Tomb Raider Anniversary

It's heading to Wii!

Legend was fantastic, if a little short.

Hienz

Release date and controls not revealed yet.

Excellent news for me; I was annoyed there wasn't going to be a 360 version like with Legend.

Having said that, I'm not expecting much more than a PS2 port with a few Wiimote QTE sections. However, I'm well prepared to be proven wrong.

Lara Croft is cool.

Excellent news for me; I was annoyed there wasn't going to be a 360 version like with Legend.

 

Having said that, I'm not expecting much more than a PS2 port with a few Wiimote QTE sections. However, I'm well prepared to be proven wrong.

yes but legends had great graphics and since it's using the same engine i se why it can't be as good.

but i woulnt' force wii-mote controls onto it

yes but legends had great graphics and since it's using the same engine i se why it can't be as good.

I wasn't complaining about the graphics; the game looks really nice. I suppose they already brought the Legend engine to the 'Cube, so I assume they'll just tweak that a little. Speaking of which, what was the GC version like?

but i woulnt' force wii-mote controls onto it

Like I said, I'm not expecting much. Still, maybe there could be semi-manual aiming by pointing at the enemy you want to lock on to, or tilting the Nunchuk to keep your balance?

Yai, more support from Eidios. Might get a Hitman game on the Wii next!

Oh how great. A remade PSOne game with PS2 graphics. *sigh*

Oh how great. A remade PSOne game with PS2 graphics. *sigh*

not a bad thing at all? it's a classic.

Oh how great. A remade PSOne game with PS2 graphics. *sigh*

its utterly butterly different, same plot but the puzzles have like increased 10 fold in difficulty

Oh how great. A remade PSOne game with PS2 graphics. *sigh*

This is a good thing. It will help fund bigger better games!!! (for PS3 and 360)

The Legend engine is also that of the 360 version. There's no reason why it'd have PS2 graphics. This is quite good support; it's nothing even close to a port.

I just played a demo of legends but it seemed pretty cool.

Oh how great. A remade PSOne game with PS2 graphics. *sigh*

Legend looked great on the GameCube (And I don't even know if they are the same graphics as the PS2 version). Anneversary will probably look as good, if not better. I'm happy with that.

I hope they have some simple controls (Pointer for camera/aiming, Nunchuck for balance), but also include an CC/GC option.

I loved the engine for Legend - movement was masssively improved over all the other TR games.

Am I the only one who didn't think Tomb Raider Legends was that good?

Even with the improved controls it still wasn't anything special, why else was it going at a budget price within months of release?

Still seemed really stuck in the past, even with the new controls, this might be good for the nostalgic but it's not going to do much for the Wii.

I think TR lost its sense of "epicness" (horrible word) and general mystism quite a long time ago. Only ones of the series that I ever rated were TR and TR:LR, eventhough the later should have been a lot better designed.

Thing is that it is essentially based on the original Prince of Persia and it still suffers. Exploring the environments isnt that fun any more, there needs to be more. Suggestions: plot, new forms of gameplay, some really new environment puzzles or (god forbid) they could actually do some heavy research and make it a bit edutainmenty by making it about actual facts.

On a completely side note, did anyone else think that National Treasure was the film that should have been the Tomb Raider movie?

I loved Legends, but then again it was the first ever Tomb Raider I ever really played! Are we ever going to find out what happens iin the "to be continued" type ending?!

The only Tomb Raider I've ever played was Cronicles, and that was... well... crap. So I don't have the highest hopes for this. But I suppose it could only get better, right?

And as to higher Eidos support, and therefore a Hitman game on Wii, I figure that if Manhunt 2 works one Wii (i.e. the control system is actually decent, rather than tacked on like I'm worried it will be) we'll see a slew of similar games available soon, and Hitman will be one of them.

Never played the original so I might pick this up.

The original was by far the best imo. It has some huge environments which really made it beautiful. Also this rendition won't suffer from disturbingly close pop up!

