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 The first game of Tomb Raider reboot was a massive sales failure. Selling only 3.4m copies in its first month, a truly dismal amount that any company would be ashamed of and not at all a product of massively unrealistic expectations for a late generation reboot of a 20 year old franchise that hadn't been truly relevant for at least 10 of those years. It got a remaster less than a year later to bring it to the next gen consoles and at last count was the best selling entry in the entire series with over 14m copies. But trilogies must be done and 2 years later we get the sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider. Rhianna Pratchett remains on writing duties, Camilla Luddington remains the owner of the most English upper class name in history, also the voice of Lara. If this game feels like it never actually happened there's one big reason for that. It was an Xbox exclusive in the period where most people would rather fall onto a rebar spike than buy an Xbox One. It would get its PC and PS4 releases a year later but it wouldn't hit the heights of the first game. Albeit not by much, still selling a solid 12m copies as of 2021. Which is a shame because this is a much better game. The focus is now on more open areas, more complex puzzles, more effort and less misery. That said the basic format is the same, move through areas, reach base camps, same bow/pistol/rifle/shotgun weapon loadout, same 3-branch upgrade system and many of the same basic collectable types. The basic pitch for Rise is that it's TR13, but better in basically every way. I'll be doing the same routine as the last game for the LP, main story progression videos, uncommentated collectable roundups and all the challenge tombs because man, the challenge tombs are so much better this time. Don't ask what happened to Sam by the way. ONWARD TO KITEZH Video Zone 1 - Meet Trinity 2 - BEAR 3 - One True Ship 4 - Down With Cistern 5 - Meet Jacob 6 - Lock Picking Lara 7 - Mine All Mine 8 - The Valley 9 - Lepers and Drones 10 - Village Assault 11 - To The Tower 12 - To The Cathedral njsykora fucked around with this message at 14:33 on Dec 27, 2023 |
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Nov 8, 2023 07:04
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If the last game started a bit slow with all the introductions and backstory, this one hits the ground sprinting. Climbing an unstable mountain, fighting off a home invasion, pickpocketing the primary antagonist all in the first hour. 1 - Meet Trinity 
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Nov 8, 2023 07:06
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This does seem to contain less misery! Good to see that the plot starts off. Good to see that the opposition isn't a shipwreck survivor cult of roughly a hundred thousand people. Also Jonah does the reasonable human thing and turns towards the rock wall to cling onto it while moving along that ledge, showing that the developers know how humans move in that situation, and Lara does the video game thing where the player character turns away from the wall and awkwardly moves along. Sigh.
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Nov 8, 2023 21:05
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I don't *think* I'd seen anything about Trinity going into this game, I'm definitely the kind of player that mostly goes through the story and only grabs collectibles or side stuff if they're readily apparent. That's a reason I appreciate LPs of games I've already played. And yeah, I appreciate what they were going for with the story and representation of Lara in the first one, but it just feels so much more natural gameplay-wise to go into it with her already being a bona fide Tomb RaiderTM.
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Nov 9, 2023 03:32
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I don't suppose there was an interquel comic or story that could shed some light on these new antagonists?
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Nov 9, 2023 04:30
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berryjon posted:I don't suppose there was an interquel comic or story that could shed some light on these new antagonists? Apparently so, in keeping with Square Enix's legendarily terrible marketing department, I had legit never even heard of this. quote:Sam is arrested for assault, but — like her earlier episodes — she can't remember anything about the incident, and due to her violent behavior while being arrested, her bail is denied. She refuses to speak to Lara in prison after Lara admits that she might be going away, screaming at her to go. But clearly I have to buy them now, or at least find somewhere to read them because lol £40 for a new copy of the first volume on Amazon UK.
