March 27th, 2002 (12:00am) - 16:36 Core Design boss Jeremy Smith hinted today that the relationship between the leading UK developer and Sony is unlikely to be broken for this generation of hardware. Smith said it would "make sense" for the upcoming set of Tomb Raider games to appear exclusively on the machine, although he declined to go into any serious detail on the wrangling involved in offering the franchise as a PS2 exclusive.
It’s as edgy as edgy can be, this new Tomb Raider lark, so read on for the Core big man’s views on Xbox, art and just what is new about Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
So you had a good time at the launch?
Smith: Absolutely. We achieved everything we wanted to get across: the mood of the game, we wanted to get across that Lara’s still Lara, and we wanted to get across that we’re back. You know, we’ve never been away, we’ve just been a bit busy [laughs].
Obviously the fact that it’s a PS2 exclusive isn’t really a shock but you would have thought Sony would have to shell out a fair amount of money for that. Got any idea how much it was?
Smith: I think it isn’t just about cash, if I’m honest with you. This is a relationship we’ve had for seven years with Sony. Sony and Core grew each other’s brands in the early days. If you look back at where we were when we launched Tomb Raider, it was the second year of PlayStation, this time it’s going to be the second year of PlayStation 2. The timing’s right; it just makes sense that we co-op on advertising and everything else. Cash on the table? Don’t know, but I know this for a fact: it made a lot of sense for us to do it.
A lot of people were expecting an Xbox version. What happened with your discussions with Microsoft? Did you just decide that Sony was a better partner?
Smith: Exactly, to be honest with you. We’ve got a good relationship with Microsoft and we like their machine, but we just feel that what we want out of the franchise we can get better with Sony.
You’ve taken a very different direction with Lara this time. You promised it would be dark, and it certainly is that. What worried us a little were the references to great artists and so on. Are you really aiming to deliver a highbrow product?
Smith: Yeah, I think there was a bit of, shall we say, artistic license there. These guys are artists; you know what they’re like. I’m a gamer. This game is going to be squarely aimed at the Tomb Raider fan-base, so she is Lara and it’s aimed exactly there. The story has the mystery; the game will get some of that across, but at the end of the day it’s still a 3D action adventure game and we don’t want to lose that.
What are you bringing in that’s new? We saw the aspects that were obviously heavily influenced by Metal Gear there, and you’ve got the darker storyline, but what can we really expect that going to be new over the rest of the franchise?
Smith: Well, it’s been really well reported that there’s a second character to be introduced in the game. I don’t want to dwell on that, because we’re going to talk through that a little later on in the year. Also, we’ve changed Lara to be far more flexible. Her character now has matured; she’s going communicate with other people in the game.
She’s actually going to have a skill-set rating as well. We’re not going RPG, what we’re trying to say is that when you’re in an environment there could be two ways to solve a puzzle such as getting to a room. One could be climbing up a wall and going through a window. If you’re a Tomb Raider die-hard fan you’ll probably know to try that. If you’re new to it you’ll probably go through a door and go up through the building. If you go by the direct route we may give you a special move, say, for example, to jump further. That special move will ultimately be given to all the players, you just get it a bit quicker. And then there’s just the freedom that the PlayStation 2 enables us to do now. You saw Lara do that stealthy move by moving up behind a character and break his neck: for the first time she’s going to have hand-to-hand combat. She’s going to use stealth, but this isn’t a Metal Gear Solid Game, this is a Tomb Raider game, but of course we looked at Metal Gear and Resident Evil and said, "Those two games are great games, what can we take out of that?" I know for a fact those two companies [Konami and Capcom] took some stuff out of our game, which is fine. I’m pretty relaxed about that. I think we’re in good company.
You wanted to make Lara grow with the fanbase, because the people that were playing it years ago are obviously a lot older now, and they want something that’s far more adult. Do you really think that you’re going to deliver a truly adult title or are you still looking to appeal to younger players as well?
Smith: Well it’s a question of defining adult really, isn’t it? What we’re trying to give the older player now, people that have grown up with Lara, is where we think you are. We want it to be a little more edgy, we want Lara to have different outfits and do different things. We still want it to be the classic jumping and looking for puzzles, but we want some extra elements in there like stealth and hand-to-hand combat. Define what you mean by adult. We think we’re appealing to all audiences, but our heart is set to appeal to the Tomb Raider fan. We certainly haven’t taken our eye off the ball there.
If we can talk about the future of the series: you signed the game as a PlayStation 2 exclusive. Can we expect the entire storyline to simply appear on PlayStation 2 and PC?
Smith: We haven’t announced that yet but it would probably make sense. When we designed Tomb Raider 1, we designed one game. We didn’t think we’d do four as we didn’t know how successful it would be. We’re sat here now, 28 million copies later, with the benefit of hindsight which is wonderful. But this time we’ve designed a game which we feel will unfold and lead into other games, so we’ve devised a plot which is almost like X-Files. It doesn’t kind of end, but it does end: there’s always something left for you to latch on to. We’ve designed a story to spin out as many games as we need to do.
How many can we expect to see in this storyline, taking Angel of Darkness as the first chapter?
Smith: It’s hard to say. We’ve got the first one and then we’re going to take stock and see where we are afterwards. As I said, we can do as many as we need to do. We have no definitive plans as yet.
