Tomb Raider Forums - TOMB RAIDER General Discussion Thread

This is where the order of the days came from...

Quote:

Originally Posted by German Spiele Magazine

As a child Lara got to accompany her parents during countless archeological expeditions. She then graduated in Cambridge and now is almost fired up for eploring the ancient secrets of the world on her own and leaving the musty lecture halls and dusty librarys behind her.
And so her first exploration lead be Conrad Roth starts on the research-ship "Endurance".

Day 1: The start of the expedition

The destination is the mysterious japanese island in the so-called "devil-sea" where legendary artifacts are suspected.
On the run a huge storm arises and so the group of researchers shipwreck at the cliffs of some unknown island. Lara is reaching the coast with the last of her strength and thats where her traumatic struggle to survive starts.
The whole story is told through the days Lara spends on this island and each day is a segment in the game. This doesn't mean, that each day is only one level though. Each segment can still be made of several taskls and sidemissions, as Karl Stewart explains.
It seems to us that Laras travel (day 1) will only be a cinematic and and so the real game will start with day 2.

Day 2: The cave

Lara is waking up being trapped and hanging upside-down in a dark cave. So someone must have found and kidnapped the unconscious shipwrecked woman.
Luckily, Lara was allready arthletically inclined back then and so she reaches some fire by swinging back and forth, that ignites her bonds and so Lara is falling down headlong and screams out loud.
Badly injured and anxious Lara is trying to escape this dark cave. Her emotions and her fragile psych were done perfectly and the scary sounds add tremendously to the atmosphere.
That's the first time Lara doesn't appear as the pixel-beauty we know from previous games, but more as a real human being.

Her only "weapon" is a torch that gives some light to this dark grotto and that also helps to burn some obstacles.
While the hobbling Lara is searching for the exit the finds something like an altar where one of the Endurance-researchers got sacrificed. While she examins the skulls and the candles around this shrine she suddenly hears a noise. It gets closer and someone is calling calling her - someone's haunting her!
Lara is running for her life and finally jams into a small crevice, where she's literally up to her neck in water.
These scenes will already make claustrophobic players breack out in sweat but it gets even worse:
The kidnapper gets to grab Lara and a fight for life starts. By pressing special buttons the player has to ward off the attacks of the scavanger, if anything goes wrong Lara will die in agony. The dying-animations are almost depressive and seeing this will leave no player cold.

To escape from her tormentor, Lara wants to get out of this cave as fast as possible, but first she has to solve a tricky puzzle. (To help unexperienced players you can always activate Laras special-sight that will mark all the object the player can interact with.)
Here's the core of this puzzle: Lara has to ignite some driftwood and move it through a waterfall afterwards. As this waterfall will extinguish the player will have to find one of several solutions.
Once the puzzle is solved there'll be another wild chase towards the exit.

This intro will already pack the player both emotional and contentwise.
the way its done leaves nothing to be desired - one really gets to feel Laras nightmare.

Day 4: The Base Camp

While day 3 is still kept secret, our exhausted heroine will find the badly injured Conrad Roth in a base camp. Now the real adventure begins, as Lara will now be able to explore the island and look for other survivors, as David Gallagher told us.
Lara is very happy that she finally found a person she can trust does everything to save his life.
Her task is to find some medicine and a radio set in a wolf cave and to get there the player will has to do some pass some tricky jumps and climbing-passages and has to be very careful to make her survive them.
IF Lara dies she won't have to repeat a lot, as there are enough save-points.
Experienced players will instantly feel right at home when they see Lara clearing risky jumps in a very elegant way.
Once Miss Croft found the survival-package for Roth she'll (of course) be attacked by a huge wolf - a nerve-racking duel starts - but there can only be one winner, and that's Lara Croft.
She kills the animal with the last of her strength and bare handed (and also with small sigh)
Back in the camp Lara doctory Roth and thus saves his life.
He will then give her a climbing-axe and so other parts of the island will be made accessible.

These basecamps play an important role in the game. Lara can practise her abilities there and also combine and modificate pickups and weapons to increase their strength.
Later is will be possible to travel from one camp to the other to start some sidemissions without running too much. These functions weren't yet unveiled, just as the combat-system, or the camera-system while combats take place - we'll have to wait and see.

LOL, says there are enough save points so if Lara dies you don't have to repeat a lot.

edit: AHHHHHHHHH I was going to edit and forgot. Fu.

Pretend it's one post. :pi: