A late-game conversation with a blind man provides some particularly elegant insight into Croft’s character and is also entirely missable.įor those skipping the civilian interactions, or even for those who don’t, the good news is that the jungle gym of Shadow of the Tomb Raider is largely a step up from the already superbly enjoyable Rise. There are at least a few hours of this extra stuff, some of it spread across 13 optional sidequests that provide many of Shadow’s best moments, at least for those who will be satisfied with well-written character interaction. Players who do only those things, however, will miss experiencing a Lara Croft who is more of a listener and helper, who conceivably can get as much out of hearing a stranger’s story as she could finding some buried bauble. The creators of Shadow of the Tomb Raider have beefed up systems for conversation and offer a slew of mostly non-violent side-quests involving townspeople but leave them skippable by those who wish to focus on plunging into tombs, shooting the paramilitary bad guys and following the game’s main story through. ![]() It’s optional and serves as a subtle representation of how little it is necessary in real or virtual life to listen or understand before grabbing the thing you want. but Trinity is here.”Īll of this chit-chat isn’t required to play the game. I was so focused on the trail of clues I didn’t even stop to wonder. “I was expecting an ancient place-artifacts, tombs-I just failed to imagine… people. “I didn’t foresee any of this,” she says. By that point she seems to have grown more aware of her potential for causing collateral damage. Later in the game, Croft travels deeper into the jungle and discovers a small city called Paititi, which is full of people with their own problems and possibilities. “It’s a shame you’re not a tourist,” Croft is told early on by a woman in a small Peruvian town that has already been ravaged by an oil-drilling company. It’s even more striking that some of these people, and Croft herself, express some doubts about the virtue of her trade. It’s unusual enough that the game fills its world with people to talk to, greatly expanding players’ opportunities to take a break from jungle exploration by heading into town and prompting scripted conversations. It also arises in the many conversations she can have with the ordinary civilians whose villages and hidden cities have the mixed fortune of being on the dotted path toward her next desired treasure. The question of Croft’s moral legacy is floated throughout much of the game, mostly in cutscenes. ![]() Hell, half the time she’s the one swinging the hand axe. The fact remains that when Lara Croft drops into town, things break. Her best friend, Jonah, attempts to reassure her that it isn’t her fault, but his words ring false. The fact remains that at the start of the game, Croft snatches a precious item from a tomb and sets loose a cataclysm of death. ![]() Croft’s excesses in chasing down buried treasures are often motivated by the fact that they, too, are hunting the thing in question, often with plans to use it to nefarious ends. Trinity, an evil and well-armed secret society, are the primary bad guys in the franchise’s new chronology, which started with the 2013 reboot. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara Croft ventures from Mexico into the jungles of Peru to outrace a fanatical Christian militia called Trinity in a quest to get some artifacts that could trigger the end of the world. Once more you gradually level up Lara Croft as you attain more experience points and virtual gold to spend on new skills, outfits and weapons.īut maybe, this sequel invites players to ponder, all this snatching of other cultures’ hidden artifacts isn’t the most enlightened cause. Once more you engage in a combination of platforming, puzzle-solving, exploration, and combat, usually sneaking around with a bow and arrow before alerting a guard and transitioning into outright gunplay. Once more you make your way into an exotic location, climbing and puzzle-solving your way through tombs, ruins, and enemy installations. It’s built on the sturdy traditions of the 22-year-old franchise and uses most of the same smart systems for exploration and combat that were introduced in 2013’s Tomb Raider reboot and refined in 2015’s Rise of the Tomb Raider. It’s fun and beautiful and is a lengthy adventure full of enjoyable Tomb Raidery things. Despite the navel-gazing self-reflection that question implies, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is not a dreary buzzkill.
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