IGN: Hey Bill, how it's going?

 

Bill Gardner: It's going great. It's been a long time since I talked to you guys. How are you doing?

 

IGN: Fantastic. The Wii is taking off, so we've been busy.

 

Bill Gardner: Yeah, I know, that's what I hear from everybody. I was talking to one of the big retailers and they said that the Wii is the only thing selling. I've been in the business a long time and I'm always concerned, because Nintendo comes along with Pokemon or Super Mario something or another, and the rest of us just get our lunch handed to us.

 

IGN: Yeah, we know. We're always concerned about that, too. But let's talk about today's news. You've just announced that Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary is coming to Wii.

 

Bill Gardner: It is. You know, we put Tomb Raider on GameCube, DS, and GBA. I have many, many, many years in the business and I've had a great relationship with Nintendo. I think the world of the people and the company - they do a wonderful job. Eidos in the past kind of avoided Nintendo.

 

IGN: Uh-huh. We were getting to that.

 

Bill Gardner: Well, I was with Capcom [laughs]. I mean, I had a great relationship with them at Capcom. It's a business, as you know, and you have to go out with the idea in mind that you could get killed by Pokemon or a Mario title, but at the same time there are a lot of Nintendo consumers out there who like to play other types of games.

 

IGN: This is true, but we are noticing a trend where people do seem to be buying more third party Wii games than they did on GameCube, so we hope that's an encouraging sign.

 

Bill Gardner: They bought a ton of our Lego Star Wars on GameCube. I mean, we did really, really well with Lego Star Wars. At the end of the day, we also did fine with Lara Croft on GameCube. It did very well. And I honestly believe we will continue to do fine.

 

I've seen the proposal on the Wii version of Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Anniversary and I believe there is enough differentiation between what we're doing now and what we're planning on with the Wii version. There is enough unique gameplay with the controls that this is going to be a really fun experience for people. And I think we're going out of our way to make a unique version for the Wii. It's not a port. It's a unique version.

 

IGN: So it's going to play differently?

 

Bill Gardner: My understanding is that it will because of the way the Wii remote is handled.

 

IGN: These other versions are supposed to be coming in June. Do you have an idea when the Wii build will be available?

 

Bill Gardner: I can honestly say this year [laughs]. I don't have a date. Part of it has to do with how much we put into it. You know, how different do we want to make it? Do we want to go down the route of calling it something a little bit different, and none of those decisions have been made yet.

 

IGN: We see. So let's speak a little more broadly for a moment. Why bring Anniversary to Wii now? What prompted this decision?

 

Bill Gardner: A couple things. One, I wanted Wii product, as you know. Let's not kid - I saw the Wii coming quite awhile ago. [Nintendo] asked me to come up and I went up with the head of Crystal Dynamics and we played with a prototype before the Wii was introduced. We were both thrilled with what we saw and played and we felt that the company needed to make a commitment to going in that direction. The problem we had was getting the development kits in time to make it happen in a timely basis with the releases we had scheduled for this year. We couldn't do that. I mean, as you've probably heard, everybody was late in getting their dev kits. Well, that piled into us also - let's not kid each other. As a result, it was impossible for us to make a simultaneous release - we didn't have the expertise to do that because we were later on getting out kits, and so on and so forth.

 

So what we wanted to do was to create a dynamic new experience with Tomb Raider to see how it'll work with Wii - to see if it goes out and does well on the platform. So that's where we are with it and it'll be out as quickly as we can possibly get it out.

 

IGN: Is this the beginning of major Eidos support for Wii?

 

Bill Gardner: Well, we've got some product I picked up in Japan. My plan is, yeah, everything that makes sense - not all of it makes a lot of sense on Wii, let's be honest. But the product that makes a lot of sense, you can bet that I'll be heavily lobbying London to include a Wii SKU. I'm a firm believer that we are a third party and as a result we need to be supporting all of the platforms.

 

IGN: Well, the Wii is taking off.

