Square Enix wants to make it very clear that the new Tomb Raider is very different from the old Tomb Raider.
The upcoming Tomb Raider may offer gameplay similar to that of earlier entries in the series, but it’s painfully obvious that the light-hearted, happy-go-lucky attitude of the old Lara is a distant, fading memory. In fact, it almost looks like she’s being punished for all the fun she had during those glory years: The tombs plundered, the treasures looted and the escapes unscathed are clearly a thing of the past – or, I suppose, the future.
The trailer tries awfully hard to establish that the new Lara isn’t the smooth operator portrayed in the original games. Lara 2.0 starts her day hanging upside in some cannibal cave, then sets herself on fire, gets a quick rebar appendectomy and makes good her escape, after which things really start to go wrong.
I don’t care much for either the silly exposition – “I need to find a way out!” – or the tired presence of Inception-esque mini-bwaaams, but the video certainly makes a deep, dark-and-gritty impression. If it plays as good as it looks, this might just be the game that finally brings the old girl – the franchise, not the character – back to relevance.
The all-new, considerably-less-pleasant Tomb Raider is scheduled to come out on March 5, 2013, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.
