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LARA CROFT'S NEXT
GENERATION EXPLOITS
Copyright 2002 www.tombraiderchronicles.com
[ February 20th 2002 ]
Following
Tuesdays return to Derbyshire-based studios' Core
Design to meet and greet new PR Manager Gary Reading
and to snatch a sneak-preview of this years most
anticipated video-game, tombraiderchronicles.com
can exclusively reveal further details from Tomb
Raider Next Generation - specifically the dramatic
increase in detail from past to present Lara Croft
models ahead of the official unveiling by Core
Design on March 20.
The new
Lara Croft model is a marvel of modern-day technology,
an adhesive marriage of mesh, bone and cloth lacquered
with high resolution detail and illustration.
Lara Croft's face has undergone extensive digital
surgery - re-modeled sporting the proportional
crisp characteristics of an attractive young brunette.
Lara Croft's standing pose now boasts a realistically-teasing,
hip-swaying draw while the mechanics of her upper
skeleton gently inflate with each intake of breath.
The model we saw had Lara dressed in a ragged
demin jacket and long blue-jeans and her movements
bore the fluid resemblance and organic feel of
a character whose former 500 polygon skeleton
has been replaced with an additional 5,000 shiny
new polygons, each dripping with realism. The
attention to detail was superb with a maze of
crease and shadow-lines spawning across her attire.
Lara
Croft's supporting cast is enormous, and although
we're not allowed to reveal too much until the
official March release, we witnessed the same
attention to detail in the supporting characters
as found in Lara Croft herself. Core Design has
stripped the characters down to the wire-frame,
rebuilding the basic mesh and mechanical architectures
and in turn rendering a more organic and fluidic
movement and feel. This coupled with detailed
illustration and the terrain-based power of Sony's
PS2 effectively adds a new dimension of realism
to the game.
Pinned
to the wall of Next Gen Mission Control were various
sketches and concept illustrations of characters
yet to be confirmed. Many bore the marked resemblance
of scientific gene exploration gone drastically
wrong. Core Design will also be implementing ground-breaking
lip-synchronization technologies which realistically
tailors dialog with mouth movement for FMV segments
and in-game scenes. The traditional open/shut
motion of in-game dialogue will be made redundant
in favor of advanced speech to mouth synchronization
(lip-synch) so effective the company speculates
players will be able to follow a conversation
by deciphering the movement of a characters lips
as he/she speaks.
Core
Design will officially unveil Tomb Raider Next
Generation - including the games heavily guarded
title - on March 20 at a secret location in London,
arming their press release with a media onslaught
including FMV movies, screen shots and high resolution
concept art. We will be covering the whole event,
so stay tuned for much more; in the meantime,
click here for our comprehensive no-nonsense Tomb
Raider Next Generation section.
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