AOD is a great opportunity for Embracer/Aspyr/CD

[Jathom95]

Originally Posted by Shirley_Manson

Everyone loves a good comeback story, and I sincerely hope AOD gets some much needed justice!

The biggest problem with AOD is that it's missing it's middle chapters, the story will always feel patched and over edited to fit together. And the upgrade system really needs to be replaced with puzzles. I hope it won't be left as nonsensical as it already is in the remaster.
I think Core was a bit inspired by the immersive sim genre when they were making AOD, and they bit of way more than they could chew. The RPG elements, multi choice conversations, multiple paths through early levels, a city hub... someone in the team must have really played a lot of Deus Ex.

Agreed, but at the same time, at least most of the major plot holes have decent ways of circumventing the issue at hand, so that there's at least logic to everything once you know where it's coming from.

Restoration Project is a good example of fixing them sensibly. Stuff like Lara knowing about Vasiley as being from Carvier's office, her already knowing Karel's name through Luddick's dossier info and the notebook, etc.

[Shirley_Manson]

Originally Posted by Jathom95

Agreed, but at the same time, at least most of the major plot holes have decent ways of circumventing the issue at hand, so that there's at least logic to everything once you know where it's coming from.

Restoration Project is a good example of fixing them sensibly. Stuff like Lara knowing about Vasiley as being from Carvier's office, her already knowing Karel's name through Luddick's dossier info and the notebook, etc.

You're right, the Restoration project accomplished so much, and it was finally nice to hear all those cut lines from Lara and Kurtis in their correct places throughout the game.
It's still kinda strange the way Lara says "Karel?!" at the final confrontation like she personally knows him, but maybe those are small plot holes that only the returning players notice.

[Jathom95]

Originally Posted by Shirley_Manson

You're right, the Restoration project accomplished so much, and it was finally nice to hear all those cut lines from Lara and Kurtis in their correct places throughout the game.
It's still kinda strange the way Lara says "Karel?!" at the final confrontation like she personally knows him, but maybe those are small plot holes that only the returning players notice.

Yeah, I get what you mean.

I try to look at that one even with Restoration that Lara's just very perceptive, and is shocked that he's just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The dialogue they have right after does a pretty good job of giving the impression that Lara just knows a lot about the Cabal by that point, instead of knowing him personally per se.

Lara: "Karel?"
(Viewed in a "You, from the dossiers. Where in the hell did you come from" sense.)

Karel: "I knew you'd find the third Shard."
(He admits shortly thereafter that he'd been watching and helping her across the game, even if she wasn't aware of it at the time.)

Lara: "But why? You worked for him."
(Lara would definitely be able to find out about that info from the dossiers. That was the original plan Core had, to show all of the Cabal members. The original texture contained such.)

And from there on, she's mostly learning new info from him directly, like how he was helping her behind the scenes across the game.

[Shirley_Manson]

^ That works great as headcanon, actually. I'll try to employ it when that scene starts in the remasters.

[DragonSlayer]

Why would AOD be a great opportunity for Crystal, Crystal don't give a 💩 about AOD and classic Lara, Crystal only care about classic Lara when they want to profit from her other than that classic Lara means nothing to Crystal.

The only reason that Crystal went ahead with TR Anniversary was to prevent Core Design from developing their own TR Anniversary and even then they didn't care much about it by deliberately underinvesting in the game by assigning the smallest possible team to develop Anniversary.
https://www.tombraiderforums.com/sho...&postcount=310

Had Anniversary not been a remake of a Core Design game Crystal would have invested a lot more money, time and effort into development of Anniversary.

[omerocoti]

Originally Posted by Jathom95

Very much agree! And it could be something that's potentially awesome for the greater gaming community even.

What I mean is, if AOD turns out to be a massive success for turning a broken game around, it might convince other devs/publishers to do the same for games that have suffered a similar fate. Imagine if the original Vampire The Masquerade game got the same treatment officially - that sort of thing.

Yes! I thought about this and I also saw a lot of Resident Evil fans complaining about not having Remasters of the classics. In fact, a game that would benefit would be PS1 Driver or even Tarzan.

Aspyr is leaving its legacy on the importance of remastering these classics

[Pietras]

Originally Posted by Night Crawler

AOD, even fixed with zero bugs and improved controls/graphics, is still not a very good game.

Probably not, but ALOT of little things can be done to it to make it significanly better and perhaps close to a trully good game.

Removing/disabling/hiding the nonsense upgrade system would be one. What is of it in the game is nothing short of an active flaw bringing the rest of the game down. Like Shirley mention ideally all of it would've been replaced by puzzles but that would be a much bigger undertaking. But even if they just hide it/delete it, it will already improve the experience by highliting the better parts (puzzles, platforming).

Economy can be improved significantly with little effort - it's a matter of balancing the vendors in the game, loot and health items and maybe adding a few more vending machines.

Good controls alone can make the entire traversal, platforming and combat (which is 90% of the actual gameplay) enjoyable at last.

New ambient NPCs (there are some cut lines for janitors etc) can be added to the hubs to make them feel more alive. Removing load times in Paris can make the main hub 10 times more enjoyable (and shorter!) to play. It's a technicality yet extremly important to the structural flow of the gameplay when it comes to large hubs

Things like lack of tombs or plot holes are harder to fix, or the overall layout of the entire game. But these are probs unfixable to a larger degree without a full-blown remake. But with so many ither aspects potentially fixed, they would become a secondary discussion to the overall decent-at-last experience

[Doki]

Originally Posted by Shirley_Manson

I think Core was a bit inspired by the immersive sim genre when they were making AOD, and they bit of way more than they could chew. The RPG elements, multi choice conversations, multiple paths through early levels, a city hub... someone in the team must have really played a lot of Deus Ex.

I think it was Gavin Rummery who stated that the team shoehorned at-the-time-trendy gaming mechanics into AOD. Eidos pushed back against plans for a remake of TR1 and told Core to add more of those RPG traits. There was definitely some Broken Sword in there as well, as one reviewer pointed out.

[omerocoti]

Originally Posted by Pietras

Probably not, but ALOT of little things can be done to it to make it significanly better and perhaps close to a trully good game.

New ambient NPCs (there are some cut lines for janitors etc) can be added to the hubs to make them feel more alive. Removing load times in Paris can make the main hub 10 times more enjoyable (and shorter!) to play. It's a technicality yet extremly important to the structural flow of the gameplay when it comes to large hubs

Man, if they could remove those loading screens... it would be perfect.

I hope they speed up Lara's every movement in climbing stairs, climbing, climbing

[JAMJOOM]

You are right; they have a great opportunity to succeed now. However, I don't think it will lead to significant changes. It will still be a remaster rather than a remake, but it will enhance its image to some extent.

While everyone has high hopes for the upcoming remaster, I remain skeptical, especially since Aspyr has a history of merging games with older versions. I'm curious about what they will do with it—this will be a real challenge.

I noticed in the ad that the differences are slight.... It would be a very smart idea if they added settings to it instead of merging an old version with the new one to show the difference,