After a long silence without news about Tomb Raider (2013), and the recent delay to Q1 of 2013, the game is back in the most famous show in Los Angeles for the E3.
Crystal Dynamics invites to some webmasters around the world to cover the E3 show, and Croft Generation will be an embassor from Spain. Thank you so much Crystal for this opportunity!
As spanish ambassor in the E3, I will bring you any news from the E3 through website, forum, facebook, twiter, google+.
Along my stay in Los Angeles, from June 5 to June 8 i will be updating with photos, articles and any news from the E3.
Group Interview
First, a group interview was conducted with the developers of the game, if you want to read the transcript provided by the company, click on the link below:
Below is Croft Generation’s interview with the Senior Art Director for Tomb Raider (2013), Brian Horton, during his visit to Los Angeles during the E3 2012 event.
Photo Gallery
Below you can also see a selection of photos from my visit to Los Angeles for E3 2012.
Tomb Raider review demo: Lara Vs Wild
To start, I will tell you the demo we seen behind closed doors, exclusively for webmasters, where Brian Horon behaved very well, stopping at each location to better explain us everything we see. So… here is my analysis:
The demo begins exactly in the cliff, just after escaping from the cave of the previous E3 demo.
El entorno es muy realista, el viento moviendo la vegetación, el pelo de Lara, pájaros volando, y en general, una muy buena iluminación, la mejor de la saga sin lugar a dudas.
When Lara begins to run way down, she looks exhausted, she almost can’t breathe… This makes you worry about her. We continue and Lara take breath, leaning on a tree trunk. Later she also sees a lifeboat with some items.
She arrives one area to cross a cliff, wich we seen at the beginning of the trailer; because of the high risk, you can see Lara is nervous and making sure of each step. As we move the trunk branches will fall down and then… Lara stumbles and almost falls, but finally reaches the other end and jump off to leave the trunk as soon as possible, and who wouldn’t?
She begins to climb an aircraft while falling parts of the same, the climbing system is very similar to previous games, although much smoother and more realistic animations.
Another aspect to point out is the immersive music, according to each situation.
Lara continued along the way, and helps herself with a foot to raise up to the wall. Later she found a bag with equipment, such as a HD camera and a box of matches (what will discover more below that only is one left); she also finds a walkie talkie and she try to be in contact with Roth or Sam, but there is only static noise.
Lara jumps to a ledge, but she slips and falls on a slope without being able to do anything. After that, it starts to rain so much, so Lara must take refuge in a more protected location.
To warm up from the cold, which we see reflected in her breath or when she’s shaking, Lara starts to collect firewood for the campfire and very carefully, trying to turn make it work with just one match, she blows carefully to stir up the fire.
When she made it, she heard some noise from the walkie talkie, she tried to contact again, but without success, Lara feels lonely, and you can feel it.
The next day is sunny; the nature is full of life and realistic, when you look around then environment, exploring the place, Lara finds a corpse with the bow at the top of a tree, so she makes her way up to collect it, she approach to him by pressing action button.
Another highlight is the experience points, after arriving to a new place or completing objectives, extras, challenges, missions hunting animals, Lara gets experience points to evolve their skills and weapons.
The water that flows by the rivers is very realistic, she may have to hunt for the first time to a deer, when she approached to finally kill him, she asked for forgiveness, she feels very bad for this.
Lara also retrieves the arrows used, as we expected, so you can save precious ammunition, since it is limited. Another aspect of the bow is that the more we stretched, the more precise we can be.
The forest is full of life, rabbits, birds, deers… all very nice, but soon Lara will discover that not all creatures are so innocent.
If we activate the survival instinct, we see a light focus on the horizon to point the place is our goal, although you are free to explore the environment to check other secrets, the more experience you get, more abilities or improvements you can get, and information.
Also Brian Horton told us that there would be a map to orient in the island, since the extension of the levels is huge (even Meagan said that in some area of the game, you can spend hours exploring, and not seeing everything anyway).
Lara also found an abandoned truck in the middle of the jungle (Lost series van?) We arrived at the camp base, time to improve our skills.
There are parts of the menu that aren’t available, and one of them called Survivor Skills are a total of 12 (or at least at the moment). Among those which can improve the ability to hunt, so you can stop more the animals to hunt easier, or find herbs (it is unknown what are at the moment, but Brian picked up some).
