A new gameplay trailer at Xbox’s Gamescom briefing today, has shown off Rise of the Tomb Raider’s improved stealth abilities, making it easier and offering greater choice in handling exploration.
The developers announced the world is 3x larger than any of their previous games, allowing for greater exploration which can apparently offer players hours of gameplay just hunting, collecting. completing challenges and as the title implies exploring tombs.
We saw Lara use new abilities such as poisonous arrows, throwing objects to cause distractions and multi-arrow. Lara has also learnt some fresh moves with new takedowns, including; leaping down on enemies or jumping out from under water and dragging her victim to the depths.
In the trailer, Lara is no longer the scared woman we watched develop in the previous game, she progresses through a camp easily and confident. She sneaked past people completely or took them out if they were too much of an obstacle. She uses the area better, blending into the surroundings more making it harder for guards to spot her. We are now in control of a stronger and wiser Lara.
If you are not too excited to see Lara cowering behind logs or walls and want to go around guns blazing, you will be pleased to know the game is designed so that players can choose how they tackle areas. You can either take out soldiers systematically or shoot anything that moves. The camps are back with the same purpose of getting upgrades, giving you the choice to prioritize upgrades based on your style of play.
For those who were upset with the lack of tombs in Tomb Raider, we have been given a little look at what we can expect from the game, and they look breathtaking. The tombs are not just copy and pasted, each seems to have its own personality. They are said to vary in difficultly and length, but how many will be left for us to find ourselves and how big/complex non story based tombs are is still uncertain.
What we do know though is that this game is continuing is prove the new style of Lara Croft is what the franchise needed.
