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…