After improving our skills, Lara speaks first time with Roth on the walkie talkie; she talks about Steph’s death, and being afraid, but Roth encouraged her to continue.
About Lara’s movements through the environment, it’s very realistic, very natural, and Lara climb the ledges in a very realistic way, much better than in previous games.
Lara enters to an abandoned house and pick up a torch. Then she passes through a very narrow passage, with a lot of mud, when she exits from that place, you can see her body covered with dirty, a very good effect.
We see a place with animal sacrifices, a closed door that we have to open and Lara must find a way to do it; with the torch, Lara burns some boxes in the way, she collects a rudimentary peak made by bone; with this new tool, we can use it as a lever to open the locked doors.
Brian Horton stops for some time to explain the area and shows you can explore it, opoen a few boxes, where we can find some artifacts, more specifically a mask, which gives us more experience as a reward.
Out of there by stairs, we’re back to the forest, the camera takes the best angle to show a better experience.
As we progress, we listen some voices, maybe Sam? and a man… They start to speak, although Lara doesn’t trust him much, there is something strange… it’s a scavenger, but Lara doesn’t know yet, she doubts but after all, she decide to shake hands, but always keeping an eye on his knife.
Samantha wants to talk with Lara, but the man is nervous, fearing all could be wrong, so he kidnaps Sam, saying at the same time that they waited a long time for this moment.
Our heroine tries to shoot him with the bow, but failed, and after running towards him, she falled in a trap for bears?.
Then with her foot trapped in this place, something the stalks… bushes moved and appear a few wolves that jump to her, Lara have to kill them with her bow (if you don’t have the opportunity to kill them at first, you still have another possibility with a combat melee through quick time events.)
Talking about the QTE, they are improved, this time occasionally you have to press the button at the precise moment, by this I mean that you have to wait for a circle around the button to press which is becoming more small and close, time in which you have to press it.
Some help to the rescue from Endurance members help Lara out of the trap. With some nervous Lara explains what happened, the group divide themself in 2 teams, one to search for Sam, and in the other part, Dr. Witman and Lara are in search of Roth.
Lara needs to rest for some minutes, her leg hurts a lot, so Witman go ahead to explore the area. Once she can walk again normally, more wolves attacks her so she defends herself with the bow, you can even avoid them crowling.
We couldn’t see Lara die, we don’t know if it’s because of the demo, but we know that Lara’s life is regenerating after some time.
Once the wolves are dead, we can pick up the used arrows, you never know…
Brian told us that Lara is not actually hunting because she’s just hungry, but for to get extra experience points, useful to evolve Lara in her abilities or weapons in the base camp.
We can move around and explore the place, between the tree’s trunk and jumping from one to another.
When she reaches the place where Witman is, she discovered a door with the same paints that previously seen and a mechanism which is needed of two persons at the same time activing the wheel, but Lara’s pickaxe to help her active it seems weak and it could break. You can find more savages to improve it in some boxes around the area.
Another challenge that Brian shown was to shoot a few skulls totem, so… If you guessed… gave us more experience.
Brian pressed a menu, because he believed that he had discovered an error, since he couldn’t find all the savages to improve the pickaxe, but it was just that he just missed one (Anyway… was a select levels menu, but I will not say names for not to spoiler but… it exits so many levels and…. also by the look of it, seems it will be back boss battles after all).
Lara and Witman makes to enter through the doors and they talk, in the conversation they mention Lara’s father, she said to him… “you sound like my father”).
They arrive to one place with a Buddha statue called Iniko; Lara find all this as a great discoverement, but Witman rather see it as a gold mine.
Suddenly some scavengers appear from no where and take control over the island, and kills anyone who attempt to escape.
Lara with tied hands, when nobody is watching, she tries to escape, nervous and afraid, she hides in a crack inside a House, but the boss of scavengers discovered her but through Quick time events Lara scape from the rape attempts, Lara knows how to take care of herself and gets rid of him with a kick. They now fight from the ground, struggling at the end manages to shoot him and leaving the man dying.
Lara after the first kill of a human being, in a shock moment, repeating non stop the words… oh my God, even if she’s nervous, she made to understands that this is survival, and is him or herself, so she stands up taking the gun and the demo ends, with a Lara pose that remind me to the real Lara Croft, with an air of confidence and determination.