Tomb Raider Ascension 2013 Project - Survival Horror

[telekill]

As part of the 25th Anniversary of the series, some very early gameplay and concept art/music was released for fans to view.

Now... I recall seeing some of this art back around 2011 or so when it was still being developed. It raised an eyebrow of concern as the creatures in it looked like they were from the wrong genre as Tomb Raider. Now, for all I knew it was a boss of some sort. Tomb Raider has had supernatural monsters in the past that you had to go up against so it was nothing new. That's what I chalked it up as. Next I knew, the Tomb Raider game from 2013 that we got came out and there were no actual monsters pre-se... at least not those that were shown.



Fast forward and yesterday, some gameplay and more info was released on Youtube among other places. You can see the video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-er1Nytu1M

After watching the footage this morning and seeing how far into the survival horror genre that they were planning on taking the series, I can say with full certainty that had they gone this direction with the series, that I would have stopped buying the games.

There are too many survival horror games these days and frankly, it's a genre that I was falling out of around the time they were developing this version of the 2013 game. For most, Tomb Raider has been about the adventure and the mystery. Finding a T-Rex in the first two games was startling but not survival horror. Fighting a mutated spider guy at the end of the third game was a bit creepy but not survival horror. Even Angel of Darkness which had some darker elements was not survival horror. That's because Tomb Raider was never meant to be survival horror. It's an adventure.

I am very glad that they ended up going the direction they did with the series because I got to enjoy some great games these last 8 years... yeah... the reboot has been around that long. Feel old yet? I do.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on the Tomb Raider that might have been? Would you have preferred that over what we got? Are you a fan of survival horror in general?

[kamikazekeeg]

I would've adored this and I liked the reboot series (Still need to play the third one).  A shame they changed direction as I think knowing what the game ended up being, but doing that with more scary horror would've been great, especially at the time when games like Resident Evil were super garbage at the time like Resident Evil 6 and Operation Raccoon City.  Interesting to see this though, reminds me how much they changed Resident Evil 4 from crazy supernatural stuff to what we ended up getting that makes abit more sense for the series.  I still think a horror spinoff for Tomb Raider would be cool.