Tomb Raider 9 News

  • It's nice that people working on the game at Crystal Dynamics inform about things via Twitter. Then we're able to keep track on what's going on, where and when. :D
    Karl Stewart seems to tweet quite often.

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    The next news will be on either on the official page or in another magazine with exclusive rights. Also Karl Stewart from Crystal Dynamics twittered that there'ss be some goodness on twitter :)

    Well, let's see what kind of goodness there shall be appearing... :thumbsup

  • I am not sure how early a stage they are actually in. I have a feeling, they are keeping quite a few secrets at the moment. ;-)
    The first concepts, which showed exactly what they are working on now are from November 2009. [Blocked Image: http://forum.tombraidergirl.ne…ll/photo-823-2fd98272.jpg]


    The changes they supposedly have made from this early concepts seem minor to me. (I bet a lot has changed in detail, but that's the way it always is with these games...)
    If they have enough people working on it, and everything goes well, November 2011 is not impossible. I assume from the twitter messages "2011 will be big for tombraider" that they aim for a 2011 release, but are not certain enough to announce anything, in case it will not be ready until 2012. (I don't think we will have to wait till November 2012 though. [hehe] )

  • Yesterday the german magazine "Gamestar" focused on the new TR so here's a video. Of course it's in german and thus you won't understand anything but I tried my best to translate it. It's nothing new but it's intersting to hear the thoughts of a woman who seems to know the franchise quite well.



    Daniel: Hello and welcome to "Gamestar TV".
    "Never change a running system" --> Crystal does it for the second time already with the "Tomb Raider" franchise and that's why we have our Lara expert with us. Hello Petra!


    Petra:
    Not important - Tells a "funny" joke [COLOR="White"]NOT[/COLOR]
    He agrees and then they finally start talking about the new TR


    Daniel:
    It's already the ninth part of the Tomb Raider franchise, but its name isn't "Tomb Raider IX", why that?


    Petra:
    Well. After the first "reboot" (well it was some kind of reboot, but the main part of the game was still the same) which was TR Legend, the first of their games after they took over the franchise from Core Design, they are now trying to go a brand new direction. Even if we still have "Lara Croft" as our heroine, and if the game is still about jumping and getting rid of enemies, the ninth TR - the NEW TR will be a different in many points of view.
    We will get to play with a brand new Lara - Crystal made her younger and one could assume that they are kind of telling the back story of the Lara we all knew, but that's not true. Crstal doesn't want the new Lara to become the Lara we all know, it's basically a brand-new character who coincidentally is an archeologist with the same family history, who also lives in Croft Manor, who's fathers name is the same and so on. Somehow it IS Lara but then again it isn't Lara...
    There are still those distinguishing marks such as the ponytail, the brown hair, the.....boobs, haha, but she's a lot counger, she's 21 in this game, she's completely unexperienced person who just came from university and now wants to prove to the world and to herself that she's not just the daughter of some very well-known aristochratic family but she wants to say:
    "I'm can take care of myself, I'm Lara Croft and I'm I'm gonny show you that by going on a boat trip through the japanese sea with some dubious people to search for a special island and make a huge discovery (of course I did lots of research on that)"
    You can see this ship, it's name is "Endurance" and the new Lara on this picture now. It could be that one, not really sure about that [points to ship] but of yourse they never make it to this special Japanese Island-they shipwreck on the coast of a different, unknown island-and from then on the the [she uses a swearword here :D] starts.
    By saying [she says the swearword again!!!] I don't meant that the game is going to suck-I can't say anything about that yet-but I can say the following.
    The new TR is gonna be a Survival-typed game. There will be some horror elements but it's won't be such a typical survival horror like Resident Evil or Silent Hill. It will be an action-adventure-survival game with a well-know heroine who still does her well-known actions (jumping, shooting and so on) but it all happens in a completely different surrounding. There won't be switch-puzzles and such, but it will all come down to Lara searching for stuff on this Open-World-island, that will help Lara surviving.
    And of course there's a mystery that has to be solved:
    After they shipwreck, Lara wakes up hanging from the ceiling and is surrounded by other humans that were sacrificed and it seems she will be next. With pain and mysery she manages to free herself and finds out that this island seems to be inhabitated by people who didn't have anything better to do and were sacrificing humans to their gods over centuries.


