The Tomb Raider franchise has struggles to maintain its identity in the last decade, up until the reboot. The installments simply did not manage to find solid ground as each subsequent installment tried to imitate elements from other games in order to cater to a wider audience, causing most of the existing fan base to feel alienated. In 2010, Crystal Dynamics took Lara in a whole new direction by switching to an isometric co-operative adventure. While Lara might have jumped genres, all the core staples of the Tomb Raider franchise were all intact, along with surprising new additions. The Guardian of Light was the finest Tomb Raider entry in years, and fans held out hope for a sequel which will now never come to be.
“There are no plans to do anything in that series but it was a great opportunity to do something a little bit outside of the core,” said creative director Noah Hughes in an interview with OXM.
“Guardian was a great opportunity to explore things that we may not have done in the pillar franchise titles, but in that case it was co-op.”
When asked whether the developer had planned to include co-op in the reboot, Noah said that the campaign is simply not appropriate for a co-operative experience, and we couldn’t agree more.
“We looked at the integration of multiplayer in Tomb Raider. We’re anxious to continue to play with ways that people could tomb raid together. With Guardian of Light, the tone and the story supported side-by-side play in the campaign; this time around, it’s less appropriate and we tried to do more of a complementary experience, hoping it would have a lot of replay ability and people can just jump in and have fun.”
“Those are just two of our explorations into multiplayer in the Tomb Raider universe, and we are anxious to see what else we can do in connected play.”
Tomb Raider has just landed on store shelves, and is the breath of fresh air that the franchise was gasping for. You can check out our review of it here if you need further convincing.
