Rise Of The Tomb Raider – Lara’s dual-wielding climbing axes

The first preview of Rise Of The Tomb Raider reveals The Last Of Us style crafting, bigger puzzle tombs, and the first story hints.

American mag Game Informer has run a 12-page preview of Xbox 360 and Xbox One exclusive Rise Of The Tomb Raider, providing the first proper info on the game’s story and new features.

The details still remain relatively vague, but Rise Of The Tomb Raider will return to the series’ globetrotting routes – rather than taking place all in one location like the reboot. Siberia has already been confirmed as one of the main locations, with unspecified desert and forest areas also teased.



The plot centres around an invisible Russian city, the secret of immortality, and a shadowy secret society. Apparently nobody believes Lara about the supernatural samurai from the last game and so she’s become obsessed with proving that such things do exist around the world.


For some reason though Jonah Maiava, the cook from the last game, is now her sidekick; which is terrible news as far as we’re concerned, as we couldn’t stand her awful collection of friends/national stereotypes – and him least of all. (Okay, maybe the alcohol and headbutt-obsessed Glaswegian was worse.)

In terms of gameplay the game will now feature The Last Of Us style crafting, with Lara collecting various raw materials to make things like traps, grenades, Molotov cocktails, first aid kits, and poisonous ammo. She’ll also wield dual climbing axes.

As a result animal hunting will be expanded with improved artificial intelligence and prey that has to be tracked, or which only comes out at certain times of the day. Animals and enemies will also have simulated line of sight and hearing, which will be affected by things like rain and fog.

Rise Of The Tomb Raider – we can bear-ly contain ourselves (sorry)

Puzzles are promised to be more complicated than last time, with a whole ancient language to decipher, but the preview is vague about whether the platforming will returning to something closer to the original Tomb Raider games. Although the reference to ‘larger puzzle tombs’ makes it sound like all that will still be treated as an optional bonus for older fans.

The final titbit is that Crystal Dynamics aren’t making the Xbox 360 version of the game, which has been offloaded to Nixxes Software – who have worked with them before on ports of their other games.

‘We’re wholly focused on Rise being an Xbox One title without limitation, without even thinking of the Xbox 360 version,’ says Crystal Dynamics studio head Darrell Gallagher.

There’s still no release date for Rise Of The Tomb Raider, although it is expected out in time for Christmas – and at roughly the same time as PlayStation 4 exclusive Uncharted 4. It’s still assumed that Rise is only a timed exclusive on Xbox, but no other versions are due this year.

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