franchise here with an extended [music] look at the mysteries of Peru in the new Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis. [music] Please welcome Crystal Dynamics experience director Jeff Adams and Flying Wild Hogs art director Eric Tomacheski. Welcome guys.
How are you? How's your Gamescom going? Awesome so far so good.
Yeah, good. Fantastic. I couldn't ask for more.
Awesome. I mean, I am so excited, as you can maybe tell, to see what you've got for us today. So, set us up.
Set the scene. What can we look to expect from the game play? Uh so today we're going to be taking a a nice in-depth look at Peru.
Um this is uh Lara when she is on the hunt for the tomb of Qualopec and so she has to engage with this iconic location and but it really shows how we are putting reimagining at the forefront to make sure we're preserving familiarity but at the same time introducing introducing new challenge. Yeah. Now Jeff, you literally just said reimagining versus like a remake or remaster.
Can you tell me a little bit about what that means to your team as well as for the players? Absolutely. In a nutshell, reimagining means preserving the things that make those iconic locations recognizable.
We want to make sure that we're preserving that core DNA, but we also want to make sure that we're finding new ways to introduce new challenge, new surprise, new delight for our players. And so therefore, if you're a new fan who's never played before, you come in and you just see a really cool game experience. But if you're a fan who's played before, like yourself, we want you to come in and actually have that first play experience all over again.
That sounds great. Yeah. Just just to add to the on the top of that, like basically what what we've got from the original one are a bunch of memories.
So we want to recreate those memories for the new players and just bring more new people in and create those new unbelievable stories for them as well. That sounds so good. Can we dig like a tiny bit deeper into your answers as well?
Sure. How important or maybe even how challenging was it to strike that balance between nostalgia as well as new exciting experiences for new players? It's it's a delicate balance and I I like to say it's a combination of an exciting opportunity to get a chance to get under the hood and really kind of see what we can do, but it's also an incredible responsibility because we know that there are people that have so many strong memories like Lara has become so part of people's personas in a lot of ways that we want to make sure that we're really making sure that those fans are seen, but at the same time, we're also giving them the chance to actually experience something new with the character.
And so we take it very seriously and everything we change or everything we modify we do because we feel like it's basically what the original developers of the game probably were getting at but they were just constrained by the tools of their time. That's beautiful. Have you found the same experience Alex as well?
The design looks incredible. Yeah. I mean what we wanted to do for example with art we wanted to bring back the same color palette.
So like when you squeeze your eyes, you you can see that you know the original game and just bring this subconscious uh idea throughout the game, but also we want to keep the key elements from the original one. So we trying to be like Jeff said, being super respectful to the OG, but then bring our own flavor to it as well. Okay.
I can't wait to spin my eyes then and look at the game. That's so smart. I've never thought about that before.
Well, can we take a we look and see what it's all about then? What you guys have been up to? We will allow it.
Thank you. [laughter] And here she is. Oh, such swagger.
She's got Yeah. You see that familiar silhouette come into the light and you just instantly get the hairs in the back of your neck standing up. I mean, speaking about hairs on your neck.
This looks absolutely incredible. Eric, talk to us about Yeah. Well done and congratulations to you.
The whole team is the team's work, but what we're trying to do is being authentic to to the place that we are bringing people in cuz basically Lara Coft is arogologist. So the places she discovers and she explores, they need to be real. So in this example, we try we dive deep into Incan's culture and architectures in Peru and also the plants and everything with the idea of bringing back the original feeling.
So we've done what we could with the we've been authentic to to the Peruvian culture, but also we bring, you know, it's a game, so we want to we make want to make it fun and beautiful. Yeah, it's it's really when we dove into it, we're like, okay, the the Cog puzzle is such an iconic part of that game. I'm going to say iconic a lot because we are dealing with an icon.
Yeah. So, but let's say they're memorable moments that people remember so well, but in a modern gaming sense, like we have a a more ability, we have an ability to create a higher believability sense of immersion. And so, when we really kind of step back and we look at it for what it is and how we try to make the gameplay feel naturally seated and believable in the world, but just slightly out of place, like why does this exist?
It sparks a feeling of curiosity. And curiosity combined with exploration is like what Tomb is at a core and so we get it on screen and we we hopefully make people happy with it. Yeah.
But also when you look on the cockpit we like wanted to make a sense why it's there. So we created a whole narration around it like we created this culture that's has this ceremony of bringing the together to open the gate to top of qual. So it was really fun to just build the whole structures and logic and the whole system why would be there and how it worked.
