January 31, 2008 - She's been a Legend, inspired Chronicles and had world-spanning Adventures. She just recently celebrated her Anniversary, revisiting old stomping grounds. She's even leapt from consoles to PCs, handhelds to mobile phones and taken on the box office twice. Over the years, Lara Croft's popularity has never waned as she's explored ruins, tombs and other historical sites. But her latest expedition will pit her against dangerous enemies, new hazards and some treacherous myths. We got a chance to check out the demo for the upcoming Tomb Raider Underworld twice, and thanks to the various enhancements and new abilities Lara has available, this could be the deepest Tomb Raider yet.

Eric Lindstrom, the Creative Director, and Rob Pavey, the Lead Programmer of Tomb Raider Underworld were our guides as we embarked on this demo. While Rob showed off Lara's moves, Eric pointed out that the design team wanted to focus on taking "the core elements of Tomb Raider and translate them into next-generation gameplay," using the various systems and their elements to tell a large scale story with impressive mechanics. To focus upon this, they isolated three key innovations that they chose to hone in on: the first was the concept of Lara against the world – she'll explore treacherous terrain in the game that very few, if any, humans have been to, and she'll have to react to any threats or hazards that may arise.

Prepare to make your own paths.
Prepare to make your own paths.
Secondly, the team wanted Lara to affect the world and the world to affect Lara. By saying that, the developers wanted to give players the feeling that they were explorers, and that they could manipulate items or elements of the world freely, but in a natural way to help them choose their paths or solutions to puzzles. Finally, the team wanted Lara to be able to do anything players expected her to. This last choice was made so that players had the ability to take chances with Lara as they explored the various pathways of the title, trying different moves or actions that seemed realistic or believable as they made their way through each level. This became more clear as we went into the demo.

While it was a pre-alpha build of the game, the demo was designed as a showcase to highlight some of Lara's new abilities, as well as the improvements that the design team have been bringing to the series. Set halfway through the fourth level amidst Mayan ruins in Chiapas, Lara had to try to find a missing skull artifact that she needed to solve a puzzle. It wasn't going to be as simple as it sounded, particularly because the area she was exploring was swarming with poachers that were looking for jaguars to kill. This section highlighted the emergent nature of the combat, which, according to Eric, has been designed "to get enemies in your face as quickly and as aggressively as possible."

These jaguars and poachers don't have a chance.
These jaguars and poachers don't have a chance.
Both the enemy AI and animals reacted to and attacked based on the threat they perceived from their line of sight. This meant that Lara could use the confusion of battle to get the poachers and jaguars to target each other while she stayed back and picked off the survivors. It also meant that she had to be careful, because your opponents won't blindly fling themselves towards you either; both sets of enemies would use ambush and squad tactics to eliminate their targets, actively seek cover to protect themselves, and retreat if they needed.



To give Lara a hand within combat, the developers gave her a new set of fighting abilities. For one thing, she can knock down enemies with a full set of punches, kicks, knees and acrobatic tumbles. Melee objects, such as poles, can be picked up and swung against opponents. For instance, Lara can use a pole to smack a jaguar across the nose, forcing it to run away in pain. She can also use grenades or her pistols, although she now has the ability to split her focus to target two separate enemies at the same time. This lets her take down multiple enemies at once, or force one into cover so she can then concentrate her fire on a nearby threat.

Once all of the threats were eliminated, Lara climbed a flight of steps and mounted a platform with ruined pillars. This allowed Eric to point out some of the new presentational elements that the team has put into place for Underworld. First of all, this is the most detailed Lara that players have seen to date: a dozen texture and shaders are being used for Lara alone, and Rob pointed out that there's easily ten times the number of polygons for her in Underworld than there were used in TR: Legend. Underworld also uses a number of lighting and shadow models on her, including a hybridized mix of dynamic lighting and pre-set light maps for the environments, and spherical harmonics to bring out the color and tone of the world around her and take light from her surroundings. For instance, if Lara walks into an area with lush vegetation, the light cast will pull out the green tones of the leaves and foliage and bathe Lara in natural light.

Don't look down...
Don't look down...
Along with this, Lara will get dirty from her activities, such as running through puddles or climbing along ledges. This mud will collect and persistently stay on Lara and her clothes, although during the demo, the rain that continually poured from the sky washed Lara clean quickly. (Were the rain to stop, Lara and her clothes would dry as well.) Apart from the clothing, Lara now features more than 1000 physical animations that have been mocapped by gymnasts, and include facial grimaces and smirks when she fires her guns, as well as running and contextual animations. For instance, as Lara picks up poles, she'll use her free hand to push shrubs and other items out of her way as she moves.

