TOMB RAIDER UNDERWORLD DEV PODCAST
Copyright 2008 www.tombraiderchronicles.com

[ February 8th 2008 ]

IGN has published a podcast with Eric Lindstrom, Creative Director at Crystal Dynamics, and quizzed him on Tomb Raider Underworld. The extensive interview provides further insight into what gamers can expect from Lara Croft's upcoming romp through Southern Mexico and beyond, including revelations on the challenges developing for Next Gen platforms.

"The biggest challenge is that when you were making PS2 games or Xbox games, you had this amount of memory, this amount of reference, etc. Now you've got an army of features, an army of possibilities. The graphics, the sound, everything. It's a lot of data and a lot of creativity you have to bring to bear on this project.

"So, it's a huge challenge of logistics and creative thought to make a game nowadays on these platforms realising that full potential. I mean you can make a game just like you did before but it doesn't reach the top tier.

"To really make games look as good on these new platforms and play as good on these new platforms as we pushed in the last generation, it's a huge effort. But it's also fun because you get to see stuff happen at the end of the day that's just, 'Oh my God, people will go crazy on this.'"

On a new look Lara Croft, Eric yields the following: "I would say that what her look is now is what you would expect to find in the world she's in. We made the world of Tomb Raider much more lush, much more detailed, much more authentic, and much more rich, and we had to take her into the next generation as well so that she would suit that environment.

"So there's a higher fidelity to all of the environment that she experiences and interacts with. We had to bring her fidelity up as well and we don't use the word "realistic" because we're not trying to make her look more realistic.

"So when we give her muscle tone, when we give her more detailed textures and whatnot, that we're not trying to make her look more like a real woman. We're not trying to make her look more real. We're trying to make her more believable, more credible, more interesting."