Tomb Raider I-III Remastered Discussion

[Splinterdog]

I've been playing the originals only recently on either GOG or Steam and TR1 with either Glidos or TombAti and was eager to see how the Remastered versions would look. I wasn't disappointed because Lara and her adventures now have a very nice lick of paint.

I was surprised to see that the intro FMVs hadn't been polished up, but was pleased to see that the FMV cutscene at the end of The Great Wall in TR2 ( the one with the gang member lauding Marco Bartoli) had been completely revamped.
F3 brings up photo mode which is free-flying and easy to use, with F1 reverting to classic mode.
If you want all the legal mumbo jumbo/weird disclaimer to disappear, just add -nolegal to the launch parameters.
I tried modern controls but couldn't handle the weirdness so I'm sticking to keyboard only tank controls because it's what I'm used to with these games.
The games have been polished up very nicely, as have the three expansions and they are about as good, if not better than I was expecting.
And, pointy bras are out, but D-cups are back in vogue.

 

[mclaren85]

I don't know why they didn't develop a remake instead of remastered.

 

[cvaldes]

I don't know why they didn't develop a remake instead of remastered.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary (2007) is a remake of the original Tomb Raider I (1996) game.

Game development isn't free. Clearly the motive here is to bring the classic games to current players. The old games -- while playable -- aren't ideal on today's machines. Remember that in 1996, most people were playing on a low resolution, narrow gamut CRTs with low refresh rates, different pixel shapes, the notion of phosphor persistence, et cetera ad nauseam.

Those original games don't look as good on today's high resolution flat panels as they did on those old CRTs. Same with old consoles like SNES, N64, whatever.

Some of the modernization is a balance between staying faithful to the old title and adjusting for modern hardware and gameplay like offering an alternative to tank controls which have gone out of style.

All of this takes time and money. The point is to make money. There's no sense in sinking in $125 million into development (like Mortals of Aveum) if you're not going to sell that many copies.

Stepping up to make a full blown remake is a major commitment with no guarantee. And upgrading the visuals to the point they require really serious hardware reduces the number of potential players.

This remaster runs on Nintendo Switch which is approaching 135 million units in total sales. How many copies of this game do you think they would sell if it only ran well on RTX 4080/RX 7900 XT tier GPUs?

Let's go back to the most important concept of all: games are way more than graphics, how many polygons you can paint on the screen, the size of the texture maps, blah blah blah.

I've seen video of some RTX Remix mods that introduce ray tracing to these old Tomb Raider games. Yes, they are pretty but a lot of times the lighting improvements make zero sense relative to the situation or story. Why would minimally trafficked tunnels be filled with freshly lit torches? Stuff like that.

But it looks like these RTX Remix mods are headed our way so you are free to tart up your PC game binaries with them if you like.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I don't know why they didn't develop a remake instead of remastered.

Tomb Raider Anniversary is pretty much a remake of TR 1 but lol that's now 16 years old!

 

[mclaren85]

Tomb Raider Anniversary is pretty much a remake of TR 1 but lol that's now 16 years old!

Maybe they should develop a re-remake of TR1

 

[Splinterdog]

After this release, I don't think a remake of any of these three is warranted and yes, Anniversary is a total remake of TR1 and very well done too.
Aspyr hasn't altered the game in any way, which I'm very pleased about. Besides, it's a remaster that's faithfully repainted both Lara and her surroundings, with the option of switching back to the pixelated original and pointy boobs in a millisecond.

 

[QuietBob]

The only Tomb Raider game I've ever finished was The Last Revelation (the fourth in the series). But I remember how hyped I was for the original 1996 release

My local software shop didn't have it at launch, so I travelled some 60 miles by bus to a nearby city just to get it. Imagine my chagrin when the other store was out of stock! I ended up with a copy of C&C: Red Alert instead. That was in fact the first PC game I bought with my saved money.

Will definitely be buying the remasters. About time to complete these classics

 

[Splinterdog]

In 1998 I remember going to Evesham Micros (UK) to buy a new Pentium II, one of the machines in the showroom was running a demo of Tomb Raider II and on the way back I popped into PC World, Hereford and bought the CD.
That's when Lara got her hooks into me.

 

[nomdeplume]

That's when Lara got her hooks into me.

Hooks, highly pixelated cannons. Same difference.

Not yet bought the remaster. Will probably do so in the near future. Glad it turned out very well and I knew you'd be thrilled when the date finally arrived.

 

[Hyderz]

was never a fan of the original tomb raider, the gameplay felt clunky and the 3d environments was confusing at most time.. mostly due to the low res on ps1
tried it again on mates pc with 3d accelerator and it looked a bit better but i never got the hang of the gameplay controls... but i guess this remaster is cool for the fans of the original
i much prefer the reboot of tomb raider back in 2013... geez thats 10 years ago already? i welcome newer tomb raider games..

 

[Klemc]

Anniversary, is that not a remake of TR1 ?

 

[Splinterdog]

Anniversary, is that not a remake of TR1 ?

Yes, it is.