Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition Almost Had New Story

Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition might seem slightly underwhelming, especially for those that completed it multiple times on PC. It wasn’t always going to be that way though. Crystal Dynamics had originally considered adding extra plot to the new-gen edition, but was shot down by a Square Enix exec.

It was actually surprisingly early on when we started putting the constraints around this,” he continued, “because our boss, Darrell [Gallagher], who’s the worldwide head of studios, he looked at us and we’re like, we can add all this stuff. And he’s like, ‘no, you don’t want to change what’s good. We know this is good. Let’s leave that alone’.

But instead, because this was driven from the team saying we want to do this, we want to step up and make it look better and we want to make it play better and we want to add more content and we want to extend the story, we really had to put a clamp on ourselves and say, you know, we’re focused on the future of Tomb Raider, we have another big story to tell, we’re worried about that for what our next game will be. So for this game it was, okay, let’s put ourselves back in Pandora’s Box a little bit, we have all this kids in a candy store feeling of all this tech.

Fortunately we have a very sensible and very senior team, so looking at ourselves we know what we can and can’t sign up for.

So, for better or for worse, Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition remains a slightly prettier, more efficient version of the game we played a year ago. Those that are yet to check it out have very little to complain about.