Arriving this March, Tomb Raider is a huge reboot of the Lara Croft franchise coming from Square Enix’s Eidos Montreal division. So far, it looks like a monumental single-player narrative, told from the perspective of the young Lara Croft before she became a “tomb raider.” But until now, we’ve heard very little about the multiplayer side of the game. And this multiplayer won’t be like Call of Duty by any means. It will be something that fits the world of Tomb Raider.
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“We wanted to do multiplayer and do it well,” he said. “As fans, what we saw in Tomb Raider had so much heart in it that we had to do something we believed in. As we played single-player, we saw a lot of elements that contributed to multiplayer. With these pillars, we found we could build something that made sense.”
Each map has what Khoury calls a “game changer,” or an event that can be triggered by players. The result is so big that it can change the course of a multiplayer match. In the “Chasm” map that I played, for instance, one side could trigger a sandstorm that could hurt the other side. The team that triggers the storm can still see the outlines of enemies and friends, but the other team will be blinded as the sand sweeps through the arena. As many as four players can square off against another four players in multiplayer.
Here’s a video interview with Khoury and Gallagher that we shot after playing a round of multiplayer combat.