Let’s start by saying this: I really, really enjoyed the Tomb Raider reboot. It’s island setting highlighted by exploration and survival, providing the player with direct sense of where to go next, and the constant feeling that something just isn't right reminded me of the joys I had when I first played Resident Evil 4.

The biggest complaint I have read in most critiques and on websites is the failure of Crystal Dynamics to balance Lara in a way that allows her to seem like she is just barely surviving and struggling emotionally, while also providing her with the necessary attributes and mentality to take on and kill numerous enemies. These two features clash throughout the game as Lara is inexplicably able to fend for herself against improbable odds, but reacts to each situation as though she has no prior experience. Failure to create this proper balance is understandable as this task seems difficult to do when making a game that is so over the top in terms of action filled cinematics and at times, gruesome violence.

The problem isn’t necessarily that Lara’s emotions contradict her actions, but rather the situations presented to her create an awkward and hasty transition from coping with doing what needs to be done to taking out entire armies. Many of the emotional scenes in the game involve her reacting to distressing situations or the death of someone she had previous connections with, making it all feel appropriate. It’s personal when it involves a friend or colleague, while her disconnect when killing cultist and psychos is understandable. I feel the problem lies more in the combat situations themselves and lack of context that could be perhaps fixed by these suggestions.

Less Is More

A feature that Tomb Raider absolutely nails is providing the player with four different weapons that tailor to any given play style. Most combat tasks can be accomplished with any choice, none feel that much more powerful than the others, and with the exception of some exploration purposes, you are never really forced to use any specific one. While I enjoyed this, in an attempt to make Lara’s struggles more believable, the game should have cut the weapon choices from four to two. Preferably this would involve removing the rifle and shotgun. Therefore, I suggest only equipping Lara with a pistol and bow.

This would make the game a lot more difficult given how many soldiers you are tasked with slaughtering. However, this falls in line with the notion that the number of enemies should have also been cut substantially. What I loved about the early enemy encounters in the game was that there were only about two or three armed guards, but all I had was a bow. This kept up the suspense and made those situations somewhat dreadful. Although you get a pistol not too long after, mowing down five to ten heavily armed guys with that weapon, given the circumstance, wouldn’t be a tasked necessarily executed with confidence. Eventually being introduced to heavier weaponry and in turn, higher number of enemies, it turns Lara from desperate survivor to mass murderer to the detriment of the character.

So while the game provides you with equally effective weapons despite the number of enemies usually, the ratio between Lara The Survivor and Lara The Unstoppable Killer could have been better balanced. It seems almost too simple, but weaker weapons coupled with adversaries consisting of more quality and less quantity would make every encounter feel like more of a struggle. Also, this falls in line a lot more with idea of Lara doing what is necessary while also expressing remorse when it comes to taking another person’s life.

Bail?…Yeah, bail.

Say cutting the amount of enemies is not ideal. This doesn’t mean that Lara necessarily has to kill them all. The game provides some stellar environments to hide in and sneak through, so why not use them when the area is loaded with guards?

Case and point, part of the game takes place in a shantytown, loaded with not only a ton of enemies, but also multiple levels of shacks and tunnels, all of which could be utilized to bypass an encounter that requires Lara to take down around twenty to thirty guys. The game already provides the option of using stealth kills by using the bow or sneaking up on someone with your climbing ax. That number could be knocked down to maybe four or five necessary kills, while the rest are circumvented through not being noticed by using tunnels and shacks to break line of sight.

A useful combat mechanic is a dodge counter that briefly incapacitates an enemy. This is a technique that can be used repeatedly in close quarters. It is also unlimited. However, if there were some sort of meter or count put on how many times this technique could be used, it could complement the notion of going after the bad guys only when it’s necessary. Personally, I’m not much of a fan of stealth, but limits on how many guards can and should be killed in certain areas would preserve the sense that Lara is trying to survive and still isn’t at ease with killing another person.

A Killer Background

Perhaps tweaking the combat isn’t the answer. That’s fine and understandable given how well the it actually works. Without messing with those mechanics, another remedy could be to provide Lara with a back story that explains the initial emotional dilemmas and the quick transition into an expert soldier.

We already know she has a background in archaeology, but it could have added more. In an early part of Tomb Raider, a brief moment where Lara is forced to hunt for food provides a little insight into her background that contextualizes why she knows how to shoot a bow and arrow. There is no explanation for why she is skilled in using any type of gun, however. Explaining how Lara has knowledge in handling guns could have been handled in a couple simple ways.

One such method could have been to simply copy cat the same insight the player is given when she initially uses the bow, but this would feel repetitious and too an extent, lazy. Tomb Raider tells much of the character back stories through journal entries and Lara’s inner dialogue, which could be used to flesh out better reasoning for Lara’s artillery expertise.

My idea would be to give her an inexperienced soldier’s background, meaning that perhaps she had previously been trained and learned skills needed for survival and combat situations, but had never needed to use them until now. This is thinking in the sense of a person who joins the military, is trained, but never gets deployed. This idea could have been good background information that would explain not only why Lara knows how to use these weapons, but why she is still emotionally rattled despite killing numerous enemies