THE MINDS BEHIND
CHRONICLES
Copyright 2000 www.tombraiderchronicles.com
[ August 14th 2000 ]
Richard
Morton, official map designer for the new Tower
Block levels in the new Tomb Raider game Chronicles
describes himself as being "not too happy" after
being told his team would be making another instalment
of the hit series Tomb Raider having thought that
two PSX adventures would suffice. Martin Gibbins,
lead programmer to the project, is a little more
blatant. "Extremely p****ed off, if just for the
fact that it was going to be another Tomb Raider.
The Team before us did the first two and said
we couldn't possibly do another one. So we've
done another two, really stretched ourselves and
to be told we've got to do another one was a nightmare."
Martin
Gibbins explains during the quite frank interview
with UK's Playstation magazine that the only areas
of improvement must be a better story, because
technically, with the exception of putting some
of the programmes code through the wind tunnel,
theres little else that can be improved. Richard
Morton explains that Chronicles will boast far
greater detail, and with the code tuning should
make the whole game run smoother and faster. Chronicles
script and level designer Andrew Sandham joins
the conversation, pointing out that "technically,
it should be damn good stuff but there's a lot
under the hood that people won't notice - there's
so much stuff going on there. A lot of the criticism
it gets is unfair."
Andrew
refers to the comments made by some of the gaming
industries media that Chronicles will be just
another Tomb Raider, a different story, but essentially
"nothing new". The whole game, according to Andrew,
has been rewritten. Richard Morton explains that
to change the game completely would require "the
Soul Reaver engine where everything is smooth
and you can have proper round walls and build
organic shapes within the system. But we can't
do that with Tomb Raider as it would take a lot
more than a year to do."
Joby
Wood, another of Chronicles level designers, says
that although there might not be any fundamental
or structural changes to the engine, hundreds
of special effects and tweaks have been applied
which should make Chroncles refreshing and stunning.
Commenting on the question put to him by PSX Magazine
about whether or not Chronicles would a more cinematic
game, Andrew Sandham says "Since finishing the
last game, we've spent a lot of time trying to
create proper characters. We've also got an awful
lot of dialogue in there. We've tried to keep
it to a minimum and not be boring but what we
have done is give the people characters that we
all know from playing games.
"We're
bringing back a lot of the old characters and
they do have personalities. We've built up the
characters over four games and now we can start
making them real." As designing a fifth Tomb Raider
began, the first month, according to Martin, was
spent bug hunting, going through the code of the
four previous games finding flaws then applying
fixes to Chronicles. "We had a lot of feedback
from Tomb Raider III that people like the Area
51 level and the stealthiness involved so we though
we'd expand on that by having stealthy deathmoves
that Lara can perform on certain enemies." "She
can get the chloroform and combine it with the
cloth and if an enemy's guarding something, she
can go up and knock him out" says Richard Morton
[This just went downstairs to the walk through
dept. Ed.]
Tomb
Raider III, according to Andrew Sandham, was the
first real accomplishment by a team, with everything
bar the kitchen sink crammed into what many now
pin as their favourite game. Chronicles will be
more selective, with the best of all four Tomb
Raider games dissected, re-written, and then portions
incorporated in the technical side of Chronicles.
"The original idea was gonna be like Tomb Raider
III. Lara would have this trophy room with four
artifacts that she'd got in the past and basically,
you could select which icon you wanted to see
how Lara got that artifact." said Chronicles musician
Pete Connelly.
The team
melds together an intellectual think tank, each
throwing in ideas on how Chronicles should play,
the story which would need to be the best yet.
The flash back idea, according to Richard Morton,
came to another programmer Tom Scutt while he
was in the pub, although Tom appears a little
vague on his exact position at the time of the
brainwave. New maps, hundreds of refinemments,
new moves, weapons and vehicles plus inclusions
from the best of the rest. Chronicles has a lot
to live up to.
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