 

Bill Gardner: It is. When we did the Lego Star Wars for the GameCube and GBA, I was actually talking to Tom Stone [managing director, Lego Star Wars] about that as soon as I joined Eidos because I firmly believed that we were missing a great opportunity.

 

IGN: Well, you were right.

 

Bill Gardner: Oh yeah [laughs]. And consequently, the company has been much more willing to [support Nintendo platforms]. Like I said, I've have some very good luck with Nintendo over the years, so I'm not afraid of the platform. I go into it with the headlights on. You can't go in there and think it's going to be something it's not. You have to be realistic and be aware of what you can do and what you can accomplish.

 

I think if you can make something a little different for each platform, you've got a better chance. If you can take advantage of the Wii controllers, some people will want to play it. Put in some levels that maybe aren't anywhere else, and maybe go that route.

 

IGN: Do you think Eidos was surprised by the success of Wii?

 

Bill Gardner: I have to say, I think the answer to that question is yes. Was I surprised? No. I went up there and saw the thing beforehand and I got very enthusiastic about the product. The pricing is right, there's enough differentiation between it, and when I played it, the games were fun. I could do it and I'm a lousy gamer, you know what I mean? [Laughs] I could see, boy, this was going to be a new experience for a lot of people. Do you remember Duck Hunt? We picked up a ton of gamers in this industry because of that game because anybody could pick up and play it. I could pretty much tell you that Nintendo was going to do all right with Wii. Now, whether or not that was going to take the wind of out Sony's sail or not, you never bet on that - that's a fool's bet. Sony is, if nothing else, a great marketing machine and a tremendous production machine. Don't think they're not going to be competitive because they will be.

 

IGN: Anniversary is coming to Wii. Is this the first of many Tomb Raider games to come?

 

Bill Gardner: I think this is the beginning of what I hope will be our taking the franchise in multiple directions, much in the way that it has happened with other franchises out there in the sense that we want to discover what works on Wii and go that path with Tomb Raider. At the same time, we'll leave our doors open because we are a third party for the directions that we need to go with Microsoft and Sony. We're learning what it is that Nintendo consumers like to do and how we can make our products adapted into that market. My hope is, yes, there's lots more to come.

 

IGN: Sounds fair. Last question: why should Wii owners be excited about today's news?

 

Bill Gardner: There are two things that come to mind. I'm a PlayStation 2 and 3 owner, but everybody knows that it's massively expensive to develop a great PlayStation 3/Xbox 360 game. I mean, it really is. Whereas, the Wii version, if you do it right, there's some gameplay in there that doesn't exist on the other platforms - it's just not there. So, why should Wii owners be excited? A) we're committed to being in the market; B) we're going to add that gameplay to the Wii products.

 

You know how Lara jumps around? Some of that is going to be really interesting to do with the Wii controllers. Much more interesting than it is to press a button. Going that route, then you start thinking about some of the things Lara can do if you were to expand in that direction. That's kind of where I see us going with it. So we'll test the waters, try to do things right and do them well because that is the right market for it. This is a great opportunity for us to not only support Nintendo, but to find new consumers.

(The message I have enetered is too short)

Nice interview, old Bill Gardner seems genuinely thrilled and enthusiastic about the Wii and what Eidos can bring to it. Heck, I dont care about Tomb Raider but the guys attitude appeals to me so I'll keep an eye on it and see if they can deliver. Like, Wii is all about the controls and if they can make a good individual game, using the Wii's strong points, its what we all need to see!

I'm looking forward to this game. Though I've never played Legends, it seemed a nice game and I'm always in for a decent action adventure, especially with Wiimote controls.

TR1 on PS1 was as tough as nails, largely due to the indisguingishable environment, so I welcome this remake with open arms.

Good interview, the guy seems like a genuine Wii fan. I also like that they didn't just rush the development so the Wii version would be released at the same time as the rest, like a lot of developers have done lately.

This is good news as I never played he original, just a bit of the sequel.

Now I want a Hitman game.