SPOnG: Can you explain the nature of ‘Adrenaline Moments’ a little more?

Eric Lindstrom: Well, before we had quick time events, which were button presses. You press the correct button at the right time as it appears on the screen to escape a life or death situation. And what we wanted to do was have that same kind of feeling, that you’re going to die if you don’t do something to get you out of it, but you have to figure out what that something is. You now don’t just wait for the [A] Button prompt to appear and then press the [A] Button.

In fact, those quick time events really take you out of the experience. We want to keep you in the experience. So we just gave the players the tools to make their own way out and keep control the entire time.


SPOnG: And you also have the slowdown, almost bullet-time, combat moves such as the headshot manoeuvre. Was it quite challenging to try and implement those things in a way that hasn’t been done in other games before? Did you find it challenging to not make it seem like another bullet-time gimmick?

Eric Lindstrom: A little bit, but as we have an approach that is more ‘recipe’ than ‘sledgehammer’, the slow motion headshots is just one piece of a whole suite of abilities and mechanics. In contrast, for example in Max Payne – which I loved – that’s pretty much what the game was. Bullet-time. That’s not what this combat system is about. It’s easier to describe it as just one star in a constellation and let it be that, rather than have it the be-all and end-all. And I think it’s the combination of all the little stars that makes Tomb Raider combat what it is.


SPOnG: Eric Lindstrom, thank you very much for speaking with me today.

Eric Lindstrom: Thanks, my pleasure.


Alison—I mean, Lara – announced the serving of lunch from atop a balcony looking down on the gathered press. When the cameras started snapping, Lara began whipping out the guns and posing. Always a classy way to do it. Luckily the food didn’t consist of animals that had been taken down by Ms Croft during her escapades, but rather a buffet fit for the Ambassador’s Reception. The confusion of games journalists pawing through posh nosh was no match for the workout that lay ahead of them in the afternoon.