Leaving Lara

My first true love was Lara. I’ve been playing videogames since I was a little girl but I only truly fell in love with the medium when I met Miss Croft. It’s not the character herself, really, it was the exploration of ancient tombs and ruins in beautiful distant lands. Adventuring and exploring are still the things I love most about gaming. I’m not so interested in combat, highscores or even complex stories that challenge your ethics and way of thinking. I just want to explore lovely places and find all the nooks and crannies, treasure chests and sparkly secrets. The other element that really captured my heart about the Tomb Raider games was the sense of isolation; a lone woman dwarfed by a vast, still and silent place, frozen in time.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light has me worried. I mean, I’m not complaining. I’m glad to see the franchise diversifying and fighting to survive in an industry where smaller, more quickly developed games are thriving in the downloadable market. That’s all great, and if that’s the way it has to be then fair enough, but the features of Guardian of Light are co-op play with Lara being joined by another character, Totec, a Mayan tribesman and fast combat, where enemies drop gems that can be collected to gain points for your highscore. My concern isn’t that my beloved game is going to have gameplay that doesn’t focus on exploration, it’s that Tomb Raider was the definition of exploratory gameplay. If that has to change for the franchise to survive does that mean that exploration in general is a gameplay concept that doesn’t sell anymore?

Will exploration of big environments go the way of blue skies and cartoon animal partnerships? We remember fondly the lonely landscapes of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and Beyond Good and Evil but where are they now? Nathan Drake was still flying the flag last year, but that isolation and vastness was replaced by smart-mouthed team ups and online competitive multiplayer. Even Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood will introduce eight player multiplayer and the use of a cannon – not exactly the lone master of the silent blade we’ve come to know. If it is the end of Lara’s lone journeys into unknown lands I’ll be very sad. Only one man will be able to comfort me. I’ll ride off into the sunset with Red Dead Redemption’s John Marston, watching the sun set on another gaming era.