In the 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider, Lara Croft was a plucky young adventurer who wasn’t all that comfortable bashing peoples’ heads in. Not anymore!
In an extended gameplay preview shown today at Microsoft’s Gamescom press conference, we got to see Lara Croft in action in Rise of the Tomb Raider, the upcoming sequel to the acclaimed 2013 game. Today’s clip shows Lara slinking around in a camp full of bad guys at night—waiting for one of them to isolate themselves from the rest of the back before sneaking up and quietly assassinating them.
The gameplay looks familiar for players of the last Tomb Raider, which isn’t a bad thing by any means. But it’s also a tad more...aggressive than the original reboot (yes I realize how ridiculous “original reboot is as a phrase).
Lara seems much more comfortable going through the killing motions than she did in the last game, when every passage of stealth gameplay was driven (at least partly) by fear. Now, she reminds me more of the bearded badass Joel from The Last of Us. But maybe that’s just because of the way she wields a shotgun:
There are also a bunch of new types of kills on display in the trailer: stealth attacks Lara can perform when coming out of the water, for instance, or jump down on an enemy from on high if she’s climbed up a building.
And then there’s her trusty bow, which can now kill multiple enemies at once with a special attack. This is all part of the new game’s “Guerilla Combat” system, which sounds rad.
Rise of the Tomb Raider is a timed Xbox One exclusive that’s coming out for that console this November. Other platforms will have to wait until 2016.
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