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How poor game design ruined Tomb Raider sequels
A top layer of monotonous quest design and disruptive game design is enough to break the immersion of even the mechanically-best of games
As I run through the Hidden City, towards a bright green marker indicating a boy who will soon ask me to find his knife, I find myself in a state of monotony. Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018) had all the possibilities of being a great game. It has solid gameplay mechanics, an interesting setting, a competent development team — and yet it threw it all away with a horrendous top layer of poor game design and horrendous quest design which ultimately ruined any immersion and atmosphere that it could have had.
Playing the game, I feel as though I’ve entered an alternate reality where The Witcher 3 (2015) was never released. How else would you justify a world map filled to the brim with pointless collectibles, a plethora of fetch quests, and the blandest characters you could possibly imagine?
I’m a year or two late to Shadow of the Tomb Raider, a game which I will hereafter simply refer to as Shadow for the sake of abbreviation. As a big fan of 2013’s Tomb Raider, a game that sparked a somewhat controversial rebooted trilogy of the Tomb Raider franchise, I felt as though I finally had to give Shadow a try. The reason why I had put off on playing was due to how disappointed I had been in the trilogy’s middle game, Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015), which we’ll just call Rise.
In order of release, the rebooted franchise contains Tomb Raider, Rise, and Shadow. The three games largely play the same — the game’s protagonist Lara Croft climbs, jumps, shoots, and puzzle-solves her way through harsh environments, tough tombs, and hostile encounters. The gameplay mechanics are phenomenally well put together. Climbing feels great. The controls are responsive and mostly intuitive. The combat is spot-on, with responsive weapons and options that allow the player to choose between stealth and action. The puzzles are clever and rewarding. This is true for all three games. Yet the top layer of the games, their quest design, their level design, their game design, changes significantly as the trilogy goes on. For the worse.
