NEW ROTTR gameplay by me! Ft. London Outfit on Seasoned Raider difficulty

**Melonie Tomb Raider** · 24-09-15, 12:57

Hey guys! I am SO EXCITED! Got to play the first 3 hours of ROTTR and was able to share this 10-minute clip. ALL GAMEPLAY IS MINE, on Seasoned Raider difficulty.

Also some things I want to highlight that I saw in the game, but some of you may consider spoilers so I will white those out.

General, non-spoiler comments:

CROFT MANOR IS BACK!!

Only in cutscenes from what I have seen, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will be able to play around in Croft Manor as we have in past games. It looks so badass though!

And as you can see in my gameplay, Lara has a London outfit, which is her casual attire she wore in the first E3 CG video. I freaked out when I saw it in her Croft Manor and I made sure I equipped it for this gameplay. From what I saw, I am the only person who equipped this outfit of everyone in the room xD

Lara is a badass

A lot of us have been concerned about how Lara will be portrayed in ROTTR as she was more passive and scared in the reboot. This time she is more confident than we've seen in a long time. Not a lot of sarcasm/ cheekiness that we have seen in the classics, but she definitely is very strong-willed and stubborn which is great.

(Read further into the spoiler section to see examples of ways she has said/ done in the portion of the game I played)

My favorite thing about how Lara is portrayed is that she WANTS to tomb raid. It's like her meaning for living - she is passionate about discovering things and she seeks out the adventure, no matter what anyone says, she's gonna do what she wants to do!

This is DEFINITELY my favorite LC character model of any TR game. She looks incredible and her mannerisms/ style really suits her character too. Naturally pretty without trying too hard/ overly made-up or looking like a runway model or anything. Absolutely perfect.

Konstantin is freaking ruthless

Again, I'll post more story stuff in the spoiler section, but just to keep it non-spoiler, holy eff this guy is twisted and demented. O_o

New characters have definitely sparked my interest

One of my biggest complaints with the reboot was that the cast, sans for Jonah, was pretty lackluster (in my opinion). This time around I've seen a couple new character who really seem very promising as both good and bad guys. I'll explain more in the spoiler section below.

Exploration is AWESOME

I could have spent countless hours on the small portion of the game I played, but due to time constraints I of course had to progress forward. There are tons of collectibles and even side missions you can complete. The open-world locations are extremely unique to the series as we've never had anything like that in past games, but given the nature of the franchise, it works BEAUTIFULLY. Some of the side missions will affect your gameplay as well (eg. forming allies with the natives).

Tombs

This is what most of us are most excited about, naturally. In my short time playing I got some nice tomb action, both main-story elaborate tombs and the smaller scale optional tombs much like we have seen in the reboot. They are GORGEOUS though! Walking into the first tomb gave me chills! I could have spent so many hours exploring every square inch of them.

Puzzles

I was dying to see the puzzles more than anything, and I was really happy with what I saw. Granted, I do want to see more of this - my thirst is hard to quench with this stuff.

Most of the puzzles were physics based, but they definitely did require thinking. I have a feeling we'll run into the most difficult puzzles on the option tombs, as most casual players aren't going to have the same patience as a lot of us seasoned raiders do. Still, the main tomb puzzles I encountered were very fun and there are tons of additional exploration within these tombs. Ancient writings to transcribe, collectibles to find, etc.

I would love to see some good old levers, keys, and switches that we're accustomed to in the classics at least to some degree.

General gameplay

I know a lot of people will be asking what Tomb Raider this feels the most like, and of course that's the reboot, being that it is a continuation. There are moments that felt very classic to me, however. Being in the large tombs gave me many of the same feels that TRLR did, for example.

This time around the game feels very secluded. Lara just exploring and doing her thing confidently without running into a friend all the time or crying to Roth (or anyone else in this case

) on her walkie. There are a lot of times you'll run into the baddies of course, but there are pleeeenty of times where it's truly just Lara and nature, which is great. This makes the scenes with friends/ Jonah actually interesting and cool instead of leaving me thinking, "LEAVE AND LET LARA BE ALREADY."

As far as general mechanics, everything feels very much like the reboot, which honestly I thought was already great. It's just better this time around - updated. After watching the Gamescom gameplays I thought I'd want to rambo my way through the action parts; however, I was pleasantly surprised with how gratifying and fun it is to get stealth kills and gravitated toward that.

