[转帖]Official Xbox Magazine报道

[TombCrow]

FEATURE: LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: LEGEND

We take a good hard look at the remaking of a gaming legend with original Lara creator Toby Gard

It\'s a mixed blessing never having sampled Lara Croft on Xbox. While it was easy to bemoan the lack of Lara when things went right, at times the PS2 was welcome to her. We lost count of the number of times we plummeted to a screeching death, pigtail flapping and legs everywhere, during the training mission of Angel of Darkness - it made us rather smug. It wasn\'t just the falls that were killing Croft, it was the programming.
\"Angel of Darkness\'s review scores were the lowest in the series\' history and
it was time to take a reflective position on the Tomb Raider and Lara Croft brands,\" Chip Blundell, vice president of brand marketing tells us. \"The development team and the global brand team went on a Lara Croft soul-searching mission together... old consumer research was unearthed, new consumer research started, we read and re-read every gaming review, had one-on-ones with editors around the globe, and played the games again. We asked the hard questions. We challenged ourselves to think differently. Who is Lara Croft? What does she stand for? What makes her tick? Why should someone be interested in playing Lara in 2005? Who is the competition? What did the films do for the brand? What values was the original brand built upon? And how is that relevant today? The answers may seem obvious to some, but the solutions could be endless.\"

 

 

 

Endless indeed. Lara has been subject to all manner of incarnations and character changes in order to keep her \'down with da kids\'. The latest, for the forthcoming Tomb Raider: Legend, sees her stripped bare (behave), and then taken back to the roots that made her such a damned winner in the first place. Gone, we\'re afraid to say, is porny Lara. Well, almost.
Toby Gard, creator of Tomb Raider and Legend\'s lead designer, explains, \"It wasn\'t a conscious decision to modify Lara at all... and we never really thought she looked \'porny\'. We\'ve just worked on her model and look. It\'s a natural evolution. We\'re now using close to 10,000 polygons, so we\'re able to make her look much more realistic. She even gets wet when she goes into water, and she gets dirty if she rolls around in filthy tombs long enough.\" Mucky cow - we knew she wouldn\'t change that much.

Chronicles of Lara
Gard was recently quoted saying he wanted to get back into the Tomb Raider franchise to give it a \'kick up the arse\', so does he think that\'s what he\'s currently doing? \"Yeah, after taking a long break from Lara it\'s been interesting to revisit her,\" he explains. \"Technology is quite different in 2005 compared to \'96, so we\'re able to do so much more with her look and movements. My role has been mostly to help get the character moving back in the right direction. So I\'m dealing with fleshing her out, both in terms of personality and in terms of animation, look and feel. Crystal Dynamics has built this game from the ground up and control is one of our main objectives. We\'re making huge strides in this area and the results so far are quite exciting. People will be able to move her and control her in a way that you\'d imagine a top action heroine to perform.\"

Is he saying she\'ll be an all-jumping, all-swimming, Prince of Persia ass-kicker? \"Oh yes, all of the above,\" says Gard. \"Expect to see lots of movement and action. In fact, everything you\'d expect from a larger-than-life character like Lara Croft.\"

Hmmm. When Gard says Lara will feature lots of \'movement and action\', it reminds us that he\'s previously said he\'s going to be trying to make Tomb Raider: Legend faster and more actiony than before. This doesn\'t mean he\'s chucking out the puzzles, does it?

\"Oh no, not at all, we\'re just aiming to blend a good mixture of action and pacing along with puzzles,\" he says. \"And there are going to be new types of puzzles too, I might add! She will have all sorts of new gadgets to help her... We\'re revealing them slowly.\"

Like that polo thing attached to her belt? \"Ah yeah, that\'s her magnetic grapple. See, I\'ve given one away already! We\'ve actually shown that in some screenshots, so look closely. It\'ll allow her to grapple and swing across chasms that previously would have been impossible to get across.

\"The magnetic grapple can also be used to solve puzzles along the way. These will be physics-based puzzles too, involving the pulling of specific objects... I\'ve said too much! Let\'s just say she will have all sorts of new gadgets to help her in her adventuring, and yeah, that includes the use of vehicles too. Rest assured, the vehicles will be cool and relevant to solving puzzles and such.\"

Presumably with all these gadgets cropping up (we hear rumours that Lara will have a grapple and rappel gadget too that will allow her to ascend and descend to all areas of a map at will), the inventory system is going to need something of an overhaul? \"Yeah, we\'re currently working on ways to make it easy to use and easy on the eye,\" explains Gard. \"We have integrated her weapons and equipment visibly into her costume. There is less of a sense of her taking out an infinite array of stuff from her Tardis backpack. The advantage is that you can tell what equipment options you have available to you by just glancing at Lara rather than needing to page through an inventory screen to find out.

\"We\'ve prepped Lara so much for this next adventure after taking a well-deserved break after Angel of Darkness,\" he continues. \"She\'s rested and ready and I think she\'s itching to get out there again.\"

Dark Ages
Ah yeah, the Angel of Darkness. We don\'t want to dwell on it too much, especially as we\'re lucky enough not to have seen it on Xbox, but it did do a lot of damage to the franchise, didn\'t it? There are bound to be a few raised eyebrows and doubters who think that perhaps Ms Croft is a little past her sell-by date. What does Gard have to say to these people?

\"Very little. All I say is wait and play the new game before making that sort of decision. The Xbox version will also feature new aspects not seen with any of the other versions. There are the obvious differences such as higher-res textures, but we\'re also going to be supporting a jukebox function which will be fun in Croft Manor. You\'ll basically be able to play a stereo when training - it\'ll be quite cool. We\'ll be revealing more about online elements at a later date too, so don\'t try and get that out of me!\"

Ah, Winston the butler. Will he be back shuffling around? \"No, Tomb Raider: Legend is a completely new start for Lara. We\'re not revealing how the story unfolds quite yet, but what I can say is that Lara travels across many continents on a quest for a mystical artefact rumoured to hold secrets of the past. Lara will then be confronted by corrupt forces led by a figure from her past thought dead. No characters from the past games play an important role, though.\"

Surely Gard isn\'t implying someone like her dad is going to come back to life? Can we persuade him to tell us? \"That wouldn\'t be fair to everyone else, would it?\" he smiles. \"Let\'s just say gamers will find out a lot more about Lara and her past, and what makes her tick in this new game.\"

And the answer to that question will be fully laid bare come the autumn, when Lara Croft either returns triumphant or goes out with a bang. Here\'s hoping it\'s the former - it\'d be such a shame spending all that time getting her looking so damned good, only to have her tumbling into the spikes again.

Official Xbox Magazine staff

[rainbow]

为什么现在都不愿意看完了呢......

[TombCrow]

更不愿意翻译了

[病态天使]

如果这种长度的文章是legend发售后对于它的评论，我是愿意看一遍的。。。在游戏发售前，都是废话，这种长篇废话就更累人了。。