Tomb Raider: Underworld Interview

Tomb Raider: Underworld is the third game in the series to be developed by Crystal Dynamics. We recently caught up with creative director Eric Lindstrom to discuss Lara’s return, the new focus on exploration and the questions surrounding the game’s Xbox-only DLC.

VideoGamer.com: There seems to be a pronounced emphasis on exploration in Tomb Raider: Underworld. Was that always going to be the case, or did you ever consider a more action-driven approach, like some of the older titles in the series?

Eric Lindstrom: It was from the start, because what we did with Legend, we did a lot of work figuring out what we thought was successful about Tomb Raider, what we thought was successful about Lara Croft. And it turned out not to be in the details, it was in the expression of those emotions and feelings that people got in the original Tomb Raider. It was that sense of being where no-one else was, where no-one else had been for thousands of years, with the wind whistling through the caves; to be on your own, discovering things no one had seen for such a very long time, getting these ancient machines up and running and fighting the increasingly strange denizens of these places. That is what made Tomb Raider special, and Legend went back to that. We’re very proud of what we did, but at the same time there was a whole lot more we could have done. So with Underworld we wanted to take those lessons learned about what was valuable and special about Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, and do it up big.

VideoGamer.com: That sense of free-roaming exploration seems very tied to Lara’s moves. How do you maintain a balance between giving players lots of options and not swamping them with too many possibilities?

EL: I think that what was really important was this idea that increasing her abilities in the world actually made things simpler, and not more complicated. That was because what makes things complicated are usually two factors: One, a lot of complicated controls that are needed to achieve the ends you want and two, a lot of arbitrary boundaries about where you can and cannot do things: There are certain objects you can throw, certain objects that you can’t; certain objects you can touch, certain objects that you can’t. By trying to break down those barriers as much as we could, we actually made things easier – because people could use their own logic to do what they needed to do. Some of the early response we got about our control scheme was very gratifying, because people were saying that it was more intuitive to control Lara and to explore these spaces, and some of the people saying this weren’t even cognizant of the fact that what they were doing was actually more complicated.

VideoGamer.com: So was that the thinking behind the whole ‘What Can Lara Do’ philosophy? The idea of opening options to the player, rather than forcing them down a path?

EL: Right, so instead of memorising a lot of arbitrary rules and boundaries and seeing whether there are invisible walls or not, it’s about, ‘I’m in this situation, so what would I do if I were there?. What could Lara do? I could climb that wall, I could throw this object. We try to fulfil as many of those intuitive gut-reaction beliefs of the player as possible. It doesn’t mean all those actions will get you anywhere, but at least you’re getting a response – you then have to work out what makes sense within that space.

We were conscious of not wanting to overwhelm the player with abilities, and we were also conscious of not wanting to overwhelm the player with all the choices in the layout of the space but really it game down to logic. Because when you have this giant articulated statue of Shiva and you need to open this temple, there are many aspects of that experience that are entirely player-driven. You have to get all these different armature mechanisms working properly. It doesn’t matter what order you do them, but you’re not going to get in until you’ve done them all. There are plenty of logical elements that define the order in which things can be done, and that gives it a kind of structure, but it doesn’t feel like an arbitrary game structure. It doesn’t feel like, ‘Oh, I have to do A to B to C because that’s the way the game has been designed’. Sometimes you have to do A to B to C because that’s what you’d have to do if you were really there. You have to be able to make those jumps of logic.

VideoGamer.com: Xbox 360 owners are delighted with the fact that they’ll be getting exclusive DLC, but it’s also true that a few PS3 users are feeling a bit left out. Were these levels always going to be restricted to the 360, and is there any chance we’ll see something for Sony fans in the future?

EL: To be honest, it completely came down the other way. We were approached by Microsoft, who asked us if we could make some downloadable content for them. It was a great opportunity, it was a great deal and we’re happy to do it. The DLC that we’re making for Microsoft is especially made. It’s not part of the main game that we saved – we put all the game out there that we were going to put out there. Now we’re going to the trouble of adding on spaces where they logically make sense, telling parts of the story. Backing up a bit… Whenever you make a story like Tomb Raider, you’re only telling part of it. We come up with all these logical motivations and rationale behind the scenes that inform what story the player understands – but there are all kinds of details that never see the light of day. Rather than making up a bunch of new stuff, there’s plenty out there that’s never been told – that was never really going to be told – but that we now have a chance to do it, and we’re doing it. So it really wasn’t about, ‘let’s make these levels and only give them to Microsoft’. It kinda came around the other way.