Weapon upgrades seem waaaayyy more detailed than in the reboot. Not only that, but there is tons more gear you can acquire. I was dying to get my hands on a lockpick and the knife, but unable to in my short time playing. What's fun is that there are areas to explore that require certain gear, meaning tons of replay value as you can go back and access them later on after getting the necessary gear.

Let's not forget swimming. Safe to say we were all super excited to see swimming return in ROTTR. However, I do have to say that I was a little disappointed given that the swimming areas I accessed were pretty shallow (heh pun). You can dive underwater for short times and in certain areas, but nothing as dynamic as having tons of underwater room to explore. You can't just dive to the bottom and swim around looking for treasures - at least not in the areas I accessed. It was still really fun, but in the future I'd love to see underwater exploration expounded on. Perhaps ROTTR still has that though, I'm just basing this off of the bits that I saw in the first couple hours.

I played on Seasoned Raider difficulty. I would have played on Survivor, but I was talked out of it by the Xbox employee as he said that it had no health regen or anything and would have been too hard (then he saw me play and was like OMG UR GOOD AT THIS haha!! He was awesome). After playing on Seasoned Raider, however, I am fully convinced I could have handled Survivor. I never had any issues

Not to say it isn't hard - the bear specifically did give me a little trouble. Everyone in the room that got to play as well played on the easy and normal modes and many struggled. That being said, casual players probably won't be able to do anything harder than normal, but for those of us who have played tons of Tomb Raider, go ahead and jump into Seasoned Raider and Survivor right away.

Now for the SPOILERIFIC STUFF!

*SPOILERS* (highlight to read)

Lara has a stepmom?!?! Kind of...

One of the cutscenes showed a family portrait with Richard Croft commentating about wanting to make sure Lara and Anna were safe. Anna is a blond woman who we later discover in the story was Richard's girflfriend after Amelia passed. Anna tells Lara in one of the cutscenes (paraphraing from memory, so something to the effect of) "You know I loved your father, I would have married him if he wanted." We see her a lot in the actual cutscenes interacting with Lara.

Lara's personality stuff

Some of my favorite things I saw Lara do:

Hide in a coffin when Konstantin and the trinity mercs went into the tomb. After they opened the coffin and spotted her, she raised her gun up in peace. Konstantin then walked right up to her and said some intimidating things where she sneakily took his detonator from him, gave him a cheeky look (omg it was so great), then detonated the explosives while she hopped back in the coffin before evacuating the tomb. She never acted terrified or anything, just so confident and badass.

In Croft Manor Lara was studying her father's research to help her find an artifact. Jonah tried talking her out of the whole thing, but she insisted she was going to do it anyway with or without help. He walked out of the room and said to count him out, and suddenly a guy from trinity climbs through the window and starts attacking Lara to try to steal her father's book. Jonah walks in and saw everything happening and grabbed a candlestick to hit the guy, but Lara manages to kick him off anyway. He got the book and jumped out the window, but I personally was very happy to see Lara able to hold her own. Jonah ended up agreeing to help her after that

When Lara gets captured, she gets angry at one of the baddies (not going into too much detail about this part of the story as I think it's TOOOOO spoilery to share) after they asked her to join them, to which she responded (paraphrasing), "How about NO F****** WAY?!" *spits in face* I almost dropped my controller at this part and I really wish I could have seen my face because I was FLOORED and so excited to see Lara act like such a badass!

Another super badass female character

I ran into a character who appeared to be one of the Siberian natives who also used a bow. She was extremely skilled in combat and reminded me A LOT of classic Lara in her design (full lips, reddish brown hair, little braids and a bun, but she had green eyes and freckles). She aimed her bow at Lara and Lara told her that she meant peace. The native woman responded (paraphrasing), "If I see you again, I'll put an arrow in your throat!(American accent if memory serves me)" Lara said something to the effect of, "I hope I can make you realize I mean no harm." I have to be honest though, I really would have loved it if Lara said, "Not if I do first!" but I'll still gladly accept the badassery I already saw

And that's all I have (for now), but feel free to ask questions and I'll answer as best I can.

Going to make a video talking about everything tomorrow too and I'll link that when I do.

