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PC Games (Games) PlayStation (Games) Entertainment Games

Core Design Loses Grip On Lara 33

Posted by simoniker from the english-rose-departs-stateside dept.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an Eidos press release discussing major changes to the Tomb Raider franchise. Following the recent resignation of the managing director of Tomb Raider developers Core Design, seemingly due to the disappointing reception for Tomb Raider:Angel Of Darkness, Eidos has announced that "...in recognition of the Company's need continually to enhance the value and maximize the commercial opportunity of one of its key franchises, for which all intellectual property rights belong to Eidos, the Board has concluded that it will transfer development of the franchise to its Crystal Dynamics studio in the U.S." Crystal Dynamics are probably best known for the recent titles in the Legacy Of Kain series, so it'll be interesting to see what they make of the latterly lackluster Tomb Raider franchise.
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Core Design Loses Grip On Lara More

Core Design Loses Grip On Lara

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  • What they need to do is shelve Tomb Raider for now, develop some other games, then bring back the franchise in 2006 for PS3. People are just tired of Tomb Raider, yeah it was cool back in the day, but enough is enough. If Final Fantasy retained the same protagonist for every game in the series it would not continue to be a million selling franchise.
    • WHAT? Retaining the same protagonist is NOT the problem (see Mario and Sonic for example). The problem is stale grey gameplay, with no quality control.

      And pointing out FF as the paragon of not reusing characters is probably the worst possible choice, as gamers are always clamoring to bring back old FF characters (and what we get for all the trouble is a glorified "Barbie's Big Adventure in the Scary World!" aka FFX-2, but that's a whole different story).
      • I should have expanded my point more, as it is more than simply being about reusing characters. Its about supply and demand. Look at your second point about FF, thats where Tomb Raider needs to be. hidden away so that gamers clamor to bring back Lara. As it stands right now nobody gives a fuck about Tomb Raider. Its not original, its the same formula. Originally it did well because it was a fun action adventure where you play a chick with gigantic breasts. Nowadays there are hundreds of games with that same
        • While I agree with some of your points, you seemed to be all over the map. Let's pick it apart in a more logical fashion, shall we?

          Originally it did well because it was a fun action adventure where you play a chick with gigantic breasts.

          True. However, it *also* had a new type of gameplay, namely a 3D platformer melded with a bit of action and a lot of exploring. Very cool when it first came out; the T&A were simply bonuses on top of that (though to me, that was always lame - polygons don't reall
    • I agree. If they leave it alone for long enough, people will only remember the good, earlier games. Then, they just need to plug the game by saying, "From the guys that brought you the ORIGINAL Tomb Raider..."
  • Bigger boobies and enchanced breast-motion simulation... what?

  • Good choice (Score:5, Insightful)

    by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Wednesday July 30, 2003 @11:16PM (#6577199) Homepage
    Crystal Dynamics has a lot of history with both Franchises (Gex, Kain, Pandemonium, etc) and with darkness (Akuji: The Heartless, Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain, Disney's Magical Racing Tour...).

    Unlike Eidos proper, they tend to make deep games that rely upon a combination of exploiting good engines and telling a story that at some fundamental level shocks the player. If Laura Craft is going to move away from "Walk to the edge. Hop back. Take two running steps and jump." style gameplay, it needs to be moved away from the group that has been working on it for years.

    They need to give Laura a harder edge and a totally revamped control scheme. So long as she remains in a world overpopulated by keys and locked doors, the series will stagnate. If on the other hand she has to assassinate a mob boss who has seen her face and survive the escape attempt, the series could take on a whole new level.

    Of course this being Crystal Dynamics, who have never put out a truly episodic game in their lives, the gameplay will probably be heavily based in exploration rather than in missions. But still, such open worlds could cut to the heart of what Laura Croft is about.

    Now we need to find a good producer to pull the movies out of the doldrums. Cameron, anyone?

    • Re:Good choice (Score:2, Interesting)

      by easychord ( 671421 )
      For someone who apparently loves the Tomb Raider franchise so much, you have a hard time spelling Lara Croft.

      Tomb Raider games are not deep things. They are about vertigo, sudden surprises and a unusual but shallow female english protagonist.

