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Ahead of February’s launch.
Image credit: Aspyr/Crystal Dynamics
We’ve not heard much about Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered since its unveiling back in September last year, but now developer Aspyr has emerged to share further details about what players can expect – including control toggles and a photo mode – when Lara Croft’s spruced-up early adventures come to PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC, on 14th February.
Writing in a new post on the PlayStation Blog, Aspyr explains it wanted to focus on “additions instead of revisions” when developing Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered, saying it believes the “gameplay of [the originals] is timeless.”
To that end, it’s adding the option to toggle between the three games’ “classic” tank-like controls and a more modern alternative, which takes inspiration from Tomb Raider Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld; here, full camera control is mapped to the right stick, while Lara moves directionally based on the camera position.
Other additions include health bars for bosses – Apsyr reasons their absence in the original games “can be frustrating for tougher bosses with massive amounts of health” – plus new 3D in-world item pick-ups that’ll replace the flat 2D sprites used previously. The latter visual tweak arrives alongside new baked and real-time lighting effects, new models for Lara and enemies (as seen in last year’s Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered reveal trailer), plus enhanced environments, animations, textures, and VFX.
Players that prefer the Tomb Raider games’ classic looks can go fully retro if they choose, with Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered featuring a toggle to switch between original and modern graphics- you’ll find some new comparison pictures over on the PlayStation Blog.
Elsewhere, Aspyr promises over 200 Trophies (which will presumably also be available as Achievements on Xbox and Steam), including one for locking Winston the butler in the freezer. And finally, there’s a “robust” photo mode, that’ll freeze gameplay and let players pose Lara ready for some snaps, with the graphics toggle also working here.
Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered launches for PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Steam, GOG, Epic, and Switch on 14th February – Lara’s birthday. Eurogamer’s Christian Donlan is, for one, excited; “Come February, I’ll have these special games back again,” he wrote last year. “I’ll plug it all in and babble to my daughter about the grid system, about how early Tomb Raider is kind of like Chess, and how you can do the special handstand when mantling. I’ll still think back to my old shared house and that creaking hand-me-down Pentium or whatever it was, but now I’ll be making a new layer of memory to bring to the whole thing. Can’t wait.”