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Nov 9, 2023 12:17
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Hi, no giant notesfest from me (also didn't get to finish it on the last game), too swamped with other things. Nonetheless I'll include some general observations effortposts. Thanks for continuing the trilogy! One starting bit of effort: Rise is a much worse game than TR13 to 100%. The main reason isn't because it's longer than the previous game- it's because Rise has an absurdly overdeveloped side content system, "Expedition mode", that chases every trend of the era with multiple forms of additional "content." Most of this isn't worth touching with a ten foot pole, but a couple parts of Expedition mode include story elements that might be worth seeing in the LP. Rise of the Tomb Raider Expedition Mode summary Squatting atop Expedition mode are two systems: Cards and Challenges. Cards: Beginning the pattern of trend-chasing, Expedition mode has a a system of modifier cards. Cards are unlocked by DLC, dropped in packs by completing various ingame actions (including within the modes themselves) and, of course, purchaseable with an ingame currency (that I think you could once get with real money). These cards include outfits for Lara that are pure cosmetics, outfits that have significant gameplay effects, and various standalone gameplay effects like removing your autoheal, adding permadeath, giving you infinite flame arrows, big head mode, all skills unlocked, etc. In turn, these cards also modify the scoring systems used by the various expedition modes. Some cards are mode-specific, some are used across several different kinds of side content. Some are permanent; others are burned on use and must be regained. Thankfully, a full playthrough of the game and careful exploitation of the card pack purchasing system can give you a completely full "deck" that is self-sustaining, and once you have that deck, you can exploit these cards to make the side modes much more bearable. Challenges: The player can select a couple "challenges" for each run to earn additional ingame currency for cards, which range from permadeath to killing a certain number of a specific animal. A crazy amount of work went into these challenges, of which there are hundreds, with several dozen tied to each expedition and each "chapter", which I'll cover next. Infuriatingly, you can only select a couple challenges to attempt on each run of each area a given mode. I'm sure this was seen as adding replayability. So what are the "expeditions" that cards and challenges are used in? Chapter Replay and Chapter Replay Elite Almost every single piece of the game, including the story DLC, is broken into 29 "chapters", including extended main story combat segments and a separate chapter for every single challenge tomb. This mode is just to replay each segment, with "elite" being the equivalent of new game plus, letting you play them with unlocked equipment and letting players grind for cards. Score Attack challenges the player to also go through each chapter and earn a score using challenge cards, ideally hitting the threshold for gold. Levels aren't altered other than the addition of score pickups and targets, all of which combine with normal gameplay actions to load into a combo system: getting damaged resets your combo, points earned are affected by what cards you use, etc. Some chapters are easy to get a gold; many are not. Getting all golds is required for 100%. In a spectacularly bad bit of decisionmaking, the first "chapter," covered in video one, is one of the worst balanced for getting a gold score. Remnant Resistance Hey, those IoI people are doing great with player-created custom challenges and leaderboards, maybe we can get in on that! This mode lets players create custom "missions", that are basically just a series of small combat arenas populated with modifiers and challenges- these being a second system of modifier cards and challenges unlocked on top of and inside the existing one, specific to this mode. There's rotating selected "featured missions," etc. Like all user-created custom content, most missions you can find for this system are either trivially easy or stupidly hard, though the limited nature of the mission builder means it's not too bad. Croft Manor Technically its own thing outside of Expeditions, njsykora may actually want to run this. It's practically a walking sim exploration of Lara's backstory in the trilogy, and provides a lot of information that's not learned elsewhere. Lara's Nightmare...hey, resident evil's popular, right? Let's slap together a zombie survivial horror mode set in that Croft Manor environment that we've already built! Who cares that it's not actually set up for gameplay- make it work! This mode in particular is visibly and severely undercooked. Endurance Mode Tomb Raider's already got a survival thing going this time around, so why not create an "endless" wilderness exploration mode? This is that concept, with a dynamically generated map that gradually increases in difficulty, including both procgen environments and tombs. The goal of the mode is to collect as many artifacts as possible then escape, while keeping heat and food meters from going to zero. Oh, and what else is hot right now? co-op! This is one of two modes with a co-op option shoved into the game. The netcode is...not great. This mode was a conceptually strong idea and it kinda works, but as with the rest of the trilogy, the seams show a bit too soon and it's all fairly buggy. Achievements and challenges for the mode are also highly time-consuming, with some runs requiring a lot of luck or more than an hour of time spent ingame. As before, exploiting modifier cards helps. Still, imagine finding a friend to play Tomb Raider survival with so you can stand around a fire barrel shooting and eating respawning pigeons for a couple hours. ...that makes it sound way more fun than it actually is. Fun note: the non-puzzle-y tombs you encounter in the main game, dedicated to the Prophet's followers, are using the same asset structure as the procgen tombs in this mode, and appear to have been used to build out its resources. Cold Darkness Awakened a nebulously canon side story taking place after the main game in which Trinity finds and accidentally unleashes a soviet zombie supersoldier drug and Lara has to clean things up. This is perhaps the most polished of the side modes, including a co-op element that's not required to enjoy it. This mode actually has documents to find that tease the introduction of a character from the third game of the trilogy...it also introduces a new annoying side character directing you (I suspect to save on not getting most of the other VAs to return). Also featured is an instruction-following puzzle mode that's vaguely reminiscent of baby's first Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes, which I suspect was originally going to incorporate the co-op elements with one player reading instructions to the other one. This mode might also be worth a try for the LP, fwiw. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Nov 12, 2023 |
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Nov 10, 2023 08:50
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So I can tell from the length of that list alone that they weren't exactly giving themselves a lot of time to refine any of them.
