The Tomb Raider Conundrum

The Eidos axe fell particularly hard on Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics, losing thirty members of their team following a 'disappointing' fiscal return from Tomb Raider Underworld in the USA, leaving their parent company 500,000 sales short and £20 million shy of expectations. In the wake of the staff cuts Chief Financial Officer for Eidos, Robert Brent, hinted to The Times that a more family or female friendly Lara might be on the cards, citing the Nolan-directed Batman movies as an example of a successful reboot of a popular franchise. The one thing that has struck me about this situation is the parallels to six years ago. Think about it: Tomb Raider failing to meet expectations and then aiming to have a fresh start? Eidos banking on a Tomb Raider to solve financial difficulty? Déjà vu anyone? Cue cheap, wavy visual effects, because we're going to take you on a journey to 2003 then back again to look at how Lara's latest sticky predicament could have been avoided.

So 2003 then. Under the watchful eye of once-great developer Core Design, for a fictional character it's fair to say that Lara was certainly enjoying a largely successful career as one of the worlds most instantly recognisable characters. So far her massive e-boobs had graced five mostly successful games and were getting bigger with every release. When she wasn‘t starring in games and inventing new bra sizes, she was having her image splashed over a multitude of unrelated consumer products and had even spawned a very mediocre movie featuring the totally-not-mediocre Angelina Jolie, with the sequel being released later that very year. You could say that the world was almost at Lara's feet… almost.

The PS2 had been out for nearly three years and with the impending release of Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness, we were all eagerly awaiting to find out just what a next-gen Lara Croft could do... 'Disappoint' was the answer, apparently. It was to be regarded as a complete mess; this was a Tomb Raider that was clumsier than ever and extremely glitch-riddled. More annoyingly Core failed to fix any of the aggravations that had been present since the series began in 1996 (*cough*the grid system*cough*). Possibly a little unfairly, Angel of Darkness is often regarded as the title that nearly killed a franchise in its prime, however as much as all may have seemed rosy before, the signs that Core Design weren't up to the task anymore were beginning to show back in 2000. The previous title, Tomb Raider Chronicles, was praised for being more of the same fun formula but was also heavily criticised for not improving on it. The cracks were starting to show.

Looking back now, it should really have come to no surprise that Angel of Darkness disappointed. Its development was plagued with rumours of technical issues. Eidos were also in financial difficulty at the time which couldn't have been easy for any developer working under them, Eidos were eventually taken over by SCi Entertainment in 2005 and thus a large profit from Angel of Darkness wasn't a necessity. For an amalgamation of these reasons, we weren't to see Lara Croft return to our screens until 2006 (ironically the same year in which Core were dissolved) but with a new developer at the helm. Step forward Crystal Dynamics, who came in with excellent pedigree having worked on some popular games over the years such as Gex, Pandemonium, and the Legacy of Kain titles. Assigning them the task of rejuvenating Tomb Raider was initially a masterstroke. Without putting out an AAA title in Tomb Raider: Legend, Crystal Dynamics concentrated simply on making the game fun again. They stripped it down, took away that maligned grid system and went back to basics. It wasn't going to win awards, but it steadied the old girl and made her fun to play with again. They extended on this with Tomb Raider Anniversary Edition, which was a thoroughly enjoyable remake of Core Design's original with Legends engine and logic applied to it. However like Legend, it was nothing more than a slightly shinier port of the PS2 version. Don't get me wrong, both these efforts were definitely a return to form of sorts, but with the power of the current-gen technologies and considering that Naughty Dog had already made a near perfect Tomb Raider game under the guise of Uncharted: Drakes Fortune, we certainly expected far more from the next title. Where do we find ourselves now? Right back exactly where we were three years ago; the same issues have come full circle in half the number of iterations.