      The formula gets boring pretty quickly.
    • I think that Crystal is the perfect company to broaden the horizons of the TR series. They've done just about every kind of game out there, and each one that I've played has something noticeably unique about it.

      They will also probably be able to make use of the excellent-looking game engine from the upcoming Legacy of Kain: Defiance, rather than using Core's. One of the biggest complaints I've heard about AoD is that the game still controls like the original TR, whereas Defiance is geared towards fast comb

    • "who have never put out a truly episodic game in their lives, "

      Arguable. SR2 was fairly episodic, with the different time periods forming the framework for the episodes. My concern with handing the franchise to CD is that they seem to spend a lot of time building cutscenes to tell a story at the expense of gameplay - SR2 in particular is reduced to a game that can be played in hours if you skip the cutscenes*. If they can combine decent, deep stories with varied and interesting gameplay, then TR may have

  • Honestly (Score:2, Insightful)

    by luekj ( 692478 )
    I trust that Crystal Dynamics could make a very original and probably good game based on the TR franchise, and core has pretty much just been milking the cow for the previous 3 or 4 sequals anyways. Though many devotees would disagree because some really did seem to like more of the same.

    Anyways, CD may make a tight TR game, but it's hard to predit whether the spirit of the original will be lost or discarded in favor of var(currenttrendinvideogameindustry) or float(increasing age of video game players).

    M

  • Their way out is simple:
    1) Fix the stupid bugs with Angel of Dorkness.
    2) Name it AoD 2.0
    3) Offer free upgrades and apologies to the few people who bought 1.0
    4) Everyone else has to pay
    5) regain lost honor
    6) Profit!
  • Its about time they hand the franchise. But the question is, will the poor performance of AoD taint the series forever? After a bad game and a couple of bad movies, maybe its time to let it die.
  • Tomb Raiders of the Lost Ark
  • What they should do, is Hand the Tomb Raider franchise over to 3D0. They have years of expereince milking mediocre games for millions of sequels. Maybe we could see some "Army Men"/"Tomb Raider" cross overs. Like Lara gets shrunk down and then has to defeat the evil tan army while recovering some artifact of immense value.
  • That franchise has had its run. Bury it. Move on. Come up with a new idea, that's right a new one, and build a moneysucking franchise out of it.
  • Stop worrying about maximizing commercial growth of the franchise and concentrate on making a quality game, no matter how long it takes. It's clear there was a decision up above to put out a new game to tie in with the movie release, but it clearly wasn't ready. Get the marketting people out of the decision making process and let the developers concentrate on making a qualiy game. The profits will come.

  • Media Industry is full of corporate crap (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ihatesco ( 682485 ) on Thursday July 31, 2003 @07:19AM (#6578752)
    I can remember When Tomb Raider was born, and who made it. Core Design was a hell of a publisher. It published very good games for the Amiga, like Premiere (a very colorful platformer), Jaguar, and a very nice helicopter simulation.

    Core Design at the time was synonim of quality, of a good group that could make his own name to stand out.

    Then Playstation came out, Commodore crash and burned, and Core Design found herself to do three things:

    1. create a 3d game because all the lamers, pardon, the new videogamers brought in by the Sony Playstation wanted a 3d videogame, after having seen that spectaular demo (but gaming shite) of Toshinden they wanted a 3d game.
    2. find herself a new patron, because the playstation development model demanded your team to be under a patron publisher at all times (in order to get the sdks you have not only to spend gabazilions of dollars, but also to demonstrate to be "worthy" of attention).
    3. find a new way to create action videogames "the United Kingdom school"-way, since they lacked at the time. (Nowadays very few titles are action videogames like they were in the years of the Amiga, now all the software houses are american, and either they publish fps, or other action arcade titles they do are lame, lame, lame. Oh, yes, and Crash Bandicoot is shit, and the other titles mentioned by Crystal Dysuxmix is either inferior to many Amiga platformers or is something that has rpg-ey elements, so they don't count. There is no "American School" for arcade games. All the good action/arcade games are either english, japanese, or just overrated because there is no competition).

    After Tomb Raider 1, Eidos put the gun to Core Design's head and said: "if you want more money (a) surrender Lara Croft, (b) publish other Lara Croft games. No, we are not Nintendo, don't even TRY to do something else or you are OUT".