Poles play a larger role within Underworld, and are just a part of the new compliment of exploratory moves Lara has to navigate Underworld's passages. For instance, she can pull poles from walls and sink them in receptacles to create new "steps" and footholds. Some of these poles can also be walked along and balanced on to give Lara additional flexibility in her navigation of the environment, or thrown to areas ahead of her. Other new navigation elements include being able to grab and perch onto corners of walls, as well as reaching across ledges or over to distant ledges. Lara can also free-climb upon any wall that has texture, such as the ornate carved surfaces of walls, rocky outcroppings or other surfaces that are concave or convex to gain access to new areas.

Extreme Makeover: Ruin Edition
Extreme Makeover: Ruin Edition
This actually tied into the flexibility of your surroundings, as there won't necessarily be one defined pathway that Lara has to take to make her way through a level. In fact, players should essentially be able to make their own paths up to help them make their way across the environments. The one that Rob demonstrated included a mix of pole balancing (which will be governed by the analog sticks to maintain Lara's balance), ledge climbing and wall jumping. In fact, it also allowed him to demonstrate a new technique that Lara has, which is wall kicking across narrow pillars to reach new heights, and the ability to use Lara's grappling hook to wrap around and pull objects, which she used to smash her way through a stone floor into a hidden underground chamber.


The destruction of the floor was based on an improved dynamic physics system that was taken from TR: Legend, and takes advantage of a persistent debris system that continually reflects any damage to the environment. Underworld also includes a complex material system to reflect the moisture or slickness of some environments as they become wet. For example, as Lara tried to climb down into the chamber, her grip slipped due to the stream of water and rain that poured onto the ledge below. Rob had to quickly reestablish her grip to keep her from falling and severely injuring herself. However, this descent into the chamber further showed off new moves, such as the ability to climb and perch onto pillars, as well as firing guns while perched atop these columns. In fact, Lara can even grab onto a ledge with one hand and fire with the other if threats are constantly emerging.



This was demonstrated as Lara reached the floor of the chamber and pulled the skull artifact from its receptacle, releasing a flood of spiders. With such a dangerous torrent of arachnids falling on him, Rob blasted, stomped and kicked the spiders away as he scaled the walls once again to return to the ground above. Of course, due to the slickness of the walls, Lara slipped once again, and had to fight to hang on. Underscoring this sequence was a rising musical score, which Eric pointed out was being used to highlight the action and drama of the sequences, and have been crafted to match the tone of the level that Lara is on.

I can see your crypt from here!
I can see your crypt from here!
As Rob helped Lara emerge from the chamber and started to make his way back towards the start of the level, Eric pointed out another facet of the persistent debris system of the game: due to the size and the nature of the game levels in Underworld, players can use the havoc they cause as a path marker to direct them back to areas they've previously explored. In such a non-linear world, this can be useful to minimize the chances of getting lost, and it's easier to follow the trail of bodies and broken objects. In the case of the demo, Rob retraced his steps, sprinting past the corpses (another new maneuver, by the way) to reach a Mayan ball court with Mayan calendars overlooking the playing field. The ball court was modeled on actual ruins and environments that the designers spent multiple days photographing and documenting for the title.

Eric pointed out that the Mayan calendar only had 360 days, and that the other five days of the year were unnamed between one year and the next. Supposedly, on those mysterious days, the doors to Hell were opened. By manipulating the calendar, Lara could potentially open these gates and proceed into the underworld, known as Xibalba. This is where the multi-layered puzzles of Underworld came in, and while the demo was set so that it could easily be manipulated, players will have to traverse the stage multiple times and figure out how to trigger the puzzle. Doing so was impressive, as large statues arose from the ball court spewing flame. However, there was a problem, as there was a very limited amount of time to trigger open the gates and enter the underworld before the gates shut and the calendar was reset.

Welcome to the Mayan Hell, Lara. Stay awhile.
Welcome to the Mayan Hell, Lara. Stay awhile.
Fortunately, Rob had set Lara's motorcycle outside of the calendar room, and was able to reset the calendar rather quickly. She tumbled under a gate and leapt onto the cycle, which was somewhat hazardous by itself, particularly because the path down to the ballcourt was lined with spike pits from the poachers that Lara had eliminated earlier. However, Rob deftly avoided these pits with solid driving, and opened the throttle up on the motorcycle. A cinematic was triggered, showing her narrowly avoiding the closing stone doors and stopping just before a spike pit within the underworld. Lara had successfully entered Xibalba.