All Articles: Rise of the Tomb Raider
2016 Writers Guild Award for Videogame Writing goes to Rise of the Tomb Raider
The Writers Guild of America announced the winners of the 2016 Writers Guild Awards this weekend, and Square Enix’s Rise of the Tomb Raider took home the prize for “Outstanding Achievement in Videogame Writing.”
Lara Croft’s latest adventure was written by Rhianna Pratchett, with Narrative Design by John Stafford and Cameron Suey, and additional writing by Philip Gelatt. Pratchett is one of the gaming industry’s premiere storytellers, but this is her first win at the Writers Guild Awards. She previously wrote 2013’s Tomb Raider, as well as Heavenly Sword, Mirror’s Edge, and Beatbuddy: Tale of the Guardians.
The writing team beat out some strong competition this year including Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed: Syndicate, Obsidian’s Pillars of Eternity, and CD Projekt’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Developed by Crystal Dynamics, Rise of the Tomb Raider was released last year for the Xbox One and Xbox 360, and is now also available for the PC. It’ll launch for the PS4 sometime this Fall.
Rise of the Tomb Raider’s PC launch gets a number of graphical enhancements
Now that it’s Xbox exclusivity has ended, Square Enix is happy to announce that Rise of the Tomb Raider is now available to download on the PC (through Steam). But co-developers Crystal Dynamics and Nixxes made sure to include a number of graphical enhancements to the game (including 4K resolution support) to better harness the greater processing power of the PC.
Here’s a list of all the high-end visual tricks that have been added to the PC version of Rise of the Tomb Raider:
- HBAO+, an ambient occlusion technique which reduces artifacts and produces a richer and more details ambient lighting. Implemented through a partnership with Nvidia.
- Anisotropic Filtering, which greatly enriches the quality of the textures in the distance when viewed from an angle.
- Tessellation, which greatly enhances the detail of uneven surfaces in the ground, rocks, and bricks.
- Dynamic Foliage, which takes previously static foliage and makes it react dynamically to Lara’s movements and weather effects.
Rise of the Tomb Raider players can also expand their game with the Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch expansion, which is now available to download on the Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC.
New Releases: Final Fantasy Explorers, Lego Avengers, Rise of the Tomb Raider for PC
This might get said every January, but January 2016 was an abnormally slow period for new game releases. The first month of the year closes out with the launch of a trio new games and a promise of much more to come in the remaining eleven frames:
- Final Fantasy Explorers (3DS) is a multiplayer action RPG from Square Enix that resurrects “legendary” Final Fantasy characters to battle with a horde of monsters guarding a cache of crystals. Yup, sounds like a Final Fantasy game.
- Lego Avengers (3DS, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One) is the latest Lego-ization of some pop culture favorite by the geniuses at TT Games. This time, they’ve set their sights on the sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe and created a brick-filled adaptation of The Avengers, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Iron Man 3, and Thor: The Dark World.
- Finally, Square Enix comes back around again to bring Lara Croft’s latest adventure, Rise of the Tomb Raider, to the PC.
As always, we’ll be back later this week to shine the spotlight on the latest digital releases available through the PlayStation Store, Xbox Games Store, and Nintendo eShop.
A Day-By-Day Guide to All of 2016’s New Video Games (January – March)
After years and years of publishers packing the September through November “Holiday” season with an unmanageable number of new AAA titles, we might get a much more balanced release calendar in 2016. But can you believe it all happened by accident?
Video game fans have always had to deal with delays, but publishers got even more use out of their erasers than normal in 2015. Aside from the one-two punch of Fallout 4‘s E3 2015 announcement, and its eventual release on November 10th, no game felt safe… and more than a few big titles got pushed into 2016. So now we get to ring in 2016 with a release calendar that just might offer up something exciting all year long.
Are you ready? Because here… we… go… (more…)