Crystal Dynamics – where the Tomb Raider team works – can be found in a complex at the end of a long road in Redwood City in San Francisco. Without laboring the comparison, Tomb Raider’s journey from inception to being in stores today has some similarities. You exit a freeway – in our case the conventional expectations of what Tomb Raider should be, you negotiate a lengthy curve (securing support for a bold new direction), negotiate through the stop signs of constant testing and second guessing before finally enjoying what appears to be a smooth home stretch.

Here’s where my comparison breaks down however. While the Crystal team has learned to watch their velocity on approach to avoid speed tickets, Tomb Raider on the other hand has hit the gas and enjoyed a breakneck ride in the past few months to launch. It’s a clichéd term but it truly has been a rollercoaster ride for the team – an unforgettable one – to get to this point.

There’s a reason why we have been using the hashtag #Reborn to accompany all our discussion of Tomb Raider at launch. It truly does represent a new beginning for one of gaming’s most beloved franchises and protagonists. We wanted to make Lara Croft a real, relatable person – prone to the doubts and setbacks we all occasionally experience. What truly sets Lara aside from the average Joe on the street isn’t her biceps, her appearance or what firearm she carries – it’s force of will. Absolute power is compelling in theory but boring in execution – especially in a game. Will to power – or more accurately in Lara’s case, will to live – is the distinction we celebrate with in Tomb Raider.

Under the watchful eyes of the Tomb Raider community we’ve created an experience that tells a truly gripping origin story for Lara Croft, while including best of class combat, an elegant control system that makes traversal second nature, and a living breathing island setting that is not only gorgeous to look at, but perilous at every turn. We didn’t forget about exploration either – with tomb raiding being important both in the game’s critical path as well as forming one of the integral parts of multitudes of diversions on offer. But I’ll let you discover that for yourself.

It’s been my privilege to work alongside a truly dedicated and committed team at Crystal Dynamics. There’s an awe-inspiring level of passion that has gone into crafting this game from our home team as well as our valued colleagues at Eidos Montreal, who worked on the game’s multiplayer. So many people have been integral in the game reaching stores, however, it would be remiss of me not to draw attention to our head of studio, Darrell Gallagher, who has driven the game and pushed the Crystal team from day one to deliver something truly special.

Revisiting my analogy up top: Tomb Raider may have reached its destination, but by no means is it the end of the road. As any Crystal staffer can tell you – the road doesn’t end at Crystal – it loops all the way around. The final verdict on whether we’ve succeeded is a more personal one – but the early indications are we might have struck the right chord. The Tomb Raider community would expect no less from us than absolute commitment to excellence, and neither would we as a studio tolerate less.

In addition to all of this, I am delighted to announce that Tomb Raider is a day 1 download on PSN — you’ll be able to grab it as soon as PlayStation Store updates today.

I sincerely hope you enjoy your time with Tomb Raider. Let us know what you think – we’ll be listening.

Injured. Scattered. Hunted. Shipwrecked on an island off the coast of Japan, Lara Croft began armed with nothing more than her wits and will to live. Forced to forage for food and defend herself from hostile natives, Lara is forever changed when her friends are captured and she realizes she is the only one who can save them. Pushed to the limits of human fortitude, Lara knows that if she doesn’t survive, none of them will. Watch Lara transition from “survival” to “Survivor” in our new trailer.

Raziel, the ‘hero’ of Soul Reaver

Ah, Soul Reaver. I remember it well! This gruesome little gem made quite the splash when it landed on PSone in 1999. As the wounded, ostracized vampire Raziel, your goal was to avenge yourself against the corrupt vampire lord Kain and restore balance to the decaying world of Nosgoth. I particularly remember the game’s inspired approach to combat; your vampiric foes couldn’t be killed by ordinary means, so after weakening them with hand-to-hand combat you had to hurl their broken bodies onto a sharp stake or into a patch of sunlight to finish them off. The level design was also a knockout, as Raziel was able to phase-shift into a spectral realm in order to bypass obstacles or solve puzzles.

