Former Tomb Raider combat was 'behind the curve'

The reboot of Tomb Raider put such a higher emphasis on combat that our own review called it a very different design ethos. Lara is less apt to push blocks around and leans more on gun-play (or bow-play as the case may be). So why the change?

"In some ways, combat, we felt, was behind the curve, that it wasn't a pillar that we could lean a lot of weight on in its previous lock-based mechanic form," creative director Noah Hughes told Shacknews. "We really wanted it to be one of the three main pillars that we celebrated."

Hughes said that the three pillars are traversal, puzzle-solving, and combat. The team made a conscious effort to balance those three elements and modernize the combat so it could stand with the other two. "We wanted the best modern, Lara-informed version of those three pillars that we could possibly have and then distribute them through the adventure in a way that, before you ever got bored of one thing, you were moving onto the next," he said. "It was less about pushing action or gun-play specifically and more about pushing pace and variety. For us, it felt more like balancing out each of the mechanics in a way that it could be an honest pillar within that mix."