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"We really wanted to send her on her first great tomb-raiding adventure. It's inspired by real-world adventurers, people like Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who climbed Everest," says Crystal Dynamics creative director Noah Hughes. That's all well and good Noah, but I'm struggling to recall when exactly Hillary or Norgay killed a grizzly bear with a poisoned arrow crafted from mushrooms harvested from an old tree stump. But hey, I'm not saying it didn't happen; my history is rusty at best.Inspirations aside, it's good to see Rise of the Tomb Raider - a timed Xbox exclusive and sequel to 2013's Tomb Raider reboot - celebrate a renewed focus on survival and stealth alongside all-out combat, not to mention the actual raiding of tombs. The E3 demo I experienced is very clearly crafted to show off these new systems, and is split into two parts. The first takes place in the freezing Siberian wilderness and sees Lara split up from her friend Jonah following an avalanche, while the second, in stark contrast, takes her to the scorching heat of some ruins on the northwest border of Syria.
In Siberia, where she's on the search for a lost key to immortality, Lara narrowly survives an avalanche but risks being frozen to death unless she finds shelter by nightfall. Much of her gear was scattered during the landslide, so Lara needs to call upon her resourcefulness and the surrounding environment in order to survive the coming storm. Despite low visibility and deep snow drifts that hamper her movement, Lara is able to collect wood from nearby trees and the hide of a recently killed deer (which has otherwise been stripped clean by wolves).
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