    You can see that on this picture that it full of wracks from different centuries, for example you can see another sailing ship here [points to ship], so you can see that his little "game" is running for quite a while now and Lara has two taks now:
    Of course she has to survive and fight against these inhabitants but also against fauna and flora, well less against flora and more against fauna and ... it seems that she collects points by doing that, just like in all those RPG's.
    So she collects these points and can increase her abilities in one of the camps that were built by other survivers of the Endurance-shipwreck. I can just assume but maybe she can jump farther then, or...whatever...AND she can also create her own weapons in these camps by using stuff she finds there. (f.e. an axe made of a sharp metal pole)
    Of course she will also find some more powerful weapons later in the game (bow, pistol...) but she won't have any of these in the beginning.
    She will have to "work" for them in this game, that won't be linear, as said, and the highlight of the Reboot won't be just game-mechanics but the way Lara is presented in this game.


    Crystal Dynamics are saying: Lara always was a tough person, but it's been a bit too much toughness. She has experienced so much and it didn't change her in any way [she uses "to drip off" here, but I'm not sure if it has the same meaning] she was exploring caves and tombs to collect artifacts and relics and that's it. So with the new Lara they want to change this. She's a woman that came from univerity, never killed anyone (of course ^^) so her "first kill" HAS to be a pretty traumitic experience for this young woman according to Crystal. So Lara will feel completely exhausted and also later on in the game it won't be easy for her to kill humans. Even if it will become a routine somehow for the player it won't be that easy for our heroine. It will become easier of course but it never will be routine for her and she won't be able to "accept" that she has to kill people in order to survive. There will be tears, there will be injuries, Lara will get dirty. We already know that from L,A and underworld but some water was enough to get clean again and this time it's different. Some "signs" of what she experienced will remain, both physically (injuries) but also psychologically.


    Daniel: But now to the -maybe- most important question: We have our story [she interrupts him with an apology for talking sooo much] à la "Lara begins", we have a completely new design, completely new gameplay so now the question: Was is really needed? Did the series need this reboot or will it reduce this series to absurdity? What would you say, what's your opinion on this new direction?

    Petra:

    It's hard to say, TR will get (one of your favourite words) grown up. That's for sure and it will get grown up at two "levels". First in terms of visuals and stroytelling (presentation, illustration) and also in terms of making Lara able to make her way into the Next-Gen-games. Lara stops being the "adventure-plastic-barbie" and turns into a real human, one that feels sympathic to the player; you couldn't really feel it when Lara was falling down hundreds of meters and died with a *crx*-sound in TR2. The player didn't share her pain back then, he just laughed and thought - "alright, let's try again!" And this didn't change in the course of the games, Lara was always somehow...


    Daniel: "awkward" [he said "wooden" but it's some kinf of awkward in German]


    Petra: :
    Yeah, she was just a heroine, just a simple figure, who "reacted" to the players commands. And with the new "Tomb Raider" this should change. So I think it's the right step to keep the series alive, to keep the character alive, because the old Lara doesn't have "right to exist" in the new Generation of games. Think of Mr. Marston (?) from "Red Dead Redemption", or even "Max Payne", who showed a lot earlier that there also can be "torn" heroes, that protagonists can be real characters.
    And uhhm, the second reason why TR got grown up is really the rather high level of brutality. Crystal Dynamics want to make this game a lot more brutal, so we can say...If Lara dies, she REALLY dies [laughs], for example she could fall down a pit followed by getting hit by a rock fragment, which literally crushes her head, the inhabitants may take her with them and stab a machete right into her chest and so on. We can really say it's gonna be a LOT more savage and bloody and thus "grown up".


    Daniel: Alright, now the most important question: When will the game be done?


    Petra:
    Late 201/early 2012, I think "early 2012" is more likely, so that's my prediction. If game developers say it will be released "around", they say that to have some kind of scope [not sure if that's right word] and most of the time they release it at the end of this scope then...


    Daniel: So I'd say we can really look forward to it!


    Petra:
    I'm very curious in what way this new direction will work, as crystal Dynamics say that they won't Lara to be a sexsymbol anymore, but it's done a bit inconsequential: Lara still wears her tanktop, still has huge boobs and incredibly sensual lips...and those eyes!!! But on the other hand: noone wants to play with an ugly Lara, I think, that's just not possible.


    Daniel: This reminds me alittle bit of "Die Hard" *laughs*
    Alright thanks for your impressions, now lets come to our contest. But first the result of last week: [It's not about TR anymore but about TRON]
    But this time of course it's about Lara Croft: In both the film and in the games Lara has a butler, and I just loooved to let him follow me in TR2 and lock him in the freezer. [they are talking about him now and his weird noises ^^]
    So we want to know: Whats his name?
    [In the last 30 seconds they are showing the prizes for this contest, TRU and a survival-thermos-jug :)]

  • Very interesting! Nice find, Soul! :D

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    Of course she has to survive and fight against these inhabitants but also against fauna and flora, well less against flora and more against fauna and ... it seems that she collects points by doing that, just like in all those RPG's.
    So she collects these points and can increase her abilities in one of the camps that were built by other survivers of the Endurance-shipwreck. I can just assume but maybe she can jump farther then, or...whatever...AND she can also create her own weapons in these camps by using stuff she finds there.

