Aspyr have released new information on the PlayStation Blog about how they’ve approached the first three published adventures of Lara Croft. (They could have done with modernizing the first five, since that would be the first generation. Forget the beginning of the second, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness…)
“An up-and-coming video game company, Aspyr, released Tomb Raider II on Macintosh computers. Aspyr continued the Tomb Raider franchise through 2003, releasing Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider III, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider: Chronicles and Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness. We’ve always wanted to revisit these titles, but we’ve always debated the right approach. We spent years trying to find the right balance between preservation and modernization. And when we felt we had it figured out, we reached out to our friends at Crystal Dynamics. As Crystal Dynamics continues to expand the Tomb Raider franchise, the timing seemed perfect to reintroduce audiences to the games that started it all. We wanted to both honor the foundations of the franchise and bring the original games to modern audiences in all their glory. How would you balance preservation and modernization? We call it Tomb Raider I-II-III Remastered,” Aspyr wrote.
Prior to development, the project was broken down into three categories: technical, gameplay, and art. For the first, it was decided from the beginning to use the original source code and engine, as it was not possible to recreate the magic. You can also switch back to the original look, so if you want the classic visuals that were strong at the time, you can opt for that.
During gameplay, all puzzles, jumps, secrets, and enemies are in the same location as in the original three games. The Legend/Anniversary/Underworld trio served as inspiration for the modern controller setup. The right analog stick gives full camera control and Lara moves percussively from the camera position, but the original tanky controls are also optional. Due to the minimal user interface, it was previously a shortcoming that boss fights had no energy bar. Aspyr made up for that. The games only had 3D models of medkits and ammo in the menu, and 2D sprites were used in the game. Here we can expect a compromise, but something better. There will be over 200 trophies/achievements (including one where you lock Winston in the freezer). There will also be a photo mode and some surprises that have not been mentioned.
For the art, the idea was to make the three games look like we remember them, because in some of the early playtests, the testers didn’t recognize that they were playing with the modern art style. With Crystal Dynamics, they have baked and real-time lighting effects, we’re getting new models, environments and enemies to see what a PS1 game would look like with modern technology and tools, Lara has a new model, and in the modern art they’ve tweaked some things with the new models to get a cleaner overall look.
Tomb Raider I-II-III Remastered will be released on February 14th for PlayStation 5, Xbox consoles, PC (Steam), PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch.
Source: Gematsu
Leave a Reply