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Tomb Raider I-III Remastered – features detailed, new key art Revealed

Draugoth

Gold Member
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It’s been almost 30 years since Lara Croft took her first snowy steps in the mountains of Peru. In about 30 days, PlayStation players will get to re-experience Lara’s first three globe-trotting adventures, with a fresh look and feel in Tomb Raider I-III Remastered on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.


How did we get here? That story takes us to Austin, TX in 1998.


Aspyr & Lara go way back


A burgeoning video game company, Aspyr, launches Tomb Raider II on Macintosh computers. Aspyr continued with the Tomb Raider franchise until 2003, launching Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider III, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, Tomb Raider: Chronicles, and Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.


We’ve always wanted to revisit these titles, but we always debated the right approach. For years, we worked through the right balance of preservation and modernization. And once we felt we nailed it, we got in touch with our friends at Crystal Dynamics.


Crystal Dynamics vision


As Crystal Dynamics continues to expand the Tomb Raider Franchise, the timing seemed perfect to reintroduce audiences to the games that started it all. We wanted to both honor the foundations of the franchise and make accessible to modern audiences the original games in all their glory.


What would the balance of preservation and modernization look like? We call it Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Starring Lara Croft.


Remaster defined


Within pre-production, we divided the conversation into three buckets: engineering, gameplay, and art. With these categories in mind, we led our conversations in the same order.


Engineering goal – performance with pixel-perfect preservation


At the outset, we knew we would use the original source code and engine. Magic can’t simply be rebuilt. A critical feature for any updates we made was to allow the users to toggle back to the original look and feel for Tomb Raider I, II, and III.


It’s a love letter to all of our memories of these games, but it’s also truly fascinating to see how far hardware pushed in the ‘90s to make Tomb Raider work. Preserving that experience will continue to inspire engineers of today and tomorrow to push games to be more immersive and memorable.


Gameplay goal – surprise and delight lifelong hardcore fans


We had a firm belief that the gameplay of Tomb Raider I, II, and III is timeless, and with our use of the existing source code, we had every jump, secret, enemy, and puzzle exactly as the original development team designed and intended.


So the conversation evolved into: how do we surprise and delight these fans? And that’s where we started brainstorming additions instead of revisions.


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Classic and modern control options


For our modern controller settings, we take inspiration from the Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld era of Tomb Raider. These changes are felt mostly in the way Lara moves – the right stick has full camera control and Lara moves directionally based on camera position.


Just like our approach to the graphical presentation, the original tank-style controls are still available to players via a menu toggle.


Boss health bars


One of Tomb Raider’s strengths was the minimal UI. However, this can be frustrating for tougher bosses with massive amounts of health. We added a health bar to let you know if you should swap to the grenade launcher or if you should keep soaking pistol damage.


3D item sprites replacements


While the menus in Tomb Raider used 3D models for the health kit and ammo, the in-game assets were flat 2D sprites. This was a legacy compromise that we’ve adjusted to give a little more umph to item pick-ups.


Over 200 trophies


This is a big moment for the Tomb Raider community, so we made sure to pack in as much content as possible. We’re excited to say there are over 200 trophies to earn including (my personal favorite) locking the Butler in the freezer. Sorry, Winston! See below for a sneak peak of a few you can look forward to discovering!


Photo mode


Exploring environments in Tomb Raider is magical. We want you to be able to share these environments and iconic moments, so we’ve added a robust photo mode to pose Lara, freeze gameplay, toggle between classic and modern graphics, and showcase these environments. We’re super excited to see what the community puts together with these modes.


And a few more surprises


So much of what we love about Tomb Raider is discovery, and we don’t want to spoil that.


Art goal – visuals as in your memory


Once we finalized the engineering and gameplay intent, it was time to move on to our biggest challenge and changes for the project—the art.


Our philosophy here was rather straightforward; we want the games to look the way they did in your mind. We knew we were on the right track in our early playtests because some play testers didn’t even know they were playing with the modern art toggled on.


We’ve worked hand-in-hand with Crystal Dynamics on the following modern art updates:


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  • Baked and real-time lighting effects – These changes add to the immersion and mood of the environment.

