In Shadow of the Tomb Raider, less is more, especially when it comes to Lara’s hilariously emotionless polygon faces.
Wearing the Tomb Raider 2 skin is amazingly funny. Showing just how dated one of the first games in the series is, Lara’s face is a much different color from the rest of her body, and her visage does not move from its default blank expression (and if you’re interested in an in-depth look at Lara’s graphical progression throughout the series, check out my longform piece here).
This makes it super, super funny to hear Lara’s well-voiced reaction to shocking things, like her discovery that her pilot was mauled and eaten by a big cat, all while staring dead-eyed into space.
So there's a pretty sweet skin option in the new #TombRaider pic.twitter.com/wUIblluqfz
— lindsay ☾ elyse (@gglindsayelyse) September 15, 2018
Later on, Lara is also mauled in the back by the same big cat, and apparently, it was pretty gruesome. I wouldn’t know, because my polygon skin on Lara only showed it tugging a little bit on her unmoving brown chunk of a backpack.
Effects like mud, water, and blood are all muted and strange on the older skins, giving Shadow of the Tomb Raider, a very modern and beautiful game, a funny and classic touch. It’s a shame that the game often makes you switch costumes for story reasons, or else I would have played the entirety of it in her Tomb Raider 2 skin.
The other retro skin I played with was the Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness one. Lara wears circular sunglasses and has her hair in a long braid while wearing this skin, and overall looks pretty badass, even by today’s standards.
Check out this awesome cut-scene I captured where she is wearing her Angel of Darkness skin as she rises out of the burning waters in a character-defining moment.
That’s not to say that the vanilla skin in Shadow of the Tomb Raider doesn’t look great; but it’s surely not as fun as the other retro skins available.
Related: Tomb Raider and The Descent are the perfect companion pieces
Shadow of the Tomb Raider is out now for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
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