Earlier this week I posted an interview with the guys from IO Interactive about Hitman: Absolution. Well, Agent 47 isn’t the only Eidos game star returning to consoles – Lara Croft is also returning (albeit from a shorter absence) in a brand new Tomb Raider that takes the series in a grittier new direction. I recently caught up with Noah Hughes, creative director Crystal Dynamics, to explore this new adventure.

How does it feel to be bringing Lara back in a brand new take on the Tomb Raider series?

Noah Hughes: It’s an honour really, to be able to not only work with Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, but also to be able to reboot the franchise. I’ve been at [developer] Crystal Dynamics for a while now, and we’ve had the pleasure of making a few games starring Lara. We’ve learned a lot. To be able to distil everything we want to do with the franchise into an entirely fresh take is inspiring.

So it’s a totally new direction for the series?

NH: It is. It’s a reboot and not directly related to the timeline of Lara as such, but it will touch on familiar elements of her character. You’ll see her grow into the hero figure that fans know and love.

Is it going to reference the events of past games at all?

NH: It starts a whole different timeline. There’s not necessarily an assumption it will connect directly to past events. We are projecting our own Lara, taking this origins story, recreating and her launching her off into a new adventure. We love catering to some of the fan favourites, but we’re not beholden to all of the story points within the series. We like playing with the signature Tomb Raider themes from this new angle.

I saw the use of an Instinct system in the game, similar to [fellow Square Enix title] Hitman: Absolution. Is that the result of sharing between studios?

NH: We actually share a lot of assets between studios. The guys at [Hitman: Absolution developer] IO Interactive are such a talented bunch. Having said that, the idea of the Lara’s intuition, this detective-like ability, is something we’ve admired in a number of games, but what’s important to us is the way fans play through this tale of survival. We’re really going to be selling this idea of Lara fighting and scraping through the unknown.

Who’s the resident physics genius responsible for the grand puzzle set pieces?

NH: One of the great things about working on a game of this size is that you attract people with all kinds of different backgrounds. These people then step up and become champions of various disciplines. The environmental challenges that we present and the physics of any given situation determine how you interact with the world.

Devising these puzzles is one of the more complex level design problems that we tackle, so it is something that we will not only get our best minds on, but iterate a lot – that means we’ll put something in, play with the system, try to figure out what the players would do and go from there.

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Hitman: Absolution was one of the most talked about games at E3 earlier this month after an impressive behind closed doors showing and the release of this atmospheric trailer. There is still plenty of mystery around Agent 47′s upcoming mission so I recently caught up with Tore Blystad, game director and Christian Eleverdam, gamplay director at IO Interactive to get some further intel.

How does it feel to be bringing Hitman back after such a long time away?

TB: It feels super great. Part of time was spent building a brand new engine from scratch. We looked at all the previous Hitman titles and said, “Okay, there’s a lot of DNA here, what do we want to improve?” We looked at everything, from Agent 47 himself – how does he move? what can he do? – to the AI. We had quite a few binary reactions in the old games, where if you got discovered it turned into a bit of a clumsy combat situation. We wanted to widen that a lot. Obviously we still have a lot of stealth elements in the game.

Let’s say you get discovered by a police officer. He won’t immediately try to shoot you, he’ll attempt to arrest you. This means that in Hitman: Absolution we have a bit of rubber-banding, a bit of leeway to try things out. You can back away, find a dark corner or try to disarm him.

We created a lot of different scenarios. So for example there’s a kind of hippies’ apartment which Agent 47 enters disguised as a police officer. These guys don’t like cops, so this disguise is not a good idea in there. But they won’t just attack you without warning. They’ll want to know why you’re there and warn you off. Of course, they might try to attack you, but that’s probably not going to end well for them.

Now, if you go in there dressed as Agent 47, they probably would allow you to be there, even though you’re trespassing and would arouse suspicion. There’s a lot for us to play around with.

So a lot of the experience will depend on you reacting to what’s going on around you?

CE: Yes, you need to play with your eyes open. Disguises play a big part here to alter how the game pans out in front of you. A lot of the disguises have their own attributes, and the Instinct system ties in there too. Instinct allows you to see potential challenges in real time. If you’re disguised and it’s cop versus cop then you can try to bluff them and sneak away to save ammo.
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