Author: Misty Crow
sequence
Once changed hands, two restarts, three fates, Laura in the tomb is a beautiful shadow, while Laura outside the tomb seems to be trapped in a curse called "trilogy".
Community culture
In 1988, a group of young people with game dreams came together to form a small studio called "Core Design", mostly programmers and artists, whose initial job was to make games for the popular computers of the time, Such as The Modelore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amiga, Atari ST, DOS, etc., during which time they produced "Chuck Rock" and "AH-3" Word-of-mouth masterpieces such as Thunderstrike" and "Banshee" have gradually emerged in the industry.
Unlike most game studios at the time, CoreDesign didn't have a fixed management structure, it was more like a college society, a group of like-minded friends who got together to do what they loved, rather than simply getting the job done. This flat working model has good and bad, the advantage is that any developer's opinion will be referred to by the team, the disadvantage is that the lack of a complete set of development process documents makes the project often lost, the team's working hours are like a roller coaster, working every day when making games until the early hours of the morning, and the rest of the time no one is working.
(CoreDesign Studio)
CoreDesign's unique working atmosphere and excellent business capabilities quickly attracted the attention of the industry, and Eidos, who had just entered the game market at the time, smelled the opportunity to buy CoreDesign Studios in 1996, just when the studio was about to launch a new project that had been pregnant for 4 years, but what neither side expected at the time was that this work would completely change the fate of CoreDesign Studios.
(Eidos, who had just entered the game world at the time)
Out of the water hibiscus
In 1996, a game called Tomb Raider was released, and once it came out, it immediately swept the US game market, with a unique 3D action adventure theme and the beautiful posture of the heroine Laura, which made countless players bend over. The developers borrowed some of the bridges and character designs from the famous movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark" to create an iconic two-gun image for Lara, and implemented a series of running and jumping actions on the console that was worrying at the time, allowing players to fully enjoy the experience of adventure in the tomb.
(First series)
As the first in its series, Tomb Raider balances the rhythm of combat and decryption well, with a rich variety of weapons and enemies, as well as well-designed puzzles. Especially when exploring the tomb, there is no background music design, so that the flow of this game is full of solitude and horror atmosphere, so that the player's sense of substitution has increased significantly. However, the game can achieve excellent commercial results but not entirely rely on its excellent game quality, but the parent company Eidos marketing strategy, and the game's decisive, calm, sassy Laura image is different, Eidos in the publicity stage deliberately enlarged its feminine characteristics, shaping it into a sexy and gorgeous image, which made CoreDesign developers very dissatisfied.
Due to the overly successful commercial performance of the first generation, Eidos asked CoreDesign to start the development of the sequel quickly, and the number of original developers was stretched, so they had to expand rapidly, and launched four works in a row in the next four years. The actual effect can naturally be imagined, except for the story background of each generation and some minor repairs to the picture effect, almost no new elements have appeared. And the members of the original CoreDesign studio do not like the current expansion of the studio atmosphere, the parent company Eidos only uses the studio as a printing press, does not care about the developer's ideas, only wants to constantly launch new works to attract money, the original enthusiastic development atmosphere gradually disappeared. While all four were commercially outstanding, the developers were tired of Laura's story and decided to write it to death in the fourth, as the final chapter of the story, and Tomb Raider: The Final Revelation was born.
(Final Revelation)
"The Last Revelation", as the final work of the series envisioned by the team, successfully brought the series to another peak once again, unlike the minor repairs of 2 and 3, "The Last Revelation" not only has a better story, but also integrates the well-received systems in the previous game, which can be said to be the culmination of the series. But how could Eidos let this cash cow just leave? At the strong request of the company and players, CoreDesign brought Laura back to the stage in the fifth part, but the experience that was too similar to the previous game made the outside world realize that the Tomb Raider series may be difficult to get closer, the team urgently needs a new work to open up a new world, and the continuous decline in sales levels also allows Eidos to approve the new plan, but unexpectedly, the ideal savior has become the team's coffin board.
(The sixth work to close the coffin board to CoreDesign)
Change of dynasty
In 2003, "Tomb Raider: Dark Angel" was officially released on the PS2 platform, thanks to hardware upgrades, the style and system of "Dark Angel" have undergone earth-shaking changes, but both player and media ratings have completely collapsed, MC average score of 52, its crappy operation feel, remove the iconic two-gun design, rare tomb exploration has made "Dark Angel" become the most unlikely Tomb Raider canon in history.
