Tomb Raider Forums  

Go Back   Tomb Raider Forums > Tomb Raider Series > Tomb Raider

Reply
 
Thread Tools
Old 18-01-13, 15:16   #1
lcroft_lc
Member
 
lcroft_lc's Avatar
 
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 15,557
Default Interview: "We want the player to feel what Lara feels"

Warning: Major spoiler about Lara's parents

When we first played Crystal Dynamics' Tomb Raider reboot at Eurogamer 2012, we were impressed with the game's new version of Lara Croft. Strong, capable - but also vulnerable and human - this younger Lara was very unlike the 1D pin-up we'd gotten used to. With the game due out on 5 March, we sat down with gameplay director Daniel Bisson to discuss how what you do in Tomb Raider, reflects the woman you're playing.


IBTimes: Lara's first kill is very traumatic for her. What did you do with the design of the combat to ensure that killing people felt significant, felt difficult?

Daniel Bisson: One word we were talking about which was very important was 'synchronisation', synchronisation between Lara and the player. We want the player to feel what Lara feels. So, we tried to make that every time she does something, some new thing, it had a toll, almost like a stain.
The first time she risks her own life is when she's crossing this log over a chasm. Normally in videogames you could do that easily and be like 'what's next?' But we wanted to celebrate that moment. We wanted that to be when she admits 'I'm going to risk my life to get to my friends.' The same thing happens with the first kill. She has to do something big to free herself from that threat.

But after that, if you look at the way we stage combat, the enemies get further away. It's purposefully like that so that the first time you kill, it's closer and more visceral and we have Lara crying.

But later on, when she tells her friend that she's had to kill a lot of people and he says 'that must have been difficult' she says it was surprisingly easy. She realises that she has something inside of her that she doesn't know she had. Everything we tell in the story is paralleled in the gameplay. It's synchronised.

IBT: How do the game's environments play into that?

DB: We wanted to tell the story of a normal person going through a change; a lot of people ask me 'why did you create a dark Lara?' and I answer that she's not a dark Lara, it's a dark environment. The island is a character by itself. It's the vehicle for transforming Lara from a naïve teenager into a full-fledged woman. It's like the mother for the Tomb Raider that will come.

We wanted to use the environment to depict how Lara was feeling. When she emerges from the cavern into the daylight at the game's beginning, it's like she's reborn, there's hope. And later on during the violence there's fire, because she's being burned, something in her is being destroyed.

IBT: How do Lara's relationships to her friends change throughout the game?

DB: Well, there's Roth who was a friend of Lara's father and when he died, Roth became a kind of father figure to Lara. That's why, originally she wants him to come and save her, but he can't because he's wounded, and he tells her she needs to help herself. So, he's still this father figure - he's helping Lara to grow.

This is why we want to dial down the sexiness, the depiction of Lara as a sex symbol. We wanted to focus more on the internal part of our character. Imagine the old Lara, with the sunglasses and the shorts and the tight top breaking down and starting crying - it doesn't work.

We wanted to make something more intimate. If we gave her a relationship with a guy outside of this father figure relationship we would be de-focusing. The game is about Lara growing herself and finding out who she is. There's a line where Roth says "you can do it, you're a Croft" and Lara says "I don't know if I'm that kind of Croft." She doesn't know who she is yet.

Jean-Paul Sartre said "you define yourself based on the perspective of the others" and to begin with in the game that's what she's doing. But at a certain point she becomes free of that and she finds herself by looking at herself.

IBT: To do all this, did you work closely with Rihanna Pratchett, the game's scriptwriter?

DB: I was more like a movie director, in that I took that script and thought about how we could represent it in the game itself. For example with the staging of the combat, I knew that that first kill sparked an evolution in the character so I wanted to convey things like that with gameplay elements.

For the intimate moments, like the first time you get the bow and arrow, instead of creating spectacle we created simple interactions. This is something I worked on a lot myself throughout my career. When an interaction is complex we become more fearful and determined to conquer, determined to dominate.