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Nov 10, 2023 09:18
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Keldulas posted:So I can tell from the length of that list alone that they weren't exactly giving themselves a lot of time to refine any of them. You are correct! I suspect that they were hoping to do some sort of GaaS thing, but in practice almost all of it was bundled with the game or placed into a single season pass upgrade when it came to PC. I have no idea how it worked on Xbox, but I'm guessing not well. To be fair, the whole system may have been part of a publishing agreement.
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Nov 12, 2023 01:25
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I keep starting this game, but I never seem to actually continue it.
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Nov 12, 2023 04:54
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Gideon020 posted:I keep starting this game, but I never seem to actually continue it. Well let me continue it on your behalf. 2 - BEAR 
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Nov 12, 2023 12:57
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For once, I would love it if one of these ancient conspiracies wasn't a monolithic organization that remined unchanged at its core throughout history, always with the same name and goal. Like, where's the people who disagree, who argue that this is this and that is that? Also, being a Scout and living in northern Canada, I saw the damage to the bark on the trees, and my first thought wasn't climbing, but "which animal was rubbing that much?" The deer would do that, but.... oh poo poo. The bear was not a surprise to me at all. Of course, it was a video game bear, and not a real life bear.
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Nov 12, 2023 13:12
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Trinity was set up as mysterious and competent at the end of the first game, and clearly had a different role in it than occurred in subsequent ones. It's also likely that the nearby monitoring ship that sent the second rescue plane being named "Trinity" was not coincidental. However, the terrible extended universe stuff that followed TR13, and all subsequent material for the trilogy, establish that Trinity is sharing in the longstanding role of lovely videogame conspiracy government antagonists, (which I'll call CGAs), holding several key attributes:
Recent examples of this behavior include Providence in the Hitman series and Abstergo and the Templars in Assassin's Creed. The common theme and explanation for this CGA issue is that in reality, giant organizations usually can't be taken down by individual plucky protagonists, especially if they're remotely competent or sophisticated. Such entities don't have load-bearing leaders, and do in fact have literal playbooks to deal with people trying to sink them. They wind up having their own incredible organizational inertia, in no small part because of the combined incentives they offer to participants at all levels. Depicting how such an organization would actually function or dysfunction, or creating a narrative where the player "beats" them, requires directors and writers to have a lot of sophistication to depict the organization with longstanding internal weaknesses or divisions, and a significant runway to plan out exactly how this decline could plausibly occur in some narratively satisfying form that depicts at least some agents of the organization as having something like a brain. Neither of these is commonly in the offering (and helps explain, by contrast, why the megacorps in Cyberpunk are handled so well). Trinity might be the worst CGA I've encountered in this regard, which we'll see in full bloom through the end of the trilogy.
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Nov 13, 2023 01:31
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Discendo Vox posted:Trinity might be the worst CGA I've encountered in this regard, which we'll see in full bloom through the end of the trilogy. I would have liked to see at some point, someone from Trinity just walk up to Lara and go "Hey, I'm with Trinity. Your dad and parts of our organization butted heads in the past, and they're taking it personally. Good job on Yamatai, by the way, we've taken care of the cleanup as best we can for you. Now, some of us think we should adopt a 'live and let live policy', others want to SCP the poo poo out of this, while others are more... religious shall we say? Sadly, you're on all our radar's now, and here's my card. If someone says they're from Trinity and start messing with you, give me a call and I'll see what's going on on my end." Just to establish that Trinity isn't perfect, has discontent in the ranks, and different factions. That way people and groups can believably display various degrees of competence over the course of the encounters. And to have allies and enemies, causing confusion about who to trust, when and why. But that would require good writing, and a willingness to explore shades of grey that aren't "Lara and Friends Good. Everyone Else Evil."
