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The first thing that strikes you upon seeing the new Tomb Raider live-demoed on a massive 115\u201d TV mere inches from your face, I can attest, is its visual fidelity: Legacy of Atlantis<\/em> is absurdly pretty. Crammed with fine detail enough that every particle of dust and bat guano flitting through the stale air poses danger to your airways, it almost feels like it\u2019s supposed to be funny when compared to the chunky textures and pointy polygons of the 32-bit original.<\/p>\nThe game\u2019s director Raul Siqueira puts it nicely during our session: \u201cthe secret to a good remake is knowing what to change, and what to leave well alone\u201d. Absolutely. Preserving the essence of a thing is much more vital than slavishly recreating the original work, and this is certainly something that Legacy of Atlantis understands, aesthetically at least. It is unmistakably a modern interpretation of Lara Croft\u2019s seminal adventure, an essential piece of gaming history arguably as important as Super Mario Bros<\/em>. or Chuckie Egg<\/em> (ask your dad). <\/p>\n<\/p>\nstill iconic as ever<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
This latest preview focuses on LoA\u2019s interpretation of the Damocles Room, the infamous chamber of raining swords that caused instant death for the uncareful while sifting through the tombs of ancient Greece. It\u2019s a frighteningly vertical space, one that cemented Tomb Raider\u2019s reputation for traversal-puzzles and terrifying jumps that make your insides curdle. Legacy of Atlantis preserves these aspects and then some, the feeling of being a tiny speck of human in an impossibly deep cavern of flakey pillars and dusty godrays made all the more potent by the sheer graphical prowess on offer. That fine detail, that premium fidelity, it stretches off into the distance and pulls off a sense of scale that could only be hinted at on PS1 hardware. Or PS2 hardware. Or PS3, for that matter. <\/p>\n
And these swords that dangle so menacingly, they\u2019re big. They\u2019re almost house-sized.. The big twist in this version of the Damocles Room is that, rather than being deadly obstacles, the swords are helpful almost to the point of politeness: they\u2019re needed for traversing the space, as Lara can now perch on their hilts after they\u2019ve dropped. And in stark contrast to bat poop, the dropping itself barely poses any danger. The swords are easily dodged, and their drops can be triggered from a safe distance by shooting at them, rendering them little more than another minor inconvenience that Lara gets to solve with hot lead.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nCall that a sword?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
Much like the poor leopard she encounters on the way here, on which the camera lingers majestically as she delivers a breathless \u201cmagnificent\u201d right before shooting it in the face. I thought this was hilarious and burst out laughing involuntarily, which turned out to be massively out of step with the rest of the room. I even asked the devs about this in the following Q&A: \u201cIs that meant to be funny?\u201d<\/p>\n
No, basically. While Lara has no shortage of handy quips, delivered with requisite English public-school plummyness by the wonderful Alix Wilton Regan, this is I\u2019m assured a serious game with a serious tone. So anyone expecting a modicum of self-awareness from this third<\/em> distinct version of Lara\u2019s original adventure, not counting the recent remaster, will be disappointed.<\/p>\nIt highlights a tonal mismatch between the various eras of Lara Croft that this game seeks to blend together. As a nexus point of Crystal Dynamics\u2019 new \u201cunified timeline\u201d for the series, Legacy of Atlantis seeks to replace both the original game and 2007\u2019s Anniversary in the PS1 and Legend timelines, while serving as a sequel to the Survivor Trilogy, which we last visited in 2018\u2019s Shadow of the Tomb Raider<\/em>. It requires a lot of mental gymnastics to imagine that all of these disparate Laras are the very same bored aristocrat, not least because each of them reflects the time they were conceived in. It\u2019s clear that neither the original games nor the Legend timeline are occurring after the mid-2010s, as clear as it is that this new take on Lara\u2019s original adventure isn\u2019t happening in 1996.<\/p>\n<\/p>\ntbh I’m team bat, Lara’s in their gaffe<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
You could argue that it\u2019s all supposed to feel timeless and perpetual, like The Simpsons, but you can\u2019t tell me that pointy PS1 Lara Croft looks like she knows what an iPhone is. There\u2019s also an element of parody to the previous eras, as plenty of Indiana Jones and sixties spy tropes were playfully redeployed as foils for 90s Girl Power, and then again as welcome ballast to the prevailing dourness of post-9\/11 Bond movies. A playfulness that the Survivor Trilogy dropped entirely, focusing sharply on the 2010s appropriate misery of being a teenager who unwittingly spends her gap year having to murder dozens of Russian mercenaries while worrying about whether her tetanus shots are up to date.<\/p>\n
The point is, all of these flavours of Tomb Raider are distinctly of their time, which is absolutely fine. Smooshing them together into a paste is a weird decision and one that seems to be inspiring some questionable choices, like the inclusion of survival mechanics like crafting and skill trees in this redux of Lara\u2019s original adventure, things that seem to be there just because the last game had them or, worse, because that\u2019s what games are like now. Things that don\u2019t make thematic sense: if this is 2013 Lara finally reaching her prime, her zenith, her most capable self \u2013 as the survivor trilogy always promised to be leading to \u2013 then why are we still spending the game unlocking her skills?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nImagine my face doing the “yes dear” meme<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
