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Tomb Raider Legend - Re-establishing the Brand
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Senior members of the team crafting Tomb Raider Legend have been talking about re-establishing the brand's credibility and the game's relationship with its jaded predecessors.
In an interview with the current issue of UK consumer magazine Edge, Greg Housnam, Riley Cooper and Toby Gard spoke about their high expectations for the game, and the burden of disappointments like Angel of Darkness.
Greg Housnam - Senior European Producer
On expectations
"This being the seventh title that we've put out signifies how Lara, in many respects, is the face of Eidos. She is a videogame icon and a household name. The expectations are huge. We want to show that we recognize the need to push the brand and, indeed, the genre forward and Crystal Dynamics was the developer with the experience and ability to do that."
On Lara's fans
They're still interested in Lara Croft. Her character is fine. The issues people have is that they like Lara Croft, but they have come to hate the franchise because of how the games have been done. That's because they haven't changed in six titles. The biggest hurdle is to overcome the backlash."
Riley Cooper - Lead designer
On the original Tomb Raider's influence
"When we set out to do this we looked carefully at the original Tomb Raiders. What made them popular? Why did people like them? The accusation that we are looking at her heritage is correct. But I think we have brought modern day expectations to bear. We've gone for a more cohesive experience in terms of the game's systems, level design and story. Those things are more tightly interrelated than anything on the series before."
On Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness
"I feel bad about how we slagged on [Tomb Raider 6]. But we have to be careful about that. If we compare ourselves to Angel of Darkness, we know it could lull us into a false sense of security where we beat the game by getting, say, a 5.6 in reviews. If that was the case, we wouldn't have accomplished anything."
Toby Gard - Senior designer
On working with Crystal Dynamics
"I'm used to having to call all the shots and that's just not the case here at Crystal Dynamics. It's been a somewhat chilled experience because I've been able to apply myself to smaller, more detailed parts of the game across various different points. It's remaining interested without that need to pull the whole thing along."
On Lara
"Tomb Raider is about a character who is extremely dangerous, very refined and who goes after mysteries. That's it in a nutshell, isn't it? The fact that it's not playing the sex card makes her more interesting. I'm not sure there are others like that - Jade from Beyond Good & Evil, I guess, but it's rare."
On tired IP
"For six games Tomb Raider was just about different stories. I'm not sure that you can do that and keep people interested. It became just like playing endless mission disks with the odd extra character thrown in. that's not good enough. The story has to be new. The environments have to be interesting. You've got to mix up the actual gameplay."
Story by Colin Campbell -
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