This week GameSpot is sharing a set of special features on Rise of the Tomb Raider. Come back each day for a new look at Lara Croft's latest adventure, set to launch on November 10. Today's story features an evaluation of Lara's psyche, a deep dive into what she's feeling and the motivations driving her at the start of the game.
Last summer, during E3 2014, we got our first glimpse of battle-scarred Lara Croft since the conclusion of her adventure in Yamatai; head bowed beneath a hood, legs nervously fidgeting, she looked nothing like the cool, confident Lara of Tomb Raider titles past. Rise of the Tomb Raider, the second title in the franchise's reboot, opens with Lara in a significantly different frame of mind, and will detail how she grew into the strong and capable archeologist-adventurer we know.
At the end of 2013's Tomb Raider, we left Lara in turmoil. The events on the island of Yamatai forever changed her; she had glimpsed a world stranger and more spiritual than ours, and learned that maybe every myth is not just a myth. Having learned to survive in the wilderness and defend herself made her a stronger person, but witnessing many deaths--including some of her friends--left her emotionally bruised.
The Lara we saw in that first trailer for Rise of the Tomb Raider was shrouded in the darkness of a doctor's office, with what appeared to be a therapist peppering her with questions. These brief scenes were intercut with clips of Lara braving snowy wildernesses and dizzying heights, the light from a torch triumphantly blazing across her face as she entered stony ruins. I sat with game director Brian Horton and franchise creative director Noah Hughes to talk about this new side of Lara. Is she coping with post-traumatic stress? Is she upset that people don't believe her stories about the events of Yamatai?
"When we think about what Lara's gone through, she's suffered through these traumatic events, seen friends die, and come out of the situation forever changed," Horton said. "That obviously has an affect on her mental state and her psyche. The idea of her in the doctor's office was a way for us to express the idea that yes, she has gone through some stuff, and she probably is mentally affected by it. But that doctor wasn't necessarily helping her deal with those problems. In a way, that doctor was a construct for the people at large that don't quite believe her, and believe that she is in some way hallucinating or telling tall tales about her experiences in Yamatai.
"A lot of that tapping and fidgeting, while you can attribute to the stress that she had from the events, is more the unease that she has with being questioned for what she's saying is true," he continued. "There is a tension between what people think of her and what she knows to be true, and they're at odds with one another. Traditional therapy isn't what Lara needs at this point; what she needs is a way to reconcile the pain that she has suffered and also the draw that she has, this compulsion, to discover more of these things now that she's just glimpsed them on Yamatai."
The tension in Lara's life is so great--the desire to pursue the truth for herself and the inability to settle back into a normal life--that she has outcasted herself from society. Unwavering, unflinching, she's committed herself to the cause, offering us a glimpse of the daredevil Lara Croft of the series' past. But on her way to that point, her motivations aren't entirely altruistic; there's selfishness in her desire to leave conventional life behind, and in her need to find her secrets on her own.
"I break it down on two sides," Hughes explained. "Coming back from Yamatai there is a sense of: how can you return, after you've been through what she's been through? Not just the physical trauma, but glimpsing something that can't be explained, something that could change the world. How can you just go back to a normal job, right? So even if she tried to stuff that back inside, there's this little voice going, 'But what if this is real? Think of the difference it can make!' There's this burden of destiny that she can't shake, no matter what."