But above all else, Soul Reaver is remembered for its story and characters. And we have the game’s director Amy Hennig to thank for that! As you’re probably well aware, Hennig later joined celebrated PlayStation developer Naughty Dog, serving as creative director and writer for Jak and Daxter and all three UNCHARTED titles.

Hennig graciously took the time to share her memories of Soul Reaver’s development, including some never-before-revealed insight into the game’s origins. Read on for the full story straight from Hennig, and be sure to leave your favorite Soul Reaver moments in the comments.

PlayStation Blog: What was the original concept for the game?

Amy Hennig, Director and Writer of Soul Reaver: I don’t know how many people know this, but initially, it wasn’t actually a sequel to Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain at all – our original proposal was a concept for a new IP we named “Shifter,” loosely inspired by Paradise Lost. The protagonist was essentially a fallen angel of death, a reaper of souls hunted by his former brethren, and now driven to expose and destroy the false god they all served.

The Shifter concept was the genesis of the game that would become Soul Reaver; the core ideas were all there. The hero was an undead creature, able to shift between the spectral and material realms, and glide on the tattered remains of his wing-like coattails. We conceived the spirit realm as a twisted, expressionistic version of the physical world. The hero was bent on revenge after being betrayed and cast down by his creator – like Raziel, he was a dark savior figure, chosen to restore balance to a blighted, dystopian world.

When we were asked to adapt this concept into a sequel to Blood Omen, our challenge was to take all these ideas and merge them creatively into the Legacy of Kain mythos.

PSB: Did you know you were working on something special? What were your creative conditions as you worked on it – uncertainty, confidence, terror?

AH: You’re never really sure when you’re in the middle of a project. Because we were initially such a small team, we were able to work under the radar for a while, and this allowed us to tinker with some unusual ideas that might not have survived premature scrutiny or skepticism.

When we first shared the concept with our colleagues in the company, there was a lot of enthusiasm for the idea but also justifiable concern that we might be taking on an unrealistic number of technical risks. We pared back on some secondary features – we had originally planned to include shape-shifting (morphing) as well as plane-shifting, for instance – so we could focus on elements that were more critical to our core concept. By the time we unveiled the game to the press, we were starting to get the feeling that we might be onto something special.

As far as the creative conditions went – we were very invested in our original Shifter idea, so it naturally caused a bit of consternation when we were first asked to adapt the concept to be a Blood Omen sequel. But creative constraints can be inspiring and invigorating, and once we dug into the challenge, the concept evolved in all kinds of exciting ways.

We definitely had set ourselves a lot of ambitious technical goals, though – so, yes, there was a fair amount of uncertainty and terror about what we were undertaking!

PSB: Did you draw inspiration from anywhere in particular for the game’s thematic elements, characters, or dialog?

AH: There were so many different inspirations, it’s hard to just name a few…
As I mentioned earlier, the original idea was very loosely inspired by the rebellious angels of Milton’s Paradise Lost. The spiritual structure of the world was based on the philosophy of Gnosticism, the belief that the cosmos is ruled by a malevolent “pretender” god, that humans are prisoners in a spiritual lie, and that mankind’s struggle is a fight for free will in the face of seemingly insurmountable Fate.

We wanted to give Nosgoth’s dystopian future a decaying 19th-century industrial aesthetic, while the look of the spectral realm was inspired by the twisted architecture and disorienting angles of 1920s German Expressionist cinema.

Regarding the dialogue, we obviously took a cue from Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain, with its florid language and ornate monologues. We wanted to carry a similar style into the sequels. I also drew inspiration from the dense, literate dialogue of historical dramas like A Man for All Seasons, Becket, and A Lion in Winter.

PSB: It was an ambitious title for its time. What were the biggest challenges in realizing your original vision?