TL;DR impression: OMG I NEED THIS GAME ASAP!!!! So far it seems like this will be the BEST, most dynamic story we've ever seen in a Tomb Raider game before (which is a lot to say coming from me because I didn't really like the reboot story). Will it be the best Tomb Raider game ever? So early to call that, and I know my hype levels are super high right now, but I definitely see the potential for it to be. At the very least I think it is safe to say that it will be my favorite Tomb Raider title since Last Revelation. Definitely a HUGE improvement over the reboot, which already was a solid game. I know I will be dumping countless hours into it and exploring EVERYTHING. I haven't been this hyped for a game in so long - I can hardly contain myself.

Patrick star · 24-09-15, 13:05

THANKS FOR SHARING MEL !

*starts reading*

AshesBorn · 24-09-15, 13:09

All I can say is...

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSS-UH!

_Doppie_ · 24-09-15, 13:11

It looks great. MS, SE and CD

Patrick star · 24-09-15, 13:17

That spoilery part with badass Lara had me jumping up and down

Color me super mega excited now !

Daring Do · 24-09-15, 13:22

Oh my gosh the hype levels are too high!!

Evan C. · 24-09-15, 13:26

I won't read the spoilers but the Manor is aready enough for me. I am seriously like over the top. I want to give Brian Horton a hug and thousands of cookies. But I bet he will be more pleased when I get my collector edition

OrangeFr3ak · 24-09-15, 13:32

Now I'm really hyped up, so glad I pre-ordered the Collector's Edition, art book and guide book too!

AimlessThunder · 24-09-15, 13:37

Dayum I am really excited now!

Baratheon · 24-09-15, 13:39

Wow... seriously.