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  • Graphics toggle – At any point during gameplay, including in Photo mode, you can swap between the original and modern graphics.

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  • New models, environments, and enemies – As shown in our initial reveal, we’ve added new models for a consistent modern look and feel. We’re excited to showcase how these PS1 environments would look with modern technologies and tools.




  • New model for Lara Croft – Her original outfits are stunning. Her silhouette—iconic. Need I say more?

  • Additional updates – We love the classic look of the animations, textures, and VFX. We’ve made adjustments in the modern scheme to look consistent with the updated models for a polished final look.

We send our admiration and thanks to the Tomb Raider community for inspiring us to work on this lovingly restored edition of Tomb Raider I-III. We’ll see you on February 14.
 

Saber

Member
Can't wait to use the Photo mode and make all Lara moments with her "angry" expression :lollipop_squinting:

I will use the classic mode and controls all the way. But it's cool they are giving different ones, so I can play differently if I like.
 

jshackles

Gentlemen, we can rebuild it. We have the capability to make the world's first enhanced store. Steam will be that store. Better than it was before.
This looks neat. I wonder how different the first game will be from Tomb Raider Anniversary though.
 

Osaka_Boss

Member
Aspyr created a bunch of glitches on podracer. I reported on the week of released. They never went back fix anything. Never buying anything from them ever again
 

Dazraell

Member
This looks neat. I wonder how different the first game will be from Tomb Raider Anniversary though.
It'll be very different as it's remastering the original game where Anniversary was a remake created from the ground up based on Legend's gameplay. So no grapple, some levels will also look different as Anniversary cut a lot of levels while adding their own things on top, characters portrayal etc
 

Con_Z_ǝdʇ

Live from NeoGAF, it's Friday Night!
I'm not a fan of the "improvements" they made since the quality is all over the place. But i would love to play all three games in their original look in 16:9 and appropriate performance. I will wait for reviews.
 

Umbral

Member
After playing the Ninja Gaiden and Metal Gear Solid collections, its gonna feel so weird to play a collection where the developers actually gave a shit.
Oh no, you bought those? Sorry to hear. Big MGS fan myself, but I clocked that shit miles away.

I’m gonna watch and see how this turns out before I buy the Tomb Raider collection. It’s hard to trust anyone who isn’t Bluepoint now.
 

AV

We ain't outta here in ten minutes, we won't need no rocket to fly through space
I do wonder if modern movement will totally kill the entire point of OG Tomb Raider. If it's just the basic movement, then maybe not, but the entire reason to play Tomb Raider is to use the extensive toolkit, it's a "hardcore platformer". If the game becomes "run this way and jump" it'll be worthless.
 

tommib

Gold Member
I do wonder if modern movement will totally kill the entire point of OG Tomb Raider. If it's just the basic movement, then maybe not, but the entire reason to play Tomb Raider is to use the extensive toolkit, it's a "hardcore platformer". If the game becomes "run this way and jump" it'll be worthless.
Yeah I wonder how the grid based system is going to work on their “modern” controls. Probably some degree of auto-platforming.
 
Really misunderstood gaming franchise. Tomb raider was incredible far ahead in time in terms of gameplay and level design/Immersive UI. the pinnacle of gaming is Doom 1993 , Zelda ocarina of time, Super Mario 64 , Super Metroid and Tomb Raider 1996.

That tomb raider got shafted/milked due to poor management doesn't deny it from being great.
 

Yerd

Member
I played it on pc.
crt filters are only for tv-only games
Unless you played super late, Pc monitors were still crt back then.

I don't remember my resolution with 3dfx but it was probably maxing out at 1024. I still have one of the last crt monitors I ever bought sitting in the basement, and a 3dfx card in a drawer.
 

rofif

Can’t Git Gud
Unless you played super late, Pc monitors were still crt back then.

I don't remember my resolution with 3dfx but it was probably maxing out at 1024. I still have one of the last crt monitors I ever bought sitting in the basement, and a 3dfx card in a drawer.
Yes but pc monitors did not had interlacing and low res like crt tvs.
On pc crts in late 90 everything looked as expected
 
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