AH: Our biggest challenge, hands-down, was getting the data-streaming working, to allow us to have a seamless, interconnected world with no load events. I think we were one of the first developers to tackle this problem (along with Naughty Dog, on Crash Bandicoot). It proved to be way more difficult than we had initially anticipated – if I recall, we were still struggling to get the textures to dynamically pack correctly, just a couple months before release. We ultimately got it working by the skin of our teeth, but I wonder if we would’ve embarked on such an ambitious plan if we’d known how difficult it was going to be!

Our second challenge, of course, was figuring out how to store two sets of data for the spectral and material realms, and how to implement the real-time morph between the two environments. Our initial plan was over-ambitious, involving texture-morphing as well as geometry-morphing, but we realized pretty early on that our texture memory (and time) was too limited to achieve this. We came up with the idea of leveraging the 3DS Max animation timeline to attach spectral values to the vertices in the geometry – i.e., frame 0 was the material world, and frame 1 was the spectral realm (or vice versa; I can’t remember for sure). This way we could alter the x,y,z coordinates of each vertex, as well as its RGB lighting values, to create a twisted, more eerily lit version of the physical realm.

Our ultimate challenge, though, was schedule and scope. Conceived as an open-world, Zelda-esque 3D adventure game, Soul Reaver was incredibly ambitious. Crystal Dynamics’ Gex engine gave us a leg-up on the 3D technology, but in essence we were writing a game engine from scratch, while developing a new IP. These days, a developer wouldn’t think of attempting such a thing in less than three years (minimum), but Eidos wanted the game in less than two. In the end, we shipped Soul Reaver in under 2.5 years, but not without some unfortunate eleventh-hour cuts which still pain me today. The scope of the game was definitely too ambitious, but if we had shipped the game that Fall, instead of that Summer, I think we could have reduced the scope of the game more elegantly.

PSB: How close to your original concept was the finished game?

AH: Pretty close, considering all the changes we went through over the course of development. We had to cut content, but the core concept of the game remained unchanged (even going back to the original Shifter proposal).

To hit the August ’99 release date, we had to cut the last few levels of the game, and end on a cliffhanger that set up Soul Reaver 2. Originally, Raziel was going to hunt down and destroy all of his former brothers as well as Kain – and then, using his newly-acquired abilities, he would’ve activated the long-dormant pipes of the Silenced Cathedral to wipe out the remaining vampires of Nosgoth with a sonic blast. Only then would he realize that he’d been the Elder God’s pawn all along, that the purging of the vampires had devastating consequences, and that the only way to set things right would be to use Moebius’ time-streaming device to go back in time and alter history (in the sequel).

So the story would have arrived at a similar place, just by a different route. In the end, as much as I hated its bluntness, Soul Reaver’s “To Be Continued” ending probably turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I think it opened up more interesting story options for the sequels.

PSB: Which element of the game are you most proud of?

AH: I’m extremely proud of how our relatively small team managed to pull off all those groundbreaking technical challenges. And as a designer, I still take pride in the originality of Soul Reaver’s vision, and the unified way we were able to mesh the game mechanics with the fiction – e.g., devouring souls for sustenance, and the way the spectral plane was integrated into the health system; how the combat mechanics were designed around defeating immortal vampires; the ability to glide on broken wings; and the balance between Raziel’s mechanics in the spirit and material realms, especially the ability to use the morphing terrain to your advantage. In many ways, I think it’s still the most well-designed game I’ve worked on.

PSB: How would you like Soul Reaver to be remembered? What did it bring to the video game medium?

AH: Fondly, I hope! Even thirteen years later, I’m humbled and gratified to have fans and colleagues come up to me and say how memorable the game was for them, or how it influenced them as young game designers. The series still has an enthusiastic fan base, and is remembered affectionately in ways we couldn’t have foreseen all those years ago.

I hope it’s remembered as a well-constructed game with an original vision and an engaging story, and as groundbreaking in terms of what we were able to achieve on the PlayStation at the time. Our approach to voice acting and performance was also innovative for the time, the way we brought the actors in to record their dialogue together rather than in isolation. The performance capture process we use on Uncharted today – where we involve the actors as collaborators, and have them play the scenes together on the stage – owes its origins to the techniques we established for Soul Reaver fifteen years ago.