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Nov 13, 2023 05:28
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Ironically the AC templars sort of do some parts of CGA well purely because the series has gone for so drat long and they've built up so much canon that they sort of painted themselves into periodic displays of nuance. Otoh, the games and comics also depict most templars as running recreational child-harvesting factories and the like - and ubisoft in particular likes to make their antagonists ludicrously passive in the face of the heroes climbing all their towers, seizing their regions and opening their treasure chests. The Templars, like a lot of these shadow governments, have to be some sort of incompetent supermonster because if they were competent or nuanced, the protagonists would be the bad guys. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 10:08 on Nov 13, 2023 |
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Nov 13, 2023 10:03
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Discendo Vox posted:Ironically the AC templars sort of do some parts of CGA well purely because the series has gone for so drat long and they've built up so much canon that they sort of painted themselves into periodic displays of nuance. Otoh, the games and comics also depict most templars as running recreational child-harvesting factories and the like - and ubisoft in particular likes to make their antagonists ludicrously passive in the face of the heroes climbing all their towers, seizing their regions and opening their treasure chests. The Templars, like a lot of these shadow governments, have to be some sort of incompetent supermonster because if they were competent or nuanced, the protagonists would be the bad guys. Another possible interpretation is that the true Templar organization really is that vast, and the Assassins aren't a threat to them, but instead happen to be spectacularly (and conveniently deniably) useful in dealing with relatively minor branches that exceed their mandate and go full out cartoon villain. It's just that, AC being the game and genre it is, the relatively minor branches going full on cartoon villain are the part of the Templars we actually see.
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Nov 13, 2023 11:34
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Blasting out airhorn.wav because it's time for a challenge tomb. 3 - One True Ship 
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Nov 15, 2023 12:52
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The use of codices and skill upgrades as the reward for challenge tombs was probably in part a way to defray the whole tomb raiding part of the tomb raider experience. The skills these tombs provide are also often quite good (though this one kinda sucks). From a design perspective, note that this tomb is placed on a "connector" between the initial, very small hub area and another large hub. This is a common approach to challenge tomb placement in this game- rise has probably the most cohesive layout design of the trilogy, with little indication that the order of play was reorganized other than in the second major hub area of the game (and the possibility that a third hub was cut partway through development). The soviet installation hub is probably why few people finish the game; you spend a huge amount of it in very samey environments, and there's a lot of combat with basic enemies before the game introduces much combat variety. On upgrades: I strongly recommend equipping whatever outfit or skill will give you increased scrap or weapon part drops. The game's upgrade structure is much less balanced than the others, and in particular you can wind up needing dozens of those scrap pieces (represented by the nit icon) and springs to finish off some later weapons. On the notes: you can see the really excellent writing and VA work that goes into some of the collectible documents, even if they're not in service to a very well-written whole. On asset reuse: you can see a great example of really, really heavy asset reuse starting at 14:50 in this video. While there's different set dressing, this entire layout and bunker building with the circuitous path leading around a neighboring tower are taken straight out of an area from early in TR13. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Nov 16, 2023 |
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Nov 16, 2023 00:13
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Discendo Vox posted:On asset reuse: you can see a great example of really, really heavy asset reuse starting at 14:50 in this video. While there's different set dressing, this entire layout and bunker building with the circuitous path leading around a neighboring tower are taken straight out of an area from early in TR13. I actually noticed this when playing but forgot to mention it and yeah, it's basically identical to the base in 2013 right down to the jump to the sub-tower outside. Anyway I'm making bad decisions this morning so since I'm expecting to be super tired I'm doing this now so I don't forget. Time for Wet Lara Technology. 4 - Down With Cistern 
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Nov 19, 2023 05:51
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After last video, things actually happen in this one. 5 - Meet Jacob  [/quote]
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Nov 22, 2023 15:49
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An important thing to know in archeology is that getting captured often nets you an assault rifle, neat!