I love that. Like here's a perfect example of curiosity on display like Laura gets a beautiful pencil dive into the water after dislodging the roots all right by the way. Oh yeah.
Awesome. But along the way she's like wait a minute I see something out of the corner of my eye. The player drives in and they come into this new space.
You may have never missed this unless you took or you may never seen it if you had not taken a chance to actually just look around for a beat. I mean, speaking about looking around, is there maybe particular details that you guys are really proud of or that you want players to really notice in the environment of the game? From an environment perspective, for me was the most important.
I want people to immerse in a game and I don't want to break this immersion. So, I wanted to build everything with the logic. So everything, all the mechanism, all the puzzles, they need to be there for a reason.
And me and our team like we really work really hard to make sure that every single puzzle, every single obstacle that Lara meets, it makes sense. So like when you dive deep into the environment, into the world that we are playing is there because someone build it, not because the game requires it to. And we and we don't want the environment to feel like it's a heritage site.
I mean, we're in the wild. This is a un this is a lost city lost to time that we are discovering and as a result we have the opportunity to kind of do some storytelling uh tricks where we can actually say hey this is a culture that evolved in isolation for a while so how do you preserve what we know about Incan culture but at the same time give it a uniqueness to say hey it's unmistakably Tomb Raider but it's that way because they just evolved in isolation for a while and when you play the game you're going to find out why. Yeah.
That's sick. And then you can have a lot of fun with the overgrown aesthetic as well as obviously some of the dirt that Lara's picked up as she's traversing through these environments. That's sick.
Yeah. I mean, that's a part of just making sure that the environment feels like you are the person who discovered the first in a very very long time because that's what she does. And we want to make sure that that's how it feels as well.
Yeah. And and Lara's not she's not a delicate flower. She's she looks good, but she is going to get her hands dirty.
She's going to dig in. Heck yeah. She's going to go anywhere and she's going to follow her instincts.
Uh, similar to how she's doing here. She's like, I need that cog to get that puzzle moving. I found one.
But that has opened up the path to somewhere else. So, curiosity is driving her. You're going to be along helping her find that way.
And we get into some beautiful traversal that make sure that Lara's physical attri her abilities, her athleticism is on full display in these moments. She's got her peak, right? She's at her peak.
Yep. Love that. Now, the puzzles, like you mentioned, they are such an iconic part of of Tomb Raider for me as well.
There's so many that I remember from Greece, Egypt, all of the levels. Um, can you go a little bit deeper about how you've evolved them for Legacy of Atlantis? Uh, similar to what we talked about reimagining, it's about saying, hey, this puzzle as it existed, you know, what was the original intent here?
And if that intent is something that we are like, hey, that's that that's a really strong guiding principle, how do we take that and make it the ultimate version of what it intends to be? Sometimes that means sticking very close to the formula. Sometimes it means deviating into another area, but we do so in a way that's very thoughtful and very precise because we never want to make it feel like we're ignoring the history of this adventure that we're reimagining.
We wanted it to feel like it's the it's the red of this game. And so adding new details like giving her gear items that allow her to extract more lore from the world, preserving some of those classic abilities like push pull, traversal, being fluid and dynamic. We'll get into combat a little bit later, but these are all just Tomb Raider things at the core.
Amazing. Yeah. But just going back to the scanner thing, like you can use a scanner if you are a fan and just want to, like Jeff said, dig deep into the lore.
You can scan things and find out more. But you can also use the use the scanner as a clue to the puzzles. It gives you clues if you want to.
If you don't want to, you can just play it your way. Nice. And that's us trying to be sensitive to the players because there are those that want to have this full breadth of systems, but we also have our hardcore players that are like, I want two pistols and no help.
And we're accommodating them as well. Yeah. I love that.
Giving players way more choice and following their lead as well. That's so cool. It sounds like you guys have done a lot of research as well and really respected a a lot of the environments that you're talking about in real life as well as creating a more fantasy realm for Lara to explore.
That sounds sick. I mean the research is a massive part of what we've been doing because the cultures that we've been working on recently is is you know incans ancient Greece Egypt and we want to be respectful to to those cultures and to the history that they have and also for the players to feel like they are actually arch is not not just playing the game. So that's why we've done so so much research and when we decided to partner with the hogs on this game you know co-develop it together we knew that they were also fans of the game.
