Brian Horton – Tomb Raider

Subject: Brian Horton – Senior Art Director, Crystal Dynamics

Mollie: When Naughty Dog’s Uncharted was first unveiled, the game ended up receiving the nickname “Dude Raider” by some gamers, as many got the impression that it was just trying to be Tomb Raider with a male character swapped in as the lead. Of course, the Uncharted series grew into its own, and it’s now amusing that things have kind of come full circle: after the reveal of Tomb Raider, some online took to calling it a “female Uncharted”. Do you take all of that in stride, or does it legitimately bother you that those people have been so quick to jump on a nickname like that?

Brian Horton: I think we’re in a very similar space. We’re a third-person action adventure game. We’re adding the survival tone to Tomb Raider that we think is very different, and which we think adds another dimension to the game. There are a lot of things that we’re doing, such as the hubs, that are very different from Uncharted, which really is a pretty linear game.

But comparisons to one of the greatest games of this decade? I don’t think we have much of a problem with that, as long as people recognize that we’re just trying to do something of our own, and that there are unique elements to what we’re trying to accomplish.

Mollie: What was so fantastic about the original Tomb Raider was that it was so heavily based around exploration, and that while it did have some elements of combat, it never felt like it had to rely on those to be a good game. These days, it seems like it’s far harder for games to strictly be adventure without having to infuse a heavy dose of action to keep some players from feeling bored. Could this new Tomb Raider have been made without any combat whatsoever? How much of a concern has the “we need action” thought been during the creation process? Is there a formula where you determine you have to have y% of action to balance out x% of adventure?

Brian: I think what we decided—and we went back and forth on this a lot as we were trying to find the core of this game as a re-imagining of Tomb Raider—is that the formula the original Tomb Raider had wasn’t wrong. It had exploration, puzzle solving—at the time they called it “puzzle solving”, we’re not calling it that—and combat, and those are still ingredients that we think are vital to the Tomb Raider franchise and identity.

So, what we try to do in the process is amp up our exploration. We’re putting a lot more emphasis exploration, and environments that are just designed for exploration. But, I do think we need a balance. We are still an action title; I think that is an ascetic of a modern gamer, but it’s also great for pacing.

The one thing I love about anything that’s impure—where there’s that blending of pillars—is that it really gives you a lot of levers to pull when it comes to pacing, and I think that’s one thing we’ve really been enjoying about our mission structure.

Mollie: The original Tomb Raider, much like Nintendo’s Metroid series, really created this amazing sense of quiet isolation. You were alone, fighting in a sense against the environments, and all you had to rely on for survival was yourself. How much of that will kind of feeling will be in the new Tomb Raider, versus the moments when you’re interacting in some way with the locals or other living elements?

Brian: As we’ve said in past interviews, the two most important characters in the game are Lara and the environment that she’s in. I truly believe that we have to personify and bring character to that environment, because it’s her main foe. No matter what, we see the island as a character, and I think that speaks to the spirit of what you’re talking about. The man vs. nature—or, woman vs. nature in this case—is definitely a key ingredient in our game.

Mollie: When you mention the island as a character, that reminds me of the TV series Lost. The writers said that that was a big part of the storyline: that the island wasn’t just a location, but an actual character in the show, one with its own persona. Would you say there’s a similar idea going on here? That concept that Tomb Raider’s island isn’t just a set piece, but something bigger.

Brian: I think in all Tomb Raider games, if you look at these environments, they had a life. I just recently re-played the original Tomb Raider on the PlayStation 3 to remember what it was like. I was a huge, huge fan of Tomb Raider—it was what opened me up to 3D games. That, and Mario 64.

What I realized was, you had such an affinity for that space, and the way you re-circulated around it. You felt like you really got to know it, but at first you didn’t know it at all. It was that getting to know the environments and feel the space out; I think we’re trying to capture some of that, but re-invent the idea for a modern audience.

Mollie: There have been an increasing number of origin stories and reboots recently, especially in the superhero genre. An origin story can be very interesting, giving you a look at the character in a way you’ll never see otherwise, but it can also feel a little lazy, as it’s an easy way to toss a character into a movie or game without needing to come up with a new plotline. How do you create Tomb Raider as an origin story without falling into that trap, and what elements does the origin story present to you that you might otherwise not have for showing the players who Lara is?

Brian: I think the big difference for this origin story is, if we just took Lara Croft as we knew her and made her origins story, she would simply play through this first journey and then move on to those events that we saw later. We’re not doing that. We’re really rebuilding her and all of her adventures that come later.

If you look at the recent Star Trek movie for example, they made a deliberate point in there that the time continuum has changed, and now everything is going to be different. Kirk and Spock still feel like Kirk and Spock in some essence, but they’re not. They’re different characters, and they have different ways to approach a problem.

With Lara, we’re trying to do something similar. We’re trying to find enough character elements that she still feels like Lara Croft, but when we go forward from here, the world’s our oyster and it gives us such a great platform to start with. It cleans the slate for us and allows us to tell new stories. So, that’s why I don’t feel like it’s lazy in respect to that. We really approached it from many different facets of re-imagining this franchise.

Mollie: In doing that, you’ve also re-created her visually, at least to some extent. In regard to that—and I have to ask this—there’s the breasts question. It’s a discussion that has come up a lot online: some people are complaining that her chest is too small compared to Lara’s previous character design, while others are arguing that if you’re attempting to make her a “serious” character, she still has too much sex appeal. It’s such a small detail in the grant scheme of things, but one that’s created a rather weird yet interesting conversation. How do you re-design Lara to have more depth in character design beyond what she was before, while also acknowledging the fact that female characters can be sexy while having that depth?

Brian: I think it’s that exact point: riding the line. I mean, you have to have some level of visual appeal. We stripped her down to the core components—where it wasn’t about the surface quality, but who she is as a person—and then built her back up from there. Her visual aspects didn’t start first, it actually started with her biography, and the vision of Lara that we wanted. Then, when it came down to the particulars, we just knew that we wanted to give her more believable proportions, so it really came down to that. What are proportions that we think are believable for a 21-year-old girl, and what would also feel contemporary? I think those are the two facets that determined everything we did.

If our critique is that some people think her chest is too big or too small, I think we’ve found the perfect center. We didn’t obsess over this; we don’t have any idea, through her biography, what her breast size is. All we did is what we felt was right for the character, and that was every decision that we made.