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Nov 22, 2023 20:49
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Lol, I forgot how blase folks in this game can be about deaths, as long as they don't know it was you. *sees colleague erupt into flames* "Well, I *guess* I'll go look around, but maybe it was just his time to go" 
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Nov 23, 2023 05:31
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I mean it is a cult, sometimes people just burst into flames.
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Nov 23, 2023 05:40
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A big brawl and some cold water stands between me and getting lost around the Sawmill again. 6 - Lock Picking Lara 
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Nov 26, 2023 10:27
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This game seems a lot more Tomb-Raidery than the previous one. If it weren't for all the resource=gathering and crafting I'd be tempted to play it. I did try to play the previous one and was incredibly disappointed with it because it's just not a Tomb Raider game at all.
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Nov 28, 2023 17:41
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The resource gathering is kinda solely an early game thing really, past that you're practically passively accumulating them. Anyway here's a video where I go out of my way multiple times to get resources. 7 - Mine All Mine 
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Nov 29, 2023 16:33
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That thing where the game shows you a preview of where your throw is going to land but when you press the button it actually hits something along the way is one of the things I hate most in video games. Why is the game interface even able to lie to you like that? It's such bullshit.
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Nov 29, 2023 18:34
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Hey it's that place from the benchmark. 8 - The Valley 
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Dec 3, 2023 13:21
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This second major hub area is notable for being way more diverse and interesting than the first - I suspect a lot of players burned out before they get here. As we'll see, some pretty arbitrary barriers in the space cut off the player from key areas in a manner that I think probably reflected some screwing around with the order of events. There are a lot more unique assets and one-off areas in this warmer environ, but the degree of jank also increases a bit. A note on enemy types: most enemies you encounter are "uninitiated", basically nutty mercs. The guys in white balaclavas are "initiated," who have finished the brainwashing process (they might have another name but I don't recall it atm); I think they might have more health or better weapons but are not qualitatively distinguished in gameplay. Beyond that we've now seen armored enemies and shield enemies, who mostly function similarly to their role in the previous game. I meant to mention earlier, one nice thing that the different difficulties in Rise do is introduce special enemy types at different points in the game. For example, at the end of the initial fight from video 6, you get a short cutscene introducing the armored enemy type as a sort of miniboss. On the top difficulty, I believe they're introduce shield enemies during this cutscene. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Dec 3, 2023 |
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Dec 3, 2023 19:24
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Videogames are about wish fulfilment, like getting to shoot down quadcopters. 9 - Lepers and Drones 
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Dec 6, 2023 13:56
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njsykora posted:Videogames are about wish fulfilment, like getting to shoot down quadcopters. Video is apparently private.
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Dec 6, 2023 16:07
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Should be fixed now, I apparently did all my Youtube stuff but forgot to change the visibility.
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Dec 6, 2023 16:12
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Finally caught up with these videos. Been having a good time with them; watched the first one on the archive, and part of the second one, but we're definitely in unfamiliar territory for me now. Hell, I'd forgotten about a third of the first one!
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Dec 6, 2023 17:04
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Come into my feverish hovel of disease. I barely remember what happens in this one and I recorded it yesterday. Kill me. 10 - Village Assault 
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Dec 10, 2023 11:10
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I don't know if there's anything you can do about it, but after your first edit there's about 6 seconds of audio desync until the log at the very end. Regarding the game as a whole, I really wouldn't be surprised to discover that Jacob is actually the Prophet. Sorry to hear about your continued illness, I hope it improves soon!
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Dec 10, 2023 17:03
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azren posted:I don't know if there's anything you can do about it, but after your first edit there's about 6 seconds of audio desync until the log at the very end. I have no idea about that, I've had Davinci Resolve gently caress up audio before but it's in sync in my local copy of the file. So it might just be Youtube loving up and I can't do anything about that sadly.
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Dec 10, 2023 17:07
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Not going to be any videos this week, as of this morning I'm only just starting to regain the ability to talk normally so figure I should probably rest things as much as possible. Management apologises for any inconvenience.
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Dec 13, 2023 07:49
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Take care of yourself man. We'll be here waiting after you recover.
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Dec 13, 2023 15:39
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I'm back to see Lara and Sofia talk about a door. 11 - To The Tower 
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Dec 20, 2023 17:01
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It's grappling hook time. 12 - To The Cathedral 
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Dec 27, 2023 14:32
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