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Eidos considers giving pneumatic Tomb Raider heroine a facelift
Just hours after confirming that the publisher is laying off staff at the studio responsible for Tomb Raider, Eidos has admitted it might revamp the series lead character Lara Croft.
A report in the The Times says that the publisher - which recently described sales of the latest Tomb Raider title as below expectations, despite shifting 1.5m copies globally - could look to garner more appeal amongst female gamers.
On Friday Eidos shares fell on the news that the publisher was revising its full year revenues (for the year ending June 30th 2009) down from a projected £180m-£200m to £160m-£180m as a result of the Tomb Raider: Underworld's 'disappointing' performance.
Eidos CFO Robert Brent likened Croft to evolving pop culture characters, like superheroes, as a means to keep her appealing.
The James Bond-style reboot would help the publisher attract a wider audience.
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“We need to look at everything, as we develop the next game. Look at how Batman changed succesfully, from the rather sad character of the Michael Keaton era to the noir style of The Dark Knight," said Brent.
The comparison to Batman is fitting for Eidos. The London studio it part owns, Rocksteady, is developing a game based on the character, and the comic book hero's owner DC Comics is part of Warner Bros, the media firm regularly tipped as prime for a take over of Eidos.
If you fools make Lara Croft more casual, you will have fewer sales. Just look to the recent Prince of Persia as an example. Females are an exceptionally small part of the hardcore gaming device audience. There are more of them playing the Wii, not the PS3 or 360. Dumbing down the difficulty of the game or de-sexualizing this title is just going to lead to less sales than this title had even with a growing hardcore console user base. Here are some suggestions to actually help increase sales.
1. Let Lara use her grapple anywhere and anytime. She should be able to attach it to any substance that a hook can penetrate. She should be able to use it when holding on to a wall or ledge. She should also be able to use it as a weapon.
2. Level up skills, weapons, and abilities. For instance, the grapple can be leveled up to allow it to attach to increasingly denser substances in harsher conditions such as rain, snow, and sand. She should eventually be able to wall run vertically and horizontally.
3. Give Lara portable surveillance drones to scope out optimal paths and or items that are too perilous for her to get.
4. Give Lara a cover system and the ability to blind fire.
5. Give Lara a partner and add co-op play. This could lead to more post release dlc as well.
6. Allow Lara to use her sexuality to distract npc's and get them off guard. Don't make it too explicit, but allow her to do things like leave a bra in view of npc's or throw pebbles or bend over and stand up in a seductive manner.
7. Let her throw or kick sand, snow, etc. in the face of her enemies to distract them. This might not work on boses or people with equipment covering their eyes.
One more thing: Don't release your game at the same time as other, better properties release theirs. Target the release date for the summer or early fall lull instead of November.
Re above...
1) Grappling hooks don't penetrate, they grapple by wrapping round or lodging behind something. This is also Tomb Raider, not Super Metroid.
2) See 1. She already can wall run horizontally with the grapple.
3) Items are never "too perilous" to get to, just difficult. If you utilise a remote collection system, it can/will end up getting used everywhere. It's also a puzzle/exploration game where exploring is part of the gameplay.
4) Again, TR is a puzzle/exploration game, not a 3rd person shooter. Many people went off TR because it went too combat oriented and betrayed the original concept.
5) Co-op TR would be good.
6) I don't think this kind of thing really helps, it doesn't need to turn into a smut game to be successful... It certainly didn't add anything to MGS having "distraction" items in the game.
7) To get close enough to kick sand in their face would probably mean you are already dead, as it adds a non-offensive action (bending down to pick up sand) in the middle of a combat scenario.
I don't think the game or character needs a re-design, I just think it needs to be good. I certainly found Legend and Underworld to be very enjoyable. It seems like they re-captured what TR was all about, which was nice. It would be a shame if it turned into something that TR isn't (again).
Forget Lara all together, instead bring back Soul Reaver.
Oh dear, you can't as you have slimlined all the staff to concentrate exclusively on more Lara games - oh well more debts next year then.
Every tomb raider game that has come out recently, they ALWAYS say the next one will include a "revamped" lara croft, which as far as i can see is the exact same lara croft with a few minor graphical improvements.
This seems to me to be the usual publisher rubbish that only one million, five hundred thousand copies of their game sells and they think that makes it a failure because it hasn't met their "targets" that they somehow pluck out of thin air. Greedy ducks... 1.5 million is loads and if u haven't made money from that its probably due to poor management and waste.
Tomb Raider is boring now, they've made so many desperate attempts to revive the franchise that its all but killed any creative merit that brought the series its initial success. They just don't understand why they can't force it to be a mega-franchise....
It's probably about time Lara was finally laid to rest... Eidos should kill her off in the final title of the long-winded franchise. Would certainly boost sales :-)
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