    Wow, I just hope that they don't overdo that. The ability developing in TRAoD was okay, hopefully in TR9 you don't get stuck if you missed something and the you have to go back a long way, or even worse, you can't go back! I'm excited to see how this turns out to be... :-)
    And a HUGE thank you for translating that! :hug

  • As it is a reboot you cannot really say it's in her past. Everything we've learned so far has never happened at this point, but yes, "Tomb Raider" (9) tells a story from Lara's early years.


    If you look into her original biography she survived a plane crash when she was 21 and had just finished her education. This is the story they are now retelling in detail, except that it was a shipwreck instead. So they do not really change Lara, they redefine her, give her a more solid background.

  • I thought that plane crash happened when she was 9?? :S, near the outskirts of nepal? and yeah maybe it is on about her early years. and Im sorry i actually really cant keep up with the storylines. the makers are always changing it. Dont get me wrong, the storylines are amazing. but i do feel like some of them do not fit... and shes 21, in this... urm correct me if im wrong, but werent that how old she was when she went to get the scion?

  • I thought that plane crash happened when she was 9?? [...] and Im sorry i actually really cant keep up with the storylines.


    That's exactly the problem. According to Tomb Raider I, Lara survived a plane crash at the age of 21, which turned her into a hardened adventurer.
    http://www.wikiraider.com/index.php/Tomb_Raider#Story (Tomb Raider itself takes place 8 years later.)


    That all got changed with Tomb Raider Legend however, with the plane crash you mean. Quite confusing actually. And that is exactly the reason why they start over and make it a shipwreck, not a plane crash, otherwise those only familiar with TRL would be confused.

  • So this shipwreck buisness is most likely going to be the 'new background story' for Laras life. huh. interesting. But when you think about. its not really changing, its going back to the actual storyline those years ago. which tomb raider gamers who played the game in the 90's will recognise, just its a shipwreck thing this time. I actually remembered, I saw some pictures a few months ago. on about the new Tomb raider, it was only skecthes but Lara was on a island... so that could be something to do with this new storyline. Well of course she will be since its a shipwreck O_O.

  • From Karl Stewart via Twitter:

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    Bags packed. Ready to circumnavigate the world on the @tombraider tour starting tomorrow. First stop...London (32 hours). #jetlaghereicome

    Posted on the 15th of February at 11:56 PM. I wish they'd give some new info... :-)
    EDIT: That Tomb Raider tour is more likely about this than the upcoming Tomb Raider.
    And this is from the official Tomb Raider's Twitter account:

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    For all you @TombRaider fans pinging me for an update, were not planning to show anything at @GDC this week. Soon, I promise. Just not now

    Posted on 1st of March.
    Meh, apparently we have to wait for a while...

  • I surely hope it'd be released around December 2011, I'd write it to my wishlist to Santa. :presentf
    Here's a rumour on when we'll get more information on TR9: it could be presented at the E3 Expo on June! :-) Can't remember where I read that, was it on Karl Stewart's Twitter page or somewhere..?


    EDIT: at the end of the month we'll get more information! :happyjump
    Source: Lara Croft's Facebook page

  • Hey guys! First off just to say hi, been a long time since I've been on here, and I hope all is well. :) Second, I think this game is going to be the re-boot the series has so badly needed. It looks massively ambitious, and I hope they pull it off. I can't wait for this one. :D

  • Off Topic: Welcome back :thumbsup:


    On Topic: I agree with everything you said. I really think that the Reboot was needed in order to tell a believable story and the information I have so far (due to the massive coverage in loads of magazines world-wide) sounds absolutely awesome. :thumbsup:

  • Welcome back.


    Actually, now I've had some time to reflect... I am getting a bit sentimental when I ... think about the reboot ...think about that Winston is probably gone, that there is no Zip - weather it's the Chronicles one or the more colourful character from Legend/Underworld... I hope they will bring them back too (probably not in the next game, but after that), reinvent them a little but keep their main features.


    I think that most of the old Raiders need this, something familiar to hang on to (at least Winston - there are probably some early-years Raiders who don't like the Legend-Zip: living with Lara, being a very close friend...); but the creators also have to give new Raiders the feeling that they are not missing out. )

  • I see what your saying, but what your talking about is nostalgia and stuff you love about the old games. But I think the series has to move on. Tbh I've been bored of TR games since Legend, they've lacked any real variety or change. The series has become predictable and stale. This -besides "Guardian of Light"- is the first game to really change things. I can't wait to see how it plays out. It might even get people who never really liked TR to play it.