Q: Is there an option to turn off hints, icons, and white ledges?
Noah Hughes: I know how much you guys aren’t fans of white ledges, but it is one of those things where on the main path we use it somewhat aggressively for players who aren’t that great at adventure games so they do not get completely lost and stuck. But we also try to be much lighter on the touch with those as you get into the secondary and optional exploration spaces. It is never any fun to jump at all kinds of things and not know what you can attach to and what you can’t attach to, so it’s always a matter of on the main path trying to avoid people flunking out too easily and off the path just making it clear what you can and can’t do, but it is a delicate balance.
(Two notes to add on this, as some of the recording for this did not carry over. My own impression in the demo, and agreed to by the group, is that there are some spots where the lighting is used smartly and naturally to make the "ledges" pop a bit, but it's not the overt white paint look from before. Many spots where the sun wasn't shining, for instance, did not appear to have a real extreme highlight to them. Also, the second part of this question was in regards to whether or not we can turn the hints off. Noah said yes we can )
Q: Will we have any playable flashbacks of Lara and Sam to help explain their friendship?
Noah Hughes: That’s a good question. We’re not revealing everything about the story, but I will say that Sam doesn’t play a significant part in this story. But you’ll have to wait and see how we use flashbacks and the like.
Q: Is it again only going to be dark-themed or are there some cheerful playable moments?
Noah Hughes: We always try to capture a variety of emotions. We do thrust Lara into intense life and death situations, but we also try to capture that sense of success and human relationships and other facets of storytelling. As an example, one of my favorite moments in the last game was Lara climbing the radio tower and that sense of victory and success, and you really felt connected to Lara and the other survivors in that moment. So we’re always trying to create those moments for the player, especially in game and on the sticks and not just in cinematics.
Q: When can you announce the release for other platforms?
Noah Hughes: Unfortunately we don’t have any details that we can talk about related to other platforms.
Q: Will the main theme stay the same?
Noah Hughes: This is a standalone story so you can start at the beginning of this story and understand everything about it but we also tried to create through-lines between the two. As an example, in the last game Lara glimpses the immortal queen but before she can really understand what it represents it slips through her fingers and she can’t explain what she saw. But she recognizes that it’s important and if this myth is true then other myths might be true. So we really have Lara pursuing some validation that this is not just a myth but an underlying truth about humanity. So that’s one of the through-lines that carries from the last game to this game.
The other thing is Lara’s arc as a character...it’s a new place in the arc but it is a continuation of her journey. So the idea that she was forged into a survivor and what we wanted to do more than anything this time was show how those survival skills weren’t just incidental to tomb raiding, but they were actually critical to tomb raiding. The secrets of the world are hidden in the most hostile and remote locations on earth, otherwise they would have already been found and it really takes someone like Lara with all of her survival skills in order to uncover them.
So we have a lot of thematic continuity between the games, but also it is an exciting new adventure that stands on its own.
Q: Will Lara’s new range of outfits affect Lara and her abilities?
Noah Hughes: Outfits for the most part have aesthetic functions in the game allowing players to express their vision for Lara. The skills allow you to choose what you’re upgrading and what skills you’re buying, and the outfits allow you to express your aesthetics. But I will say that we may be introducing some amount of gameplay effects to some outfits so that is something that we’re looking at.
Q: Are we going to see dual pistols in this game or the next?
Noah Hughes: Ah, the dual pistols...I think it’s fair to say it’s probably a bit spoilery to get into it one way or another. But we do recognize the anticipation for Lara and everything people love about her as an icon so we are trying to bring back some of those things people love but you’ll have to wait and see what they are.
Q: Will the player lose themselves exploring the world you crafted?
Noah Hughes: That’s actually an important one since that was a creative goal I gave when we talked about larger spaces. Part of that’s fun because it’s next-gen platform and we can say, “Hey, now spaces can be bigger!” but we don’t want bigger for bigger’s sake. Part of why we want bigger is the sense that you’re immersed in this environment and it’s big enough that you can actually get lost a little bit. It adds a whole different feeling. So for us we blend very linear exciting roller coaster ride-style gameplay but when you plop into this HUBs they can be overwhelming and you can even get lost in them, and that adds to the sense of immersion and being plunged into this hostile and alien landscape.
But part of what’s important is that once you start to acquire gear and start to be able to unlock all these things that you couldn’t initially interact with, your proficiency in that space then becomes a measure of your success. So in some ways the scale of HUBs really are just scaling up that environmental opponent that we love in the game.
Q: From what I saw, Lara’s emotional state just pulls in the player even more, probably.
Noah Hughes: Yeah and we not only tried to thrust the player into this variety of emotional experiences, both highs and lows, but we tried to make sure that Lara as a character feels grounded in that moment. I think that’s one of the things we get feedback quite often is that one of the things people love about game is Lara almost feels alive. That she feels more human and real than a lot of game avatars and part of that is just connected with the world -- you see her placing her hands on things that make you feel like she knows where she is. But a lot of its emotional state too, when she’s walking through a scary area and you kind of spin the camera around and you see that nervousness on Lara’s face it really does connect Lara and the player to the experience they’re having.