24-09-15, 12:57	#1
Melonie Tomb Raider Gold Contributor Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: USA Posts: 26,145	NEW ROTTR gameplay by me! Ft. London Outfit on Seasoned Raider difficulty Hey guys! I am SO EXCITED! Got to play the first 3 hours of ROTTR and was able to share this 10-minute clip. ALL GAMEPLAY IS MINE, on Seasoned Raider difficulty. Also some things I want to highlight that I saw in the game, but some of you may consider spoilers so I will white those out. General, non-spoiler comments: CROFT MANOR IS BACK!! Only in cutscenes from what I have seen, but I am keeping my fingers crossed that we will be able to play around in Croft Manor as we have in past games. It looks so badass though! And as you can see in my gameplay, Lara has a London outfit, which is her casual attire she wore in the first E3 CG video. I freaked out when I saw it in her Croft Manor and I made sure I equipped it for this gameplay. From what I saw, I am the only person who equipped this outfit of everyone in the room xD Lara is a badass A lot of us have been concerned about how Lara will be portrayed in ROTTR as she was more passive and scared in the reboot. This time she is more confident than we've seen in a long time. Not a lot of sarcasm/ cheekiness that we have seen in the classics, but she definitely is very strong-willed and stubborn which is great. (Read further into the spoiler section to see examples of ways she has said/ done in the portion of the game I played) My favorite thing about how Lara is portrayed is that she WANTS to tomb raid. It's like her meaning for living - she is passionate about discovering things and she seeks out the adventure, no matter what anyone says, she's gonna do what she wants to do! This is DEFINITELY my favorite LC character model of any TR game. She looks incredible and her mannerisms/ style really suits her character too. Naturally pretty without trying too hard/ overly made-up or looking like a runway model or anything. Absolutely perfect. Konstantin is freaking ruthless Again, I'll post more story stuff in the spoiler section, but just to keep it non-spoiler, holy eff this guy is twisted and demented. O_o New characters have definitely sparked my interest One of my biggest complaints with the reboot was that the cast, sans for Jonah, was pretty lackluster (in my opinion). This time around I've seen a couple new character who really seem very promising as both good and bad guys. I'll explain more in the spoiler section below. Exploration is AWESOME I could have spent countless hours on the small portion of the game I played, but due to time constraints I of course had to progress forward. There are tons of collectibles and even side missions you can complete. The open-world locations are extremely unique to the series as we've never had anything like that in past games, but given the nature of the franchise, it works BEAUTIFULLY. Some of the side missions will affect your gameplay as well (eg. forming allies with the natives). Tombs This is what most of us are most excited about, naturally. In my short time playing I got some nice tomb action, both main-story elaborate tombs and the smaller scale optional tombs much like we have seen in the reboot. They are GORGEOUS though! Walking into the first tomb gave me chills! I could have spent so many hours exploring every square inch of them. Puzzles I was dying to see the puzzles more than anything, and I was really happy with what I saw. Granted, I do want to see more of this - my thirst is hard to quench with this stuff. Most of the puzzles were physics based, but they definitely did require thinking. I have a feeling we'll run into the most difficult puzzles on the option tombs, as most casual players aren't going to have the same patience as a lot of us seasoned raiders do. Still, the main tomb puzzles I encountered were very fun and there are tons of additional exploration within these tombs. Ancient writings to transcribe, collectibles to find, etc. I would love to see some good old levers, keys, and switches that we're accustomed to in the classics at least to some degree. General gameplay I know a lot of people will be asking what Tomb Raider this feels the most like, and of course that's the reboot, being that it is a continuation. There are moments that felt very classic to me, however. Being in the large tombs gave me many of the same feels that TRLR did, for example. This time around the game feels very secluded. Lara just exploring and doing her thing confidently without running into a friend all the time or crying to Roth (or anyone else in this case ) on her walkie. There are a lot of times you'll run into the baddies of course, but there are pleeeenty of times where it's truly just Lara and nature, which is great. This makes the scenes with friends/ Jonah actually interesting and cool instead of leaving me thinking, "LEAVE AND LET LARA BE ALREADY." As far as general mechanics, everything feels very much like the reboot, which honestly I thought was already great. It's just better this time around - updated. After watching the Gamescom gameplays I thought I'd want to rambo my way through the action parts; however, I was pleasantly surprised with how gratifying and fun it is to get stealth kills and gravitated toward that. Weapon upgrades seem waaaayyy more detailed than in the reboot. Not only that, but there is tons more gear you can acquire. I was dying to get my hands on a lockpick and the knife, but unable to in my short time playing. What's fun is that there are areas to explore that require certain gear, meaning tons of replay value as you can go back and access them later on after getting the necessary gear. Let's not forget swimming. Safe to say we were all super excited to see swimming return in ROTTR. However, I do have to say that I was a little disappointed given that the swimming areas I accessed were pretty shallow (heh pun). You can dive underwater for short times and in certain areas, but nothing as dynamic as having tons of underwater room to explore. You can't just dive to the bottom and swim around looking for treasures - at least not in the areas I accessed. It was still really fun, but in the future I'd love to see underwater exploration expounded on. Perhaps ROTTR still has that though, I'm just basing this off of the bits that I saw in the first couple hours. I played on Seasoned Raider difficulty. I would have played on Survivor, but I was talked out of it by the Xbox employee as he said that it had no health regen or anything and would have been too hard (then he saw me play and was like OMG UR GOOD AT THIS haha!! He was awesome). After playing on Seasoned Raider, however, I am fully convinced I could have handled Survivor. I never had any issues Not to say it isn't hard - the bear specifically did give me a little trouble. Everyone in the room that got to play as well played on the easy and normal modes and many struggled. That being said, casual players probably won't be able to do anything harder than normal, but for those of us who have played tons of Tomb Raider, go ahead and jump into Seasoned Raider and Survivor right away. Now for the SPOILERIFIC STUFF! SPOILERS (highlight to read) Lara has a stepmom?!?! Kind of... One of the cutscenes showed a family portrait with Richard Croft commentating about wanting to make sure Lara and Anna were safe. Anna is a blond woman who we later discover in the story was Richard's girflfriend after Amelia passed. Anna tells Lara in one of the cutscenes (paraphraing from memory, so something to the effect of) "You know I loved your father, I would have married him if he wanted." We see her a lot in the actual cutscenes interacting with Lara. Lara's personality stuff Some of my favorite things I saw Lara do: Hide in a coffin when Konstantin and the trinity mercs went into the tomb. After they opened the coffin and spotted her, she raised her gun up in peace. Konstantin then walked right up to her and said some intimidating things where she sneakily took his detonator from him, gave him a cheeky look (omg it was so great), then detonated the explosives while she hopped back in the coffin before evacuating the tomb. She never acted terrified or anything, just so confident and badass. In Croft Manor Lara was studying her father's research to help her find an artifact. Jonah tried talking her out of the whole thing, but she insisted she was going to do it anyway with or without help. He walked out of the room and said to count him out, and suddenly a guy from trinity climbs through the window and starts attacking Lara to try to steal her father's book. Jonah walks in and saw everything happening and grabbed a candlestick to hit the guy, but Lara manages to kick him off anyway. He got the book and jumped out the window, but I personally was very happy to see Lara able to hold her own. Jonah ended up agreeing to help her after that When Lara gets captured, she gets angry at one of the baddies (not going into too much detail about this part of the story as I think it's TOOOOO spoilery to share) after they asked her to join them, to which she responded (paraphrasing), "How about NO F****** WAY?!" spits in face I almost dropped my controller at this part and I really wish I could have seen my face because I was FLOORED and so excited to see Lara act like such a badass! Another super badass female character I ran into a character who appeared to be one of the Siberian natives who also used a bow. She was extremely skilled in combat and reminded me A LOT of classic Lara in her design (full lips, reddish brown hair, little braids and a bun, but she had green eyes and freckles). She aimed her bow at Lara and Lara told her that she meant peace. The native woman responded (paraphrasing), "If I see you again, I'll put an arrow in your throat!(American accent if memory serves me)" Lara said something to the effect of, "I hope I can make you realize I mean no harm." I have to be honest though, I really would have loved it if Lara said, "Not if I do first!" but I'll still gladly accept the badassery I already saw And that's all I have (for now), but feel free to ask questions and I'll answer as best I can. Going to make a video talking about everything tomorrow too and I'll link that when I do. TL;DR impression: OMG I NEED THIS GAME ASAP!!!! So far it seems like this will be the BEST, most dynamic story we've ever seen in a Tomb Raider game before (which is a lot to say coming from me because I didn't really like the reboot story). Will it be the best Tomb Raider game ever? So early to call that, and I know my hype levels are super high right now, but I definitely see the potential for it to be. At the very least I think it is safe to say that it will be my favorite Tomb Raider title since Last Revelation. Definitely a HUGE improvement over the reboot, which already was a solid game. I know I will be dumping countless hours into it and exploring EVERYTHING. I haven't been this hyped for a game in so long - I can hardly contain myself. __________________ I can do all things through Croft who strengthens me