VideoGamer.com: Is it absolutely confirmed that there will only be a demo for the 360, or is there a chance we’ll see one for the PS3?

EL: I’m not entirely sure. I’ve been talking to brand, and I don’t think there’s a final answer on that yet.

VideoGamer: At the time the original Tomb Raider came out, it seemed to feel that there was something of an unofficial alliance between that game and the PlayStation. Do you feel that this could happen with the 360? Is there an argument that it’s now the dominant platform of this generation?

EL: I think it was more timing and circumstances than anything else. The Xbox was on site, they were ready to go and the PlayStation had a longer strategy plan that they [Sony] were implementing. I think that 10 years from now, looking back, we’ll have a different view about the way these platforms ultimately succeeded and the audiences they captured. But right now we’re in the middle of it, and we’re still on the wave that the 360 caught. The PlayStation is still ramping up, so we’re still in the middle of it.

VideoGamer.com: Underworld has a hints system that can either offer clues or tell the player outright what it is they have to do to progress. Did you have any concerns about this? Did you worry that it might be open to abuse?

EL: This is something I’ve wanted to do from the beginning, and I’ve been having conversations on the other side, convincing people that it’s a good idea. I actually only explained half of it in the presentation we did today. There’s also player tailoring within the menu structure, where you can go and alter multiple settings that are initially set with your choice of difficulty at the beginning. But it’s not really about difficulty, it’s about what kind of challenge you want. You can set how strong Lara is, how strong her enemies are, how much time you have to perform a recovery grab when one of your hands slips off a ledge. It’s really about giving players the ability to tailor the kind of experience they want. Some people love to explore and solve puzzles but find the combat tedious. ‘I don’t want something to be attacking me any more. I want to get back to figuring stuff out’. They can dial that down – not because they’re not good enough, but because they don’t want that to be emphasised in their experience.

The one really controversial point is the one you touched on, which is people giving in to temptation. While the hardcore gaming audience especially enjoys a tussle, and coming out on top in the end, there’s also a very broad mainstream audience that would drop before they got there – particularly with the crowded field we have. There are so many games out there, and so many coming out this fall. It’s a question of finding the balance. How much do we facilitate people wanting to experience the game in the way they want to experience it, and how much do we tempt them with what can not be resisted? I think in the end we’ve done more good for more people. Because the real hardcore gamers, they’re not going to look up the answers. They’re not. And even if they do it once, they’ll be like, ‘aw, I could have figured that out!’. And they won’t do it again.

VideoGamer.com: So just to clarify – when you said you can make Lara stronger…?

EL: You can dial up the health of Lara, you can dial down the health of enemies, reduce or increase the amount of time you have to recover when you slip, and you can change the amount of ammo you bring in for your secondary weapon. You bring in a whole bunch of shotgun shells, or you can bring just a few – but you’re not going to find any in the ancient ruins! No-one’s been walking around leaving 12-gauge shells lying around.

VideoGamer.com: Are there any rewards for using the harder settings? Achievements and trophies, perhaps?

EL: Because this was really about the way people want to play, and not, ‘here are the great players who can do this, here are the not-so-great players who can’t do that’, we only have one. If you dial everything down to the hardest settings, there’s a master survivalist achievement that you can get. And that is really about survival. It doesn’t check whether you use the help system or not, because you could always go on the internet It’s about getting through the physical challenges to the end.

VideoGamer.com: Okay, I have one last question that I’ve always wanted to ask someone who works on a Tomb Raider game. You have all these ancient temples with amazingly complicated ways of opening up doors and the like… When you’re designing these levels, how do you imagine that things used to work? Were all the monks super-trained acrobats, or what?

EL: That’s funny! One of the things that makes Tomb Raider levels hard to design – at least under my watch – has been that the designers have to make everything twice. They need to design what the space looked like when it was first built, and then they need to design what it looks like now. So when you’re swinging around poles or shimmying along ledges, that wasn’t the way the ancient priests did it! The priests had a stone breezeway going up to the second level – so we build out those stairs and then destroy them. So if you look, you’ll often find ways that the place made a lot more sense for the people who originally designed it. There’s a corridor that’s broken down, or a stairway that’s collapsed. So we put a lot of work in to make both worlds exist.

Tomb Raider Underworld is out on November 21 on Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, PS2, PC and DS.