For CoreDesign, the failure of "Dark Angel" is completely expected, although the team seems to have a three-year development cycle, but due to the departure of the earliest core members one after another, the game lost its main backbone, and the project management pressure brought by the excessive scale was even worse, at first the team planned to do a free and open world similar to the "GTA" style for Lara to take risks, but the team's technical ability could not meet the requirements, and the game was deleted and changed nearly 90% The content was only restarted. At this time, the game's main producer was sent by Eidos to guide the development of another new work, the team was completely in chaos, the staff did not know the next development direction, and finally after several delays, a semi-finished product was hastily listed.
(The Angel of Darkness who completely collapsed)
Due to the defeat of Dark Angel, Eidos decided to transfer the development of the Tomb Raider series to another studio, CrystalDynamics. Just as the so-called new officials took office with three fires, the members of Crystal Power were originally fans of "Tomb Raider", and they naturally spared no effort to obtain the production opportunity of the new work, and developed "Tomb Raider: Legend" in three years. This work also focuses on optimizing the basic problems such as the picture and the feel of the operation, and successfully wins the reputation of the series, but the sharp decline in the difficulty of decryption and the monotonous battle still make some old players feel dissatisfied. However, perhaps due to the exaggerated action scenes in the film version of Tomb Raider, the performance and action design of "Legend" have gradually converged with Hollywood blockbusters, laying the groundwork for subsequent reboots.
(Crystal Power, who took over the development of the series)
A year after the release of Legends, the production team rushed to hand over Tomb Raider: 10th Anniversary Edition, which was a complete remake of the original series, using the same engine as Legends. Crystal Power not only retains the original scene and puzzle design of the original version, but also adds the excellent operations in "Legend", which greatly improves the game experience of "Tenth Anniversary Edition", and adds some plots according to the script of "Legend". "10th Anniversary Edition" has achieved a double harvest of word-of-mouth and sales, and old players have finally experienced the most important tomb exploration experience of the original game again after many years, and new players can also see how it captured people's hearts that year.
Another year passed, in 2008, Crystal Power released "Tomb Raider: Underground World" as the finale of the soft reboot trilogy, even though Crystal Power's production capacity is amazing, but the spell of the new year is still difficult to get rid of, this work and the first two works are almost no qualitative difference, but further strengthen the action of the game, although the core experience is still the tomb exploration dominates, but with the original series of works is already a judgment of the two.
(The trilogy after soft restart emphasizes action more)
In any case, the commercial achievements and word-of-mouth of the new trilogy are excellent, with a total of more than 10 million copies of sales and an average media equal score of about 80, so that the outside world has once again seen the commercial value of the "Tomb Raider" IP, but for Crystal Power, the production of the new trilogy has squeezed out their ideas, the events of the year have reappeared again, and now Crystal Power is also in urgent need of a new work to help them find the direction of the series again, but unlike CoreDesign, This time, a divine soldier descended from heaven.
(Underworld became the epitome of the new trilogy))
Makeover
In 2009, SE acquired Eidos for £84 million, and all of its studios and IP were under the SE umbrella, which gave Crystal Power sufficient development funds and R&D cycles for the development of sequels. In the same year, Uncharted 2, developed by Naughty Dog, won the game of the year, which made the team re-examine the direction of the series, and finally decided to completely overturn the original setting and make a complete reboot.
The original "Tomb Raider" has always been based on play, and did not dig deep into the story of the protagonist Laura, which made it difficult for the screenwriter to exert its strength, in order to solve this problem, the team decided to focus on the role of Laura in the new work, reshape Laura's image and enrich her image with a rich story line. For this reason, the team found a large number of actor auditions, and finally finalized a little girl from the United Kingdom, Camilla Luddington, as the actor who played Laura, and her naïve and wild personality coincided with the image of Laura envisioned by the team.