They I I think Maddie is actually one of the designers on the Yeah. So like we we've got a designer on the team who literally used to make Tomb Raider levels for fun and he's really well known in the community. So these are real fans that are making the game, but at the same time we're also, you know, we have a luxury of very talented developers who ask the right questions, who push in the right places to make sure we get really cool stuff that's fun to play on screen.
And watching this whole process unfold over the last few years has just been a treat as a developer. I bet that's so special. That's so cool.
What we're seeing here is Lara movement in full action there. She's got a lot of swagger. Like I said, she's got seas looking.
Can you talk to me a little bit about some of the innovations that Lara's movement can be experienced in Legacy of Advances and and how it'll feel for players? Players are what we hope is we hope it feels familiar. We hope that you can pick up the sticks and you're like, "Wow, this is like putting on an old pair of shoes that are super comfortable.
" But at the same time, we've given her a couple of more tricks that she can use to to help navigate the world, such as a grapple cuff that can give her some unique abilities to to interact with objects, to use it to navigate. Those little touches are additive and are meant to enhance the experience while still preserving that original intent. Very cool.
But that cog puzzle, I mean, she basically knew she needed to find it. She used her instinct. She moved upwards through this beautiful little pocket civil like city that was adjacent to this temple.
Discovered things about it along the way. Got inside, found this beautiful water clock whose purpose is unknown. She gets it.
And look at this. There she is. That's Lara, baby.
Oh my god. Lara never comes in through the front door and she never leaves without style. [laughter] Oh, that's sick.
So yeah, we've got this beautiful landscape around us. Uh the the environment art is stunning. I know.
I mean, incredible. I mean, we try we try to when you play in this game, like we want we want you to explore and just enjoy exploring the environment apart of doing everything else. Like if you just want to walk around and want to figure out what was actually happening in this place and how we what the people were doing there hundreds of years ago, you can do so.
And just working on all those vistas, they it's just so awesome. People like our teams put so much heart and passion into building the Exactly. The vistas like this.
Look at that. This is one of my favorite one of my favorite moments is the postcard shots where you're alone in the wilderness. You can hear the birds chirping, the leaves rustling.
There's no time fly. We We want people to slow down when they play the game. We want them to say, "Take it in.
Enjoy it. " You don't have to speedrun it, but if you're listening and you do, let us know what your time is because we'll keep track. [laughter] But, uh, but that's great.
It's it's the type of audience that we have. You know, we have people that want to challenge themselves to move through the experience as fast as they can and those that want to sightsee and the game just is welcoming to all. I'll be sightseeing for sure.
I've got tears in my eyes. I'm not even joking. That is absolutely incredible.
Wow. Um, I wanted to go back a little bit and talk a little bit more about Lara's toolkit and how that's evolved here. So, we've mentioned her her grapple hook, her um, we saw the scanner in action as well.
Um, how is that really going to affect the gameplay for players and what other tools has she got up her sleeve? Well, we've got the, like you said, the two items that we've already discussed and as Artic mentioned, the scanner has some dual functionality. can not only give you some hints that are optional if you don't want to engage with it, but it also gives you some world lore.
But on top of that, we've got some things under the hood in her PDA that we can use to help give her some slightly different skill attributes if you want to equip her in a certain way to help meet challenges as you face them. We've got our crafting system because we we want to make sure that, you know, finding med packs in the middle of the jungle is cool, but [laughter] a little bit old school. Yeah.
in a tomb 10,000 years old has lucky that there's a first a kit here. That's right. They're not there all the time.
So, so we were like, how do we make this still feel like Tomb Raider, but at the same time like not break immersion. And so that's where like crafting is a perfect add-on addition to it. It's lets her scavenge the world for resources, use her knowledge and her ability to craft something useful.
And on top of that, she can use recipes to provide certain gameplay buffs that are going to help give her short-term. If you want, you don't have to. Yeah, you can just play the old school way dual pistol all the way through with healing items if you want.
If you want to put your heads down and power through it, you can do it. But these things are available to you and we think they're fun to engage with. Amazing.
The tumqualape waterfall gate is opened. Done it. Now, here we're advancing to a little bit later in the in the game.
We're uh now just on the cusp of a very memorable first encounter. So, folks, hold on. Here we go.
Oh, I remember this, I think. But we got to do it with style. Yes.
[laughter] Oh, I'm so worried you were going to include us one time. That's so sick. Oh, she's so cool.
Early stages of the project, we were like, hey, you know, if we're really going to do this, we want to represent Lara in a way that she's fully recognizable. And part of that is the acrobatics. Lara without the acrobatics is still cool Lara, but not classic Lara.