Q: Are you planning on creating an actual boss fight this time?
Noah Hughes: Well I don’t want to speak too soon, I guess people will have to judge for themselves whether it’s a true boss fight or not, because it sounds like there’s some criteria that I may not be aware of. But it is important to have climax to our combat challenges and those do express themselves in boss fights but again they’re not really the most important opponent in the game. We really do blend the environment itself as a character and an enemy but ultimately that can’t test your combat skills in the same way enemies and bosses do, and a lot of what we try to do is not necessarily make the end all be all of single bosses but we really try to over time introduce new enemy archetypes that keep the player having to learn new skills to overcome what they’re facing. And also not just human enemies but even things like the bear that we saw in the demo. These might not qualify as a full boss fight but along the journey you see these spikes of intensity that really test your mettle, and that goes from the first bear fight all the way to the end of the game.
Q: Will there be an expert difficulty that pushes the player more than the regular hard difficulty?
Noah Hughes: I don’t think I can talk about actual specifics but one of the things I was very adamant about this time was to introduce a skill difficulty level that did push the players farther than any difficulty level in the last game. So we do have that fourth difficulty level and we’ll be sharing more news about it in the future.
Q: Will silent takedowns or sneaking be possible at all in combat scenes or will Lara still be confronted by hundreds of enemies at once like in the Shanty Town?
Noah Hughes: There are still some ambush situations where the enemies are very aware of Lara and her position and so in these situations she is forced to fight, but one of the things we’ve done as a vision for making the combat most appropriate to Lara as a character, and for some of our audience who likes to not just win through twitch skill but win through intelligence and resourcefulness, is pre-combat when you come upon enemies who aren’t aware of you. And so we tried to create more situations where Lara is able to initiate combat on her own terms or even in some cases avoid combat entirely, and also give you more tools to use in those situations. So a lot of her crafting skills will reward players who assess the environment first and then they can take things that they collected in the environment and use them to modify things in the environment. So for example we have the gas can in the Bear Valley demo which Lara can combine with cloth to turn into a giant molotov bomb. And that’s just an example of not only creating that moment where players can initiate combat, but give them more ways to do that.
Also we saw trees and swimming, and another cool thing about them is they add traversal and exploration to the game, but they also add opportunities for concealment from the enemies and then silent takedowns. So actually one of my very favorite things in the game is to be underwater and do a silent takedown from within the water, and that feels super empowering.
Q: Will we be able to play as other characters in the game?
Noah Hughes: We don’t have anything to announce as it relates to that.
Q: Because of the outcry for not releasing the game on other platforms, will we get some compensation like all DLCs?
Noah Hughes: Unfortunately I still can’t announce anything as it relates to other platforms, but I understand the question and I sympathize with the situation.
Q: Alongside the expanded set of animal enemies, will there be a wider variety of human enemies?
Noah Hughes: Yeah, we have a variety of enemies. A lot of what we tried to do was focus on gameplay functions of the enemies, so we do try to make sure that their behavior and their weapons and their armor really challenge the player to confront them in different ways. And we do try to push the personalities to a broad variety of enemy types. You’ll see lower ranked enemies behaving a little differently than higher ranked enemies, almost similar to the scavengers in the last game. So we still try to tease out that personality and that humanity, but a lot of the time with enemies it’s about evoking different gameplay challenges.
Having said that we do have other characters in the game so I’m excited to share more about that in the future.
Q: Will the much-loved and missed classic outfit make a return, either story-related or as an unlockable?
Noah Hughes: I’m not sure but I’ll take that as a request.
Q: What sort of improvements have you made to Lara’s hair?
Noah Hughes: Yeah, we actually did push the hair. As you know, Lara’s fidelity as a character is important to us and that includes most notably her new facial animation system that we’re doing which I think is getting a lot better at capturing that human emotion. At times I can even see some of Camilla’s idiosyncrasies coming through but most importantly you see emotion coming through. When Lara’s passionate her eyes almost light up, which is just amazing.
And then the hair’s the other part of it. It’s part of her as a character and I think we’re starting to get somewhere with it that it really adds a lot to the animation the fact that it does simulate physically and really adds a certain amount of dynamics. But I think that’s the other great thing about it -- Lara moves and her hair moves and we have more on things on her outfit like her axes and things on her belt, so we really do try to bring the character to life through secondary motion.
Q: How many locations are there?
Noah Hughes: There are the two main locations. So there may be another location or two featured in cinematics, but in gameplay we’re focusing on the Siberia location and Syria. Having said that, the Siberian location is much more varied in its area types than we’ve seen so far, so it’s important to realize that just as with the island we really tried to push a variety of environments. You can expect to uncover new hidden pockets of Siberia that are really going to push the environmental variety.
Q: Will the platforming sections in Rise be less automated and scripted than the previous game? Will the platforming be more challenging as the game progresses?