（Camilla Luddington）
The characters were selected, and then the script was followed, in order to show how Laura went from an ordinary girl adventurer to a cold strong woman in the original, the team chose to set the starting point of the story on the first adventure of 21-year-old Laura, different from the previous lonely battle, this time Laura has a whole squad to accompany, the personality of the squad members is distinct, which plays a vital role in Laura's growth. In terms of plot design, it is also more delicate, and the team takes "survival" as the theme of the new work, focusing on Lara's inevitable abandonment of her past innocence in order to survive, from the beginning of not being willing to kill animals, to the disbelief of the first killing, under Laura's scarred appearance, it is already a hardened heart. This kind of delicate story that focuses on depicting the hearts of the characters has never been seen before, and in terms of results, Crystal Power has undoubtedly completed the task well.
(Laura's image is more plump than ever)
The four-year development cycle also meant rapid technological progress, and in order to create a sense of loneliness and crisis in the survival of the desert island, the team spent a lot of energy on art and motion capture, and the game was full of various deadly traps, with Lara's countless death animations, and strived to create a real and cruel game world. In addition, the new "Haifeisi" hair effect also adds a lot to the overall picture texture.
While Crystal Power is doing its best to produce a wonderful single-player plot, Eidos Montreal Studio is also working intensively to prepare the multiplayer mode of this game, also with "survival" as the theme, the multiplayer mode of "Tomb Raider" in addition to the traditional gunfight, but also set a large number of traps in the map, making the game more tense and exciting.
Compared with its predecessors, Tomb Raider can be said to be a work of all-round evolution, which was widely praised by players and the media after its release in 2013, and its sales also reached the highest in the series. But since the game console entered the PS3 era, "Uncharted Sea", "Gears of War" and other more Hollywood-style performances and gameplay has gradually become the mainstream of the player group, and the tomb raider's previous tomb exploration gameplay has no longer the courage of the year, the team will also repeatedly reduce the proportion of tomb exploration in the new work, becoming a series of side quests in the process, although the theme of the game is still tomb exploration, but the gameplay has been very different from the original design.
(Start of the show again)
Reading this, I think you must have felt the familiar sense of déjà vu, yes, this series after two reboots, each time is the first work of a blockbuster, and then it was urged by the parent company to launch a sequel, and finally disappeared silently, and this time, although it was not as tight as before, but SE did not give Crystal Power too much time, just one year, Crystal Power announced the sequel "Tomb Raider: Rise", and announced that it was exclusive as a Microsoft platform for a limited time. At the hot moment of "Uncharted" on the Sony platform, Microsoft urgently needed an action-adventure work of the same volume to support itself, and SE was happy to accept the high exclusive fee paid by Microsoft (rumored to be more than $100 million), and finally the game was officially launched in 2015. Thanks to the performance leap of the sub-era platform, the picture level of "Rise" has once again reached the peak of the series, especially the shaping of the snow mountain, which once became the picture benchmark of the Microsoft platform. But the core of the game has not changed substantially, and although the game stage has come to Siberia, the game content is still Lara's Hollywood-style adventure story. At the same time, due to the previous game's portrayal of Lara's image too deeply, the tension of the emotional ups and downs in this work is not as good as before, and the combat system is almost exactly the same as the previous game, but due to the leap in the picture, players and the media still gave it a good evaluation, and the game sales slowly accumulated to more than 7 million.
(The leap of the screen barely masks the fatigue of the gameplay)
The performance decline of the previous work SE naturally also looked in the eyes, they did not choose to squeeze the commercial value of the series like the original Eidos regardless of disregard, but gave the team 3 years to concentrate on producing a more excellent work, which is the "Tomb Raider: Shadow" released in 2018, but the opposite is that the Shadow once again ushered in a decline, the average score is less than 80, the same period of sales is not as good as the previous game, although the game returned to the 9 generations of the atmosphere of crisis, But the still unchanged combat and decryption system is extremely boring for veteran players, and in contrast, the game's new stealth system and darker and deeper plot are eclipsed. Once again, the series has come to this awkward node, not up and down, not high, not low, the rebooted Tomb Raider has once again ended in the form of a trilogy, and there is no news of a sequel to this day.
(Another third work by Waterloo)
Looking at the history of the development of the Tomb Raider series, we can find a lot of similarities in it, each of the three periods of history began with a show of heaven, and then gradually declined, and every three parts must be a Waterloo. It is inevitable that the parent company is forced and squeezed, but perhaps for the production team, they are not good at extending on excellent works, but challenge new things from scratch. I hope that the next time I see the Tomb Raider, it will also be like its predecessors, which will make the player's eyes shine.
After all, new achievements always belong to the explorers of continuous innovation.