Most media starlets have to resort to plastic surgery in order to relaunch themselves - who can forget the press furore over Jade's new boobs? We certainly can't. Which is why we felt it time to investigate the men who made Lara cool again - nipping and tucking at her gameplay and figure until she became markedly less shit than she used to be. And at least 45% more kissable too, if you're not averse to fancying works of fiction. Speaking are the folk of Crystal Dynamics: Matthew Guzenda (senior producer) and Riley Cooper (principal designer).
NU-LARA Guzenda: Going from the Angel Of Darkness model, she was very stylised at that point so we wanted to make her look more human. Obviously she still looks very perfect in a lot of respects, as far as dimensions go, but her proportions now are far more human. In AOD if you compared her to the other characters, the others were quite realistic but she stood out. Now obviously, we didn't want to make her too realistic as you run into the whole 'uncanny valley' thing when it looks too close to a human person - you start seeing odd things... But we wanted to keep her a little more realistic. Lara Croft creator Toby Gard played a big part in that when he came back in. We'd gone through a couple of different models which I'd say were evolutionary from previous models, so then we moved onto this third base model that was pretty different. Which led to the fourth model which is the one we used.
THE PRIME OF MS LARA CROFT Guzenda: If you're looking at all the previous stories and games, Lara pretty much kills everybody she's interacting with or competing against. There really wasn't anything that we could continue, so we wanted to establish a Lara-world where there were other characters and enemies that we could continue instead of starting from scratch every time. It was also unclear why Lara was doing what she was doing, as she's obviously rich but she's really into archaeology and takes all these risks - and we wanted to add emotional background and flesh out her story. In past games there were one or two mentions of what happened to her mother. We knew something had happened in the Himalayas, but it wasn't very clear, so we thought that was a good way to tie in a few good storylines.
THAT DRESS Cooper: Of course, coming to a party she's going to dress appropriately, but in order to get into her mechanics, that dress would just not have worked!
Guzenda: The dress was definitely a key moment; when we were designing that level, it was always a part of the design. We're always very conscious about not exploiting her character. I mean, the cheap thing to do is to put Lara in a bikini everywhere, but that's just not something we would do as it is cheap! But we thought that having her in an expensive dress, which is something that Lara would wear, and then having that whole thing when she rips it - it's a cool thing to do, and still in line with the character.
TOMB PHYSICS Cooper: We set this as a goal really early on - although at first our efforts didn't quite fit in and it was hard to see whether people were actually going to understand what to do with it. But after a while, we managed to do some things that we thought were pretty cool. Flipping the block in the air by jumping on the other side of the see-saw was the most enjoyable thing to design, and the most fun to watch people play. We got all giddy when we watched it - it was great! The main thing we would have done if we'd had more time would have been more physics set-ups, but we were happy with what we did in what was new territory for all of us.
TEAM LARA Guzenda: Zip was actually one of the very few characters from previous games who wasn't killed or 'disappeared' that came into contact with Lara. In the original game she was pretty much always alone, and although that's actually key to the game - feeling that you're alone in the tomb and Lara's the first person to get there - the problem was that it's also very hard to move her personality along if she's not talking to anyone. Unless you're using flashback scenes and interrupting gameplay, it's very hard to add personality to a character - which is something we really wanted to do with Legend. Having Zip and Alister, having her interact with those guys, adds to her personality and obviously moves the story along. It was also an easy way for us to do a help system that was a little bit more subtle. If you get stuck in a level and don't know what's going on, those guys pipe up and give you some hints.
ARTHUR'S TOMB Guzenda: The thing with Arthur, the myth of King Arthur, is that it is a weapon, and depending on who you talk to, there are about 20 different versions of the myth. So it's a really cool one to play with - there's plenty of room to explain it and you can't get proven wrong.
Cooper: At first it was like 'Well, where would we put the Arthurian tomb?', and we knew that there were a lot of museums and locations in the UK that claim to be the true location, so we went with that. One influence for the museum was the funhouse level in Max Payne 2 - it had come out before we'd started, but was still fresh in our minds...
THAT GO BUMP IN THE FIGHT Guzenda: We do this layered approach when we do tombs - Lara always starts out somewhere that's realistic, and I don't want to call this 'an onion' as I hate that analogy. But basically she starts somewhere like outside a waterfall, where anyone can go - so it starts normal and everyday. Then she gets to a second layer between the two where maybe there are mercenaries, but it's still not supernatural and there's nothing unusual going on. As she gets further into the tomb it's fair game for more supernatural things to occur, so for example, with Arthur's grave, she starts off in an abandoned museum, she goes deeper and eventually ends up in the tomb where the sea monster is.
HOME (COUNTIES) GIRL Guzenda: If you ever get an email from me, my tagline is 'That's Lara, not Laura!' We were very aware when it moved to Crystal that the game was going from a UK developer to a US developer. Obviously there's a worldwide audience for Lara, but she's also somewhat of a UK icon. So we were very protective - I'm actually British and there are a couple of other Brits on the team, and obviously Toby Gard too. He was a great source of, 'She wouldn't say that, she'd say it this way.' Even with little things like when we say that it's her manor, rather than her mansion. Although technically it's a mansion because we don't show any of the estate...
THE INEVITABLE SEQUEL Guzenda: Based on the feedback we got for Legend, we'll obviously focus on game length next time. I think this time around, we just wanted to get the game right. We spent a lot of time redoing areas we'd already done. We could have made more areas, but we wanted to make sure the game was good.
MASSACRE OF THE FURRY INNOCENTS Guzenda: Originally, we wanted more creatures in the game than we had. We ended up using human enemies quite a lot, and I think that, based on some of the feedback we've got, they're something we'll go back to in future games. With Lara you're always very careful, asking 'would Lara do this?', even when you're killing humans. It's not a shooter, and she doesn't do it for the thrill of killing people, so you always have to wonder what Lara would do in the situation. The team have had plenty of discussions saying, 'Well Lara wouldn't shoot that'. Like one time we had chickens running around a village and you could shoot them. But would Lara actually shoot chickens? You get lots of weird conversations about stuff like that.