But when it's much more simple it can represent more complex emotions. For example, in a game like The Walking Dead from TellTale, in order to build those complex emotions, complex relationships the interaction has to be super simple. Same thing with Heavy Rain.

We have that in the game, in moments where we wanted to create intimacy or confusion the interaction is simple.

IBT: What was it that you wanted to keep in from the previous games?

DB: These three pillars of Tomb Raider gameplay: Puzzles, platforming and combat. Also, exploration - the fact that you can lose yourself in an environment. You don't need to have objectives to do; you can just be in awe.

To be honest, we had a conflict, me and Noah [Huges - creative director], because I hate when a player just walks - I'm more of an action guy. And he was saying that in Tomb Raider, we were going to be celebrating walking, and I was saying, well, that's boring. But in Tomb Raider, exploration is very important. Just seeing a waterfall and wanting to go behind it just for the fun of it. That's Tomb Raider - it doesn't always have to have a gameplay point.

That's why we have these hubs that you can look around. I've seen people spend five hours in these places: Even though there's no action or plot, they stay there and collect things. And that's something we wanted to keep from the old Tomb Raider, these environments that you can just enjoy looking around.


Source

Last edited by lcroft_lc; 18-01-13 at 15:20.
lcroft_lc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-01-13, 15:18   #2
Soul
Golden
 
Soul's Avatar
 
Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 6,652
Default

Quote:
Major spoiler about Lara's parents
PARENTS?!

EDIT: Could you maybe mark the spoiler red - I'd like to read the rest of the interview ^^

Last edited by Soul; 18-01-13 at 15:19.
Soul is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-01-13, 15:20   #3
lcroft_lc
Member
 
lcroft_lc's Avatar
 
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 15,557
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Soul View Post
PARENTS?!

EDIT: Could you maybe mark the spoiler red - I'd like to read the rest of the interview ^^
Marked the spoiler in white. Go read the rest.
lcroft_lc is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-01-13, 15:21   #4
Lara holic
Member
 
Lara holic's Avatar
 
Joined: Apr 2008
Posts: 258
Default

I thought her parents are missing? now her father is dead .

Last edited by Lara holic; 18-01-13 at 15:22.
Lara holic is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-01-13, 15:22   #5
Rider
Inactive
 
Joined: Dec 2012
Posts: 675
Default

I read that part and i am confused??
Rider is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-01-13, 15:24   #6
amiro1989
Member
 
amiro1989's Avatar
 
Joined: Mar 2006
Posts: 9,707
Default

spoilers.
amiro1989 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-01-13, 15:25   #7
Rider
Inactive
 
Joined: Dec 2012
Posts: 675
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lara holic View Post
I thought her parents are missing? now her father is dead .
Lmao you spiled it for Everyone i think!
Rider is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-01-13, 15:25   #8
Xopax
Member
 
Xopax's Avatar
 
Joined: Dec 2012
Posts: 1,924
Default

I hope that Lara's mother also died
Xopax is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-01-13, 15:26   #9
Soul
Golden
 
Soul's Avatar
 
Joined: Jan 2009
Posts: 6,652
Default

OK - since people were directly talking about it, I "spoiled" myself - it's not really major though.

I guess her father doesn't play such a HUGE role - they only needed a way to turn Roth into a VERY important person in Lara's life and I'm fine with that.
Soul is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 18-01-13, 15:29   #10
lcroft_lc
Member
 
lcroft_lc's Avatar
 
Joined: Dec 2010
Posts: 15,557
Default

Rest In Peace, Sir Richard Croft.
lcroft_lc is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off



All times are GMT. The time now is 20:25.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.
Tomb Raider Forums is not owned or operated by CDE Entertainment Ltd.
Lara Croft and Tomb Raider are trademarks of CDE Entertainment Ltd.