Tomb Raider Developers On Sense of Exploration, Hunting And Hub Areas

Latest from Crystal Dynamics.

Tomb Raider’s reboot seems to be developing in the right direction. The gameplay seems to be a drastic deviation from what we have seen in previous Tomb Raider games and so far it is gathering a lot of fan and critical praise.

In an interesting interview with CVG, creative director of Tomb Raider, Noah Hughes talked about several important aspects of the game. He explained how the game had an open world feel to it, the importance of hubs and hunting.

He explains how Tomb Raider isn’t an open world but it feels like it. “As a Tomb Raider game you want to create a world that’s rich with atmosphere and high fidelity enough to feel like a real place. Another aspect, that was essential to keep, was that sense of finding things. It wasn’t acceptable to trip along a linear path. So the hubs were really that middle ground where we felt we could deliver on that sense of exploration and maintain that fidelity that we thought was important.”

Check out this latest video from Tomb Raider.

He also explains that in order for the player to survive they must hunt. Hunting helps the player to earn skills.

“In the context of hunting, Lara gains experience from that. We know that food is essential for survival but we didn’t want a simulation game. It’s really a way to enhance your survival and gain skills. And we wanted to make sure that there was enough AI behind something like the deer so you feel like it’s alive in the world,” he said.

The game is due in March for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC. Personally, I will be picking up the PC version since the developers have promised a pretty shiny version. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

Crystal Dynamicspcps3Square EnixTomb Raiderxbox 360