At Gamescom this year, Crystal Dynamics showed off that Lara Croft is frighteningly good at murdering people. Sure, these people may be hunting her down, but they weren’t immediate danger – they were just on patrol and then suddenly found themselves with a knife lodged in their throats.
This got some people asking the question: can you play Tomb Raider non-lethally? And Crystal Dynamics have answered “Why yes of course! Just check out this video to see how!”
The new footage retreads the level of the Gamescom demo, but remains completely bloodless. Rather than violently tackling soldiers to the floor, Lara creeps through the bushes and makes use of her new grappling hook to hoist herself out of line-of-sight. There’s quite a few stealth staples here: throwing bottles or firing arrows as distractions, but the whole thing seems exceptionally workable. Crystal Dynamics want Lara’s combat abilities to enable a lot of player choice, and this – combined with good verticality in the level design – seems to work well for a stealth approach.
Rise of the Tomb Raider will be with us in 2016, after we’ve sat out the exclusivity period for Xbox One.