It’s expansive but not a true open-world – it’s much more structured, with Lara being pushed from one camp fire to the next. Siberia functions much like the island did in the first game. Here the game begins in earnest, settling into a rhythm more familiar to the first instalment. She’s hurt but it’s not life-threatening. Once it’s over, the action returns to Siberia and we discover what happened to Lara after she fell from the mountain. The tomb of the prophet, however, is a self-contained section. And it’s here, among the cobwebs and scorpions, that Rise of the Tomb Raider feels at home and distinguishes itself from other third-person, high-adventure games. It’s everything you’d expect from a Tomb Raider experience. It’s a powerful callback to early Tomb Raider games where there was no more disturbing sight that seeing Lara drown. There’s even a section where Lara has to swim through a water-flooded catacomb and nearly drowns. Lara translates monoliths written in ancient Greek and critiques religious frescos for further leads. What follows is great: there are clues to hunt down, puzzles to solve, and gruesome traps to avoid. The action switches to the north-west border, and after a brief encounter with the local militia, Lara discovers the entrance to the Prophet’s Tomb. It’s something that’s been mentioned once or twice in the years since release, and Rise of the Tomb Raider addresses that almost immediately. It deftly fills in the psychology of a character we’ve known for so long.įamously, the 2013 reboot didn’t feature all that many tombs. Despite Anna’s best efforts, the scene concludes with Lara declaring, “I’m going to find the prophet’s tomb.” It’s a quiet sequence – Lara isn’t running from anything, no buildings are collapsing – but one of the most effective I played. She asks her to return to Croft Manor, her ancestral home, and not let obsession ruin her in the way it did her father. Presumably she’s a former lover of Richard Croft and someone who appears to genuinely care for Lara. Interestingly, while researching, Lara’s visited by a woman named Anna. By the end, everyone believed her father, Richard Croft, to be delusional, but Lara has also seen things which can’t be explained by science, and is driven to prove her father right and restore his reputation. She’s continuing her late father’s research, which involved locating the tomb of the prophet which contains, according to Lara, “tangible evidence of the immortal soul”. She’s on the front cover of a British tabloid along with the blunt headline “Another Crazy Croft”. After the events of the first game, it appears Lara’s become something of a minor celebrity. At home, we see Lara researching her next trip. Lara eventually falls off the mountain, and while her fate hangs in the balance, there’s a sustained flashback. What follows, however, does a great job of setting Tomb Raider apart. It looks spectacular, but ultimately isn’t all that unique within the genre of third-person action games. Effectively, it’s a tutorial level in which I learn Lara’s various navigational abilities under extreme pressure. Inevitably, Lara loses her footing and what ensues is a fraught sequence of ice climbing, rope swinging, and last-minute jumps. As we climb, a vicious storm approaches and the snow around us begins to shift. What I played opened with Lara scaling a Siberian mountain with her friend Jonah. While this is obviously a continuation of 2013’s reboot, it feels much more confident in terms of structure and scope. In just over three hours, I scaled a mountain, explored wolf-infested caves, climbed a frozen Byzantine galleon, polished up on my Greek, nearly drowned, and there was even time to fight a bear. There’s tremendous variety and more spectacle than ever before. This doesn’t make for a dry character piece either. Watch the video above to see nine minutes of brand-new gameplay from Rise of the Tomb Raider.