So just how did the wheels fall off again? It was going well… wasn't it? Looking at Robert Brent's comments along with where the staff cuts were made, it's easy to see where Eidos where laid the blame; at Crystal Dynamics door. It's an odd one; Underworld was fun, but certainly disappointed overall. While trying not to turn this editorial into a review, large strides were made forward for the series. Visually it was absolutely stunning, Lara looked better than ever. Tombs weren't always naturally well lit; finally we had realistically dark and dank tombs that required artificial light sources. They muddied the path a little, meaning that there wasn't always one clear route around the various rooms, encouraging exploration, and speaking of which; the level designs and puzzles were as good as ever. It was just a shame that with every improvement there was a broken promise or an annoyance. All too often you found Lara stuck inside or against a wall (the bike is particularly bad for that), or jumping in the opposite direction than what you were clearly indicating; a fact not helped at the times when the camera decided to go renegade and really fight against you. The combat is quite simply the worst in the series; you are invisible to enemies who are over 10ft away and in most cases you can do more damage up close and personal using Lara's melees than you can with a high-powered assault rifle. Just as you feel like you were losing yourself to the game some sloppy oversight would pull you right back out again.

A lot of these complaints aren't game breakers in the slightest but they are completely avoidable issues that detract from the games overall quality. That lack of polish in turn affects reviews which will inevitably hurt sales. Yes, looking at it from that respect Crystal Dynamics do have to shoulder their fair share of the blame for that; they made the game, however the faults that the game suffers are typical of a game hurried in development. Far be it from me to be the cynic and suggest that in this instance that it was probably to make the most of the ill-informed during the Christmas rush to cash in on a popular franchise, but thinly veiled comments coming from one particular ex-Crystal Dynamics employee would back me up. Taking time to post and answer fan questions on the official Tomb Raider forums Crystal Dynamics ex-creative director Eric Lindstrom explained:

"One could say that we were rushed in making these Tomb Raider games, but you can also say that we tried to do too much in the time we were given. Who's right? Well, it does come down to expectations. If the publisher expects something of certain size and quality in a certain time frame, it can lead to rushing that is unavoidable, but if we were better at our jobs could we have done it? Maybe.”

The elected release date was complete a mystery to me but it‘s comments like the above that have the puzzle pieces falling into place like Tetris blocks in my mind. Sandwiched between a ton of clearly more anticipated titles core gamers were never going to pick this up until we hit the New Year, and that's without taking into account the crumbling global economy and Lara's recent shaky history. For example; Tomb Raider Legend was released in April of 2006 at a time that there wasn't too much of a similar quality around to combat it, by the end of June it had gone on to sell around 3 million units globally. Compare that to Underworld; released in the gaming ‘silly season' it had barely hit 1.5 million sales in its first six weeks. Co-incidence or purely circumstantial? Looking at those figures and the climate in which the game was released into suggest to me that holding the game back until 2009 may have been the way to go; the additional time would have allowed Crystal Dynamics to add that much needed level of polish. It's easy to see that for every weakness that could have been fixed, it would have been the difference from the average received review scores of 7's to the lofty scores of  8's and 9's. Other aspects such as the odd decision to plea to certain publications not to release reviews that gave the game low scores until after it was released do absolutely nothing but alienate consumers. Moves such as that will always be made public.

Whichever way I look at this whole predicament I simply cannot agree with Robert Brents opinion that the problems lies with the Tomb Raider universe as it stands or with the work that Crystal Dynamics put in. All paths in dissecting Underworld's problems lead me straight back to Eidos and their strategy for the series as an annual money-spinner. The release date they slapped on Underworld suggests that at the time they had enough confidence that the brand and the game in its current state could compete against huge releases, but now they have decided that the brand isn't actually that strong at all and want to hit the restart button and take it in a completely different direction? Maybe Core also weren't the under-achievers that we were led to believe. It seems to me that Eidos are playing the blame game when the obvious answer is staring them right in the face. Tomb Raider needs evolution at the moment, not revolution. Given a little more love and attention, Tomb Raider Underworld could have been everything we wanted and Eidos could have been laughing all the way to the bank. Unfortunately with their current thought process I don't hold out much hope for whichever new direction Lara takes, but I certainly feel sorry for the remaining Crystal Dynamics members tasked with taking the series forward.