The Concept
It's not a "sequel," but it kind of is
Discounting remakes, ports, and portable versions, Underworld marks the second Tomb Raider game from Crystal Dynamics, but while the developers promise to answer story questions from Tomb Raider: Legend, they don't view this as part two of that tale. "There's something about the word 'sequel' that implies the 'second,' and I don't see it as 'second,'" says creative director Eric Lindstrom. "I see it as a continuation, so there were elements in Anniversary and elements in Legend that we continue to carry forward."
The Execution
It's all about the details
By design, there's no one thing you can point to in Underworld that makes it instantly significantly different from previous Tomb Raider games. Instead, the developers are trying to evolve the franchise in lots of smaller ways: The graphics look more realistic and less cartoony, there are lots of new movement and wall-climbing animations, you can carry around objects you find and use them for combat or puzzles, you can aim your guns at two enemies simultaneously, and so on. In many ways, these are necessary improvements for the franchise to keep up with games like Uncharted: Drake's Fortune that have leapfrogged it in areas like graphics and physics, so it's nice to see Crystal Dynamics back at a competitive level with Underworld, though we'll stop short of saying it looks as pretty as Uncharted at this point in development.
The Marketing
It's a swimming game
Or at least, swimming's a big part of the marketing (during a recent visit to Crystal Dynamics, we spotted some artwork of series heroine Lara Croft fighting sharks), and the game kicks off with Lara fending off sharks in the Mediterranean Sea. Swimming's nothing new for this series, but having an ocean to mess around in is something different altogether. "I remember Eric [Lindstrom] coming to me very early on in the project and saying, 'Hey, we want quite a lot of the gameplay in this game to be in the ocean,'" says lead programmer Rob Pavey. His response? "How big an ocean?" To help prevent players from getting lost, the developers have incorporated a sonar map system where you can send out a signal at any point and see the ocean floor -- but only as far as the sonar waves can reach in front of you.
The Tone
It's "darker"
Tying in with the more realistic graphical approach -- and as you may have seen in the first batch of Underworld screenshots -- the game is taking on "darker" themes in its story when compared to previous Tomb Raider games. What does that mean, exactly? Well, we're not sure, since the developers are keeping quiet on specifics. "A story's darkest moments are usually critical to the plot, so there's no way to give examples without spoiling it," says Lindstrom. "We wanted this adventure to have weight, and the mood shifts dramatically across the whole adventure, both bright to dark -- but the most I can say beyond that, without spoiling anything, is that Lara Croft gets really angry in Tomb Raider: Underworld, and it takes a lot to make Lara angry."
The Variety
You have options
One of the developers' design goals for Underworld is to make it less segmented than previous Tomb Raider games -- instead of going from an action scene to a puzzle scene to a mi****me scene, players should be doing these things in a more connected way and with more options on how to approach them. In some situations, that means there won't just be one path to climb to reach the next area. In others, you may be fighting and solving a puzzle at the same time.
The Directed Moments
You no longer need to memorize button locations
Tying in with the previous concept of keeping everything as part of a cohesive whole, the button-pressing mi****me sequences from Legend have been replaced by what the developers call "adrenaline moments." The idea here is that in certain key sequences, something will happen in the environment and time will slow down, bullet time-style, to give you just enough time to decide how to move -- and you then have to make the move using your normal character controls. For example, you may have to jump off a tower as it's collapsing below you or jump out of the way of an incoming object. In a version of the game we saw recently, though, these seemed too early in development to fairly judge.
The First Toy
Your motorcycle is "on demand"
We haven't had a chance to see this in action, but from what we hear, it sounds like Lara's sidekick in Underworld will be her motorcycle, which she'll be able to use as she chooses instead of just during scripted sequences. "The [sequences] are not mi****me-like as Legend had them," says Lindstrom. "There's a motorcycle that's a gear item, and you can use it as you want to get on and get off, accelerate and decelerate. There are places that you need to use it like a grapple would need to be used, to get somewhere faster than you can run, or to jump across a barrier that you otherwise couldn't leap. But except for those elements, it's on demand."
The Second Toy
You have a camera
Much like Beyond Good & Evil and, well, a lot of games, Underworld introduces a camera to your tool list so you can snap pictures of whatever you come across. In a demo level we watched, producer Alex Jones attached a sticky grenade to a shark and then snapped a photo right as it exploded -- and joked that he wanted to create an Achievement for players who would do the same. While the details haven't been nailed down with the different online services across Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, and PC, the developers are aiming to incorporate a system where players can e-mail these photos to whomever they choose.
The Third Toy
Your grappling hook might now be cool
From our perspective, the grappling hook in Tomb Raider has always seemed like a great idea, but it hasn't ever been very well implemented, feeling too rigid and sensitive to be significantly fun. And while we've only seen a bit of how it's being used in Underworld, we're excited by how the developers describe it -- which is to say that it'll have many more uses and come into play in many of the game's puzzles. In at least one portion of the game, Lindstrom tells us, you'll be able to wrap the wire around a cylindrical object a few times, then pull it and watch that object "spin like a top."
The Platform Differences
The Wii version will have a few bonuses
To date, we've seen nothing of the Wii or DS versions of the game, but according to a press fact sheet, the Wii game will include special items like an air gun that you can presumably point to blow dust off of objects, a torch to melt items, a chisel to break away parts of the environment, and so on. The fact sheet also promises that "the combat system has been enhanced for more fluid character control and more precise aiming with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk," but we can't say with any certainty whether that's true at this point.
