomb Raider fans. So we’re super excited for new players to get to play it in October.

About the Xbox platform exclusivity, would that be something you’d do again?

Right now we’re focused on the 20 year celebration content, and the PS4 version so we don’t really have anything to say about future releases.

Looking at the co-op Endurance Mode, is there a reason you added this in now?

We were looking at what was the right way to add multiplayer in Tomb Raider. There was MP in the 2013 reboot, but as we built the DLC we wondered what was the right thing to add for ROTTR? We didn’t just want to do MP, we wanted to do something that fit the spirit of Tomb Raider. People were enjoying the Endurance Mode and exploring the space. So we thought that was the perfect space to get a friend in, not about it being competitive but let’s get two players raiding tombs together. There is no better multiplayer experience than that for this game. So when it came down to “what’s the Tomb Raider thing?” This is the Tomb Raider thing.

So it’s more about exploration and working together than combat?

Well there is combat, but everything is about the two of you working together. You share resources, share a pool of lives and your score is shared on the leaderboards. It’s very much about working together as a team. Plus, as ever you can earn credits and roll them into card packs to alter your experience in other parts of the game.

Comments
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  • I know there likely be lissencing issued, but it'd be so much nicer if they would release a 'legacy collection' of the entire series instead for 1 system.
  • There are rumours that there will be another Nu-Raider. Sucks. I wish they'd go back making TRs like Anniversary and the classic ones again and not this cinematic gow clone shite.
  • This is one of the best games I ever played. PS4 owners need to jump on this. Get the sales up so they can make part 3 even better than this one and that will be a steep mountain to climb.
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