And here they're on full display, but what I hope people appreciate is that there's more grounding, more believability to it in how she moves. She's still having fun, but it's synonymous to her. But yeah, like you mentioned, the more grounded when she was kicking the call puzzle, that looked sick.
It was so cool. But yeah, those little interactive moments add a sense of cinematic spectacle time to time, which is nice. It it it allows the game to still feel like a summer blockbuster.
Yeah. And speaking of Hello, where are these guys? I don't know.
The router design looks really cool, Aric, as well. Brilliant. Thank you.
I love the addition of the the feathers. Yeah. I mean, we wanted to keep the red color, you know, which you which you remember from the original one, but obviously our knowledge about the dinosaurs evolved so much since 1996.
So, we wanted like with everything in this game, we want to add on the top of what what's been done already. So, we kept the color, we add our own silhouette designs, and we added the feathers uh to make it unique for for the legacy of nice. And their combat has been like dramatically overhauled.
They're no longer just charging at you and just taking bullets. They're thinking. They're evading.
You have the ability to use the health reticle when an aim down sight to be able to kind of assess where they're at so you can target your shots. And with Lara's combat, love seeing the uh the axe make a little appearance. Um utility gear for the win.
But um when she's actually in combat, she's got a loop of, you know, assessing the situation, responding, and then moving to make sure she can then reassess. And that's Lara's always in motion. Her combat is fluid.
It's organic, but at the same time, it helps her kind of overcome challenges and get the upper hand. Yeah. Yeah.
She basically she needs to keep moving all the time. It's like a dance for them. Yeah.
That's sick. And you can see a little blue dot on the bottom, which enables you to go into the focus mode, which slows down time, which is one of my favorite uh features in our game for sure. Yeah.
When that fills up, she can go into hyperfocus, slow down time, and really pull off those precision shots. But if you're going to do that, like, give her some style when she does it. Absolutely.
Let those acrobatics shine. Hello. There's our girl.
There's the girl. Yeah. Yay.
Oh my gosh. What was it like reimagining such an iconic boss fight here as well as the other ones in Atlantis? How was that?
From our perspective, it was just an honor to work on on a T-Rex, but like we've worked for such a long time to just make sure it's perfect from our perspective. And we were trying to be respectful to the OG one. You know, the moment when she's coming out like throughout the corner and you see the T-Rex, we couldn't do exactly this, but we wanted to have the same emotions when people see her for the first time.
And then just working on a design, it was such a blast. Yeah. And when you see when you see her, it's like she still has some of those classic DNA.
She's got that beautiful green with that yellow pockets under her eyes, but we've also got some added elements in the feathers that also provide a little bit more of a reason of she's in a geothermal valley. I mean, she's going to have a little bit of plumage that feels like it matches that environment and it just gives her this really recognizable signature look. I just love that we added those red feathers because there's so many versions of the T-Rex, you know, in all the medias and those red feathering on the top of this green and yellow eyes for me is like and like chocolate and peanut butter is just great getting these two back together again and seeing it like never presented before.
T-Rexes love Lara. I love that as well. Um, with the T-Rex and again other iconic bosses, what are you guys hoping that resonates with players or what are you hoping that they experience from them coming across?
Yeah. No, no, we can take it all. No, I'm kidding.
We absolutely want people to be engaged. We want them to be pulled in. We want them to have fun.
Yeah. We want them to feel like they're being put onto a cinematic thrill ride when we are ready to do that. But we also want them to feel like when we're not in that moment, they get to ramp down, explore, enjoy what we put out there for them to to Yeah.
But it's also so much fun to, you know, recreate like reimagine the things with the technology that we have now and we can build a lot on the top of it with so much more narration. It's it's just so much fun to work on it and hopefully people will feel it when they play it. Yeah, I cannot wait to play it as well.
Guys, I'm really honored about speaking to you, seeing all of that footage. So, thank you so much for joining us. Can we go check out the booth here at Gamescom as well?
I want to see that T-Rex. Okay, let's do it, guys. Thank you so much again.
Check out Tomb Raider Legacy of Atlantis when it launches on Xbox Series X and S on February 12th, 2027. 2 days before Lara's birthday, isn't it? And it's Xbox Play Anywhere.
Buy it once and play across Xbox console and Windows PC. Pre-order now. Plus, if you pre-order the deluxe or collector's edition like me, get ready to play a full 48 hours early starting February 10th.