Why are we \u201csurviving\u201d at all, eating foraged meals cooked in the field, when this isn\u2019t a survival scenario? Lara hasn\u2019t been stranded here, she came to these ruins of her own accord, presumably in a rented jeep. It\u2019s only Greece, you can go on Ryanair for twenty quid. This is a capable explorer who would have a meticulous itinerary and a bag full of protein bars and jerky, she wouldn\u2019t be winging it on the basis of eating boiled moss.<\/p>\n
Nor would this classically educated aristocrat seem to need a detective mode scanner thing that gives her puzzle hints and provides handy historical commentary. In fairness, its usage is entirely optional, and seems to be there to address a common criticism of the more recent Tomb Raiders, namely that Lara seems to spend a lot of time chatting to herself.<\/p>\n
None of these things are dealbreakers, they\u2019re just prominently questionable choices in a game full of them. As is the decision to employ, then defend, the studio\u2019s use of generative AI in development. Granted, feelings in the community are mixed on this \u2013 some care, some don\u2019t, most are probably blissfully unaware of the controversy \u2013 but it tends to go down like a shotgunned leopard with enthusiasts, and so using it at all feels like unnecessarily tainting your project before it\u2019s even out.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\ntbf this food lasts a long time. cos nobody will eat it<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
Because they\u2019ve admitted to using it, it\u2019s hard not to look for evidence of it. I\u2019ll be blunt, the food crafting menus are looking very suspicious. Video game depictions of food are an art form in and of themselves, and often, they are notable for looking absolutely delicious. Who can forget the sweetrolls of Skyrim or the lavish gourmet meals conjured up by Ignis in Final Fantasy 15? In Legacy of Atlantis, though, the food looks kinda disgusting. Despite what the accompanying description says, Lara\u2019s lunches all look rather aptly like slop. Mushy stews of unrecognisable plant matter and meat you\u2019d hesitate to put in a dog.<\/p>\n
To be clear, this is all circumstantial \u2013 we don\u2019t know for sure if these elements are derived from AI, and the studio for their part has insisted that everything in the final game will be human made or human \u201crefined\u201d \u2013 but it demonstrates how damning even a faint association with generative AI can be. Especially if the results are this unappetising.<\/p>\n
The game is still many months away from release, and what we\u2019ve seen of it so far is by no means final. There\u2019s time to iron out the kinks and excise the final traces of generative AI that may or may not be plaguing the current build (not that you can un-use genAI any more than a bat can un-shit a temple floor).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nlegacy of atlantis is undeniably gorgeous<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
As the second remake of a ground-breaking game, Legacy of Atlantis has a lot to live up to. It certainly justifies itself by playing differently from the existing versions: there\u2019s never been a Tomb Raider game quite like this, for better or worse. And though the challenge element has been dramatically reduced in the Damocles Room (and therefore, one presumes, the rest of the adventure), incorporating the giant swords into a traversal puzzle is inspired, and the way it plays out in the demo hints at something fresh: a puzzle with a fixed solution, but multiple routes to reach it.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\nit’s a long way down<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/output><\/p>\n
And it really can\u2019t be stressed enough how beautiful it all is. On a technical level the fidelity in every image is positively retina-searing, but it\u2019s all sumptuously lit and pocked with a gnarly decay that makes the ancient world sing with a sense of history. Lara herself has never looked better, a depiction that successfully blends the slightly cartoony Lara of the Legend trilogy with her naturalistic, mud-caked, cortisol-saturated counterpart of Tomb Raider 2013. New Lara spent her youth avoiding certain death in some of the most deadly corners of the earth, from Syria to Siberia, yet moves with all the balletic flourishes that the Survivor Trilogy sidelined in favour of Uncharted-style handhold grappling. Every jump, flip, and bullet-time whip exudes joy: this is a Lara who revels in being Lara. She even does that handstand backflip thing when hoisting herself onto a platform (in the build we saw, a little too often, but I heavily suspect it was dialled up for this demo).<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a lot to love here. A celebration of all Tomb Raiders past and present, one that treats all of the previous eras as equally important to the series\u2019 legacy, is refreshingly inclusive. In these sorts of franchise overhauls, someone\u2019s favourite usually gets overlooked in pursuit of whatever is deemed to be the most <\/em>iconic or fundamental. To have a project here that treats the whole thing as gospel is admirable, if dauntingly hard to chew.<\/p>\nAs someone who grew up with Lara and has enjoyed every iteration of Tomb Raider, I desperately want to be on board for this new, unified journey. But a mixture of dubious choices, mechanical and ethical, are making it a tough sell at the moment. I very much doubt Lara would choose to consume suspicious looking slop if any alternatives were available, and neither should anyone else.<\/p>\n
Jim Trinca is a Video Producer at IGN, and when he isn’t fawning over Assassin’s Creed, he can be found watching Star Trek and eating stuff. Follow him on <\/em>@jimtrinca.bsky.social, and check out <\/em>The Trinca Perspective playlist over on IGN’s YouTube channel!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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