PSB: Which of the Soul Reaver characters is closest to your heart?

AH: It’s impossible for me to choose between Raziel and Kain – they’re two inseparable sides of the same coin (so to speak). As a character, I probably like Kain more. Although ostensibly a villain, he’s really a classic hero, fighting for free will in a world shackled by Fate. Raziel is a more tragic figure, a pawn, and that makes him sympathetic – but he’s also a deeply flawed character, blinded by self-righteousness and vengeance. I loved writing for both of them.

More Behind the Classics

How does it feel to be bringing Lara back in an all-new take on the Tomb Raider series?

Noah Hughes: It’s an honor to be able to not only work with Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, but also to be able to reboot the franchise. I’ve been at developer Crystal Dynamics for a while now, and we’ve had the pleasure of making a few games starring Lara. We’ve learned a lot. To be able to distill everything we want to do with the franchise into an entirely fresh take is inspiring.

So it’s a totally new direction for the series?

NH: It is. It’s a reboot and not directly related to the timeline of Lara as such, but it will touch on familiar elements of her character. You’ll see her grow into the hero figure that fans know and love.

Is it going to reference the events of past games at all?

NH: It starts a whole different timeline. There’s not necessarily an assumption it will connect directly to past events. We are projecting our own Lara, taking this origins story, recreating and her launching her off into a new adventure. We love catering to some of the fan favourites, but we’re not beholden to all of the story points within the series. We like playing with the signature Tomb Raider themes from this new angle.

I saw the use of an Instinct system in the game, similar to fellow Square Enix title Hitman: Absolution. Is that the result of sharing between studios?

NH: We actually share a lot of assets between studios. The guys at [Hitman: Absolution developer] IO Interactive are such a talented bunch. Having said that, the idea of the Lara’s intuition, this detective-like ability, is something we’ve admired in a number of games, but what’s important to us is the way fans play through this tale of survival. We’re really going to be selling this idea of Lara fighting and scraping through the unknown.

Who’s the resident physics genius responsible for the grand puzzle set pieces?

NH: One of the great things about working on a game of this size is that you attract people with all kinds of different backgrounds. These people then step up and become champions of various disciplines. The environmental challenges that we present and the physics of any given situation determine how you interact with the world.

Devising these puzzles is one of the more complex level design problems that we tackle, so it is something that we will not only get our best minds on, but iterate a lot – that means we’ll put something in, play with the system, try to figure out what the players would do and go from there.

Is the climbing axe a tool Lara constantly has access to?

NH: Yes, that’s an example of one of our gear-ups. Lara gets a gear item and you’ll have that available to you for the rest of the game, along with whatever abilities that brings to the table. On the game design side of it, when we give you gear like that, it really is multifunctional. The obvious application of it is as a climbing aid, but there’s a heap of other uses for it besides.

So is Lara now a serious heroine, after the cartoonish adventures of the 90s?

NH: Rather than change her for change’s sake, we just decided to make her as real as we could. Everything then kind of came out of that – the character design, the story we were telling, the whole look of the game. We really tried to ground that in a human experience. That was the starting point.

You can see that once you start down the road of bringing her to life, it can influence so much of the rest of the game. So, yes, she is, but that was the result of the changes we made, not the cause.

How far did you push Lara’s pain threshold?

NH: Pain and hardship are what help forge Lara into this hero – I mean, she’s a fledgling archaeologist who becomes the Tomb Raider. There has to be some trial and tribulation! Ultimately the boundary was: what delivers that sense of survival at all costs, without being gratuitous?

Where did inspiration for this environment come from?

NH: What we try to do is trace our initial ideas back to their roots. The idea we keep coming back to is that of survival being a core human instinct. We want the history of a place or a situation to really hook you in and pull you through the story.

We also take inspiration from a number of real-world stories. You hear about these people who have gone through extraordinary situations and come out alive. Films like Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours are where we’ve been looking. That’s what we’re trying to capture, that core human spirit.