Noah Hughes: We’re not going to change things entirely. We’re also sensitive to times where it feels like you should have missed a jump and the game makes you make the jump, that that does diminish my skill as a player. Having said that we don’t like the platforming to feel too finicky or frustrating and so it is a balancing act, but we are sensitive to minimizing the automation in the platforming. Also we have tried to introduce more challenge. As a team we asked, “Can we have Lara die more from non-combat situations than she did in the last game?” So we brought back traps and things like that as well as platforming challenge. So we do hope that the environment itself is challenging your skills as a player.
Q: Will there be a lot--like 15 minimum--different outfits and color schemes to choose from?
Noah Hughes: I think it is something we value so we’re going to get as many as we can. I would assume we’re going to get more than the last game but we don’t have any numbers to announce.
Q: Will the environment be more complex this time around?
Noah Hughes: I think some things have made the environment more complex. We talked about scale and being able to get lost a little bit and that does add some complexity to just navigating the larger Hub spaces, but also it’s great to have things like the trees and swimming because not only can you jump from platform to platform and climb ledges, but you have to start thinking, “Oh, where can I get if I climb this tree or if I go into that water what am I gonna find?”
So it does sort of expand the layers of exploration that you have in a given space. So hopefully people will feel that there is more explanation packed into any given space, especially given the scale.
Q: Will she need to eat or drink?
Noah Hughes: No specifics as it relates to that. As you know we really do push the action side of survival action, but we also are very compelled by being stranded and doing everything you can to survive through collecting resources and things like that so it’s an interesting balancing act. It’s not a critical part of the game at all, no.
Q: Will there be physical damages and such evident on Lara?
Noah Hughes: Yeah, we have a lot of goals to make Lara feel grounded in the environment and one of those is just how the environment affects her. So when she’s in the snow you’ll see snow on her clothes and in her hair and she’ll shiver and when she gets wet her clothes will get wet and when she gets damaged she’ll show damage on the character. Even just rolling around in the dirt she’ll get dirty, then when you get in the water she’ll get cleaned off. It’s very subtle and it’s not critical to the gameplay, but it’s part of what again makes her feel a little more real and connected to the experience.
Q: Will there be a downloadable demo of the game?
Noah Hughes: Again, I don’t think I can announce anything relating to that.
Q: Will North America be getting a physical edition for the PC?
Noah Hughes: Unfortunately we have no additional platform announcements.
Q: Will finding artifacts and relics return?
Noah Hughes: Yeah, artifacts and relics do return, as well as documents. And of the things we included this time is the language system so not only are you getting sort of completionist rewards as well as secondary narrative and backstory, you also advance your language skill which allows you to translate certain things in the environment. So, it is something we love as an exploration reward and it’s something we’ve sort of pushed farther with the language system.
I'm glad hints can be disabled. I hope all that damn extra ass dramatic music can be switched off too. That music is so distracting and takes away from the experience. Without it, it feels more like you're there and more realistic and general.
Oh my ****ing god! I am slayed all over again. I can't take it anymore... When she entered that tomb!!! It was so beautiful! The lighting, the ship wreck, just everything about it. Take my money Crystal Dynamics!!!!!!!!!
Rise of the Tomb Raider Targeting 1080p/30fps, Engine Ovehauled To Utilize Full Power of Xbox One
Quote:
During E3 2015, Game Director for ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’ Brian Horton explained to GamingBolt how they will be pushing the power of the Xbox One to deliver a stunning gameplay and visual experience this holiday. Horton revealed that working on the definitive edition of the Tomb Raider reboot allowed them to push the Xbox One to its limits and everything that you will see in Rise of the Tomb Raider has been developed from the ground up.
“We were working during a generational shift where we were able to learn about the power of next generation consoles when we made the definitive edition of Tomb Raider but we really wanted to make Rise of the Tomb Raider from the ground up. Everything has been rewritten, the lighting engine has been rewritten, the animation engine for Lara’s facial expression has been completely redone. All of our material processing, lighting engine and everything has been overhauled to utilize the full power of the Xbox One,” Horton explained to GamingBolt.
Working closely with Microsoft meant that the development team did not face any issues with eSRAM or with the console itself, says Horton.
“We have a fantastic relationship with Microsoft. We got work directly with them and were able to understand how to get most out of the system and it has been a flawless experience so far.”
And finally, he confirmed that they are targeting 1080p resolution and 30 frames per second for the Xbox One version. And if the recent Xbox SDK updates are anything to go by, we are confident that Rise of the Tomb Raider will indeed achieve that resolution standard.
I believe Microsoft funded the development of this game so I don't see it coming to PS4 (unless there's some news I'm unaware of) but it will probably come to PC.
As a non-XboxOne owner, that's good enough for me The game looks really good, I hope they do a good job with the PC port
No, but that's what graphic w***** want to make you think.
30fps is what we've been having for generations in consoles now, which is a really decent and playable frame rate, especially if stable (movies in the cinema go at 24 fps). Gamers expected this new generation of consoles to be able to handle 60 fps just like PC users have been enjoying for years but apparently they're not if the game runs in 1080. 60 frames per second makes every move smoother, that's the principal advantage, but by no means 30 fps is crap.