    Now what happens when the public gets tired of playing the same games for 7 times in a row?
    What happens if you get the same team to reprogram the same game for 7 times in a row and NO research and development (which is IMPORTANT in the Videogames Market, Japanese do a great deal of R&D)?
    What happen if in a franchise you put more hype than substance?
    You got it: you produce lame ass games and people will let them stay on the shelves.
    That was the rule in 1980 with Commodore 64 and Nintendos, that is the rule nowadays.

    Eidos taking Lara Croft from Core Design and giving the scepter to Crystan Dysuxmix is the sign that the dickheads at Eidos haven't understood a shit of what makes the videogame industry tick, and even if they have good developers and marketers under them they will soon be doomed. It happened to Square and to Sega which produced excellent games to be on the brink of death, why shouldn't it happen sooner or later to Eidos?

    Maybe Core is having a party right now because they already tried to kill the bitch some time ago (wasn't Lara supposed to be dead at the end of "The Last Revelation"? Or at least >?) and maybe they programmed the new videogame with their own asses just to say screw you to Eidos and screw you to Paramount... I wouldn't be surprised by that

    Anyway in 80s and 90s was the success of a movie that made or ruined the career of videogames. Paramount bitching about the poor sales of the videogame that reflected on the movie is someone spewing LIES to save their asses. A Movie Sells Itself. Final Fantasy: The Spirit Within, it was a great movie but wayyy off-topic from Final Fantasy. Its sales were low. But Final Fantasy VII, VIII, and IX, and the subsequent X were great sellers. Why do we have to believe to Paramount and Eidos corporate shit?

    And now mod me down as troll and flamebait, but American Videogame Industry is good for RPGs, FPs, Strategy Games, and might be good for sports games as well, but for action games American Videogame Industry sucks my balls.

    • They suck for Flight Simulators as well. Just look at the horrible abomination which is Microsoft Flight Simulator (and Combat Flight Simulator) compared to the the stuff rolling out of russian software development houses: IL-2 Sturmovik [il2sturmovik.com] and Lock On: Modern Air Combat [lo-mac.com].
    • Maybe Core is having a party right now because they already tried to kill the bitch some time ago (wasn't Lara supposed to be dead at the end of "The Last Revelation"? Or at least >?) and maybe they programmed the new videogame with their own asses just to say screw you to Eidos and screw you to Paramount... I wouldn't be surprised by that

      Actually, I think Eidos just did them a huge favour, because Eidos forced the game to release to meet a fiscal quarter anyway, and the game did sell pretty well at f
    • If you like 2D Amiga games so much, why not just keep playing them instead of getting upset that modern games aren't like that?

      If basic 2D action games were popular enough to be profitable, they would still be being made for today's consoles. IMO, though, they're totally played-out.
  • Personally I'm pleasently suprised that the industry is blaming the lousy sales on the fact that it's a poor game and not piracy.
    • Unfortunately, Eidos is blaming the fact that it's a buggy pile on the developers, when Eidos is the one that forced it to ship to beat the end of the fiscal year.

      Oh, and the game didn't sell poorly at all, it's #2 on the sales charts for the year so far. The sales may, however, have dropped significantly after everyone figured out the horrible condition it was in.
  • reinvent the series go with a completely new interface and style with of course the classic features of the Tomb Raider series..

    If it where up to me I would drop the cartoony Uber tit look of Lara Croft, keep her sexy but more real looking, take a pinch of Splinter Cell.. a hint of GTA(being free with what you can do) and steal a chunk from Metroid Prime. Add a good backstory, throw some actual history onto the tresures you are nicking and throw a bit of first person in there as well.

    but thats just my 2 c
    • Yeah, that pretty much says it all, very good. But I keep seeing "the franchise is too old, change it". I'm no linguist but if it were to be radically changed it would no longer be a franchise.

      I think a lot of gamers bought into this game because they WANT more of the same, just a little better and updated. I think it is now called a franchise because (some) gamers were looking for these very qualities.

      I was eagerly anticipating AOD for the PS2 and after Lara hurled herself off a Parisienne balcony for

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