Lara Croft is coming back in Shadow of the Tomb Raider, set to be available simultaneously on September 14th for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Christian was able to try the game and report his first impressions of the demo earlier this week, but since then the folks at Eidos Montréal (now leading development with Crystal Dynamics in a consultant role and Nixxes due to port the game on PC) have shared more information on the gameplay systems.

In an interview published on PC Gamer's latest magazine (issue 318, June 2018), they said that tombs won't have to be solved via trial and error.

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Vincent Monnier (Gameplay Director) We avoid trial and error, where you’d have to die to understand what’s happening. What we use, from the beginning of this trilogy, is tinkering. This tinkering is really about manipulating, usually the physics object and pulling things and making you go, ‘Oh, okay, so if I put that there and do that it’s going to work, but if I do that I’m going to die.’ That’s why players usually don’t feel cheated by the game because you always have a way to anticipate any kind of danger.

The absence of a real trial and error mechanics should be all the more welcome now that tombs and puzzles in general are going to be much deadlier in Shadow of the Tomb Raider.

Interestingly, the game will have several hubs and the developers even teased that the biggest one may be changed throughout the game depending on Lara's actions.

Jill Murray (Lead Writer) We are going to have a few hubs. including the biggest hub that we’ve had so far. So people will get a more up close and personal look at the culture, not from the perspective of the artifacts necessarily, but meeting people and having to live alongside them. Vincent Monnier (Gameplay Director) The hub has a different aspect to it because of the living world. There is much more we can work with, with how the player plays and what the player has achieved during the game.

The first gameplay footage of Shadow of the Tomb Raider should debut at E3 2018.