24-09-15, 13:05	#2
Patrick star Tomb Raider Join Date: Jun 2013 Location: Syria Posts: 12,004	THANKS FOR SHARING MEL ! starts reading __________________ The extraordinary is in what we do , not in our hairstyle...

24-09-15, 13:09	#3
AshesBorn Professor Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Estonia Posts: 3,595	All I can say is... YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSS-UH! __________________ 'In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different' Coco Chanel

24-09-15, 13:11	#4
_Doppie_ Professor Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: Libria Posts: 4,225	It looks great. MS, SE and CD __________________ Beautiful Individual That Creates Haters

24-09-15, 13:17	#5
Patrick star Tomb Raider Join Date: Jun 2013 Location: Syria Posts: 12,004	That spoilery part with badass Lara had me jumping up and down Color me super mega excited now ! __________________ The extraordinary is in what we do , not in our hairstyle...

24-09-15, 13:22	#6
Daring Do Relic Hunter Join Date: Nov 2014 Location: Geothermal Valley Posts: 6,742	Oh my gosh the hype levels are too high!! __________________ People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing everyday.

24-09-15, 13:26	#7
Evan C. Tomb Raider Join Date: Dec 2007 Location: Buenos Aires;Argentina. Posts: 13,989	I won't read the spoilers but the Manor is aready enough for me. I am seriously like over the top. I want to give Brian Horton a hug and thousands of cookies. But I bet he will be more pleased when I get my collector edition __________________ "Fortitudine Vincimus"

24-09-15, 13:32	#8
OrangeFr3ak Archaeologist Join Date: Oct 2014 Posts: 1,407	Now I'm really hyped up, so glad I pre-ordered the Collector's Edition, art book and guide book too!

24-09-15, 13:37	#9
AimlessThunder Professor Join Date: Apr 2012 Location: Romania Posts: 4,010	Dayum I am really excited now! __________________ The definitive Lara Croft has less emotion than Kristen Stewart.

24-09-15, 13:39	#10
Baratheon Archaeologist Join Date: Dec 2012 Posts: 2,260	Wow... seriously.