--Lara Croft, Rise of the Tomb Raider
Rise of the Tomb Raider definitely improves on or expands outward from its predecessor title, introducing new gameplay mechanics and focusing more on developing supporting characters. It shows Lara, already convinced of the existence of the supernatural, matured from someone motivated by her deceased father's memory into a woman who wants to do the right thing for its own sake by fighting a shadow organization called Trinity. She truly shines in this game, thanks to great writing and her plausible character arc (and some elements of this game appear in the recent Tomb Raider movie, along with aspects of the prior game [1]).
Production Values
As with the first installment in this reboot series, Rise of the Tomb Raider has excellent voice acting, clear visuals, and an ambitious scope. The visuals occasionally had a quality below that of the majority of the game (a certain character model particularly comes to mind), but generally they beautifully bring to life Lara's world, from artifacts to a hidden city to the bloody cuts on Lara. I only rarely encountered glitches of any sort. Lara is voice acted to great effect--as are the other characters--and the writing gives the other characters a chance to show or develop their own personalities. In Tomb Raider no one besides Lara really seemed to grow; in Rise of the Tomb Raider there is at least a handful of developed characters other than her.
Gameplay
As with Tomb Raider, the game succeeds in several key areas. The combat can be challenging and quite fun, the platforming is great, and the collectible options provide a wider variety of reasons to possibly keep playing after you've finished the main story. Exploration and fighting complement each other well and each one provides a respite from the other, with both furthering Lara's accumulation of new items and abilities.
More weapons are available this time, meaning that there are more ways to dispatch enemies and more ways to upgrade weapons. Because of this, the combat can be far more diverse in its execution. New gameplay additions also include a language translation mechanic and a crafting system. The former allows for Lara to read and decipher various messages in other languages, like Greek or Russian, and levels up a meter that applies only to translations. The latter lets Lara fashion explosives, special ammunition, and healing kits. It's a clever evolution for the series, which is thus far headed in a direction of steadily increasing quality.
Optional challenge tombs provide an additional intellectual challenge, and completing the tombs unlocks specific skills that cannot be obtained by any other methods. This time, thankfully, they are more elaborate than before. The skill tree is far larger his time, so the challenge tomb rewards only account for a fraction of the increase in skills. A fully-upgraded Lara is far more versatile and formidable in this game than the one that came before. If you loved the ferocity and atmosphere of the first game, you will probably love this game too.
Story
(Spoilers are below!)
Lara and Jonah, a surviving friend from the first game, climb a Siberian mountain together, but are quickly separated during a storm. Lara has come to Siberia in pursuit of a religious object called the Divine Source (associated with eternal life), something her deceased father Richard Croft believed existed. He thought that the mind/soul endures beyond the death of the body, and Lara wants to find the tomb of a figure called the Prophet of Constantinople in order to find the Source.
An ancient organization called Trinity declared the Prophet's ideas heresy, allegedly killed him, and was surprised to discover rumors of his resurrection. Lara had traveled to Syria to find the Prophet only to find an empty coffin and that Trinity has sent a man named Konstantin to recover the Divine Source for its own purposes, though Konstantin has his own objective of using the Source to heal his sister Ana. Once she comes to Siberia with Jonah, though, she is captured by Trinity and placed in a cell next to a man named Jacob. The two escape together, with Jacob leading Lara to his people and helping them prepare for Trinity's arrival.
Lara finds a tool that helps show the location of the Divine Source called the Atlas, and discovers that Trinity workers are being attacked by guardians called the Deathless Ones. Jonah, whom Lara has been separated from until now, is found by Jacob's people (the Remnant) but soon abducted by Trinity along with the Atlas. In a murderous act Konstantin stabs Jonah, but he is brought back to Jacob and healed. Away from Jonah, Jacob reveals to Lara that he is the Prophet; he can be harmed but he will not die of natural causes, and the Source is not divine, but it did give Jacob immortality.
Lara enters the area of the Source, hidden under a glacier, and fights the Deathless Ones--soldiers that the Source turned into monstrous long-lived warriors. Trinity attacks both the Remnant and Deathless Ones under the glacier, culminating in Lara killing Konstantin, who had believed for years that God had tasked him with claiming the Source. Trapped between Lara and advancing Deathless Ones, his sister Ana activates the Divine Source, but Lara smashes it, releasing the life from the relic's guardians. Jacob dies as well, but his people have survived.
Intellectual Content
As far as non-thematic intellectual content goes, the puzzles in the complex optional challenge tombs are more intellectually rigorous than those of the previous game, meaning that players can have to be more observant and thoughtful in how they approach these optional puzzles. Aside from this, Rise of the Tomb Raider does explore some important issues about religion or raise questions about them.
The Prophet has a history very similar to that of Jesus--he is said to have been killed and conquered death through resurrection, "claiming miracles that come only from the Divine" and preaching his own revolutionary theology. One of the Prophet's ideas, according to a document Lara can read, was that no human can speak on God's behalf because no person can know the truth about God. And yet, since the Prophet simultaneously insisted that God's voice is manifested in/through the natural world, this forms a contradiction in the Prophet's worldview. If the truth about God cannot be known, then any activity of God in the natural world cannot be known, for then a truth about God would be knowable. It cannot be true that God cannot be known is it is also true that we can identify God's voice in nature (which is fallacious as it is).
As for whether or not the claim "no person can know God" is true, it depends on what is meant by the sentence. If one means by the claim that no one can know anything at all about the concept of God, that of an uncaused cause, then it is self-refuting. A person can certainly at the very least know what he or she means by the word "God." If it means that nothing about the character of God can be known, then, while this is true on one level, there is still a massive evidential case for general Christianity that must be considered. Then there is the fact that an uncaused cause exists by pure necessity, and all that is open to legitimate skepticism is whether or not anything about God's nature beyond the existence of an uncaused cause can be demonstrated to be true.
It is revealed throughout the story that a stigmata on Konstantin's hand was made by his sister when he was young, not by God as Konstantin thinks, and the reveal means that at the very least a part of Konstantin's religion is false. Jacob has also lied to his followers for years about the nature of the Divine Source. In reality, he is not a prophet from God, nor is the Source an object affiliated with an actual deity. In light of each of these plot revelations, Rise of the Tomb Raider naturally raises questions about religious epistemology--how can one know if a religious claim is true or false? That depends on what is being claimed. A religion that has internal contradictions, like the one Jacob taught, cannot be true, however.
One last thing for this section--when it comes to the themes of eternal life and the existence of the soul beyond embodied life, as a Christian I must affirm that the Bible teaches that the soul is not immortal on its own post-Fall (1 Timothy 6:16). But humans were indeed meant to live forever. Death cannot exist apart from life, but life can exist, and was intended to exist, apart from death. It is just that eternal life on earth as it is could quickly prove a terrifying, exhausting thing. Lara seems to realize this by the end of her adventure, or to at least reach a similar conclusion.
Conclusion
The sequel to the 2013 reboot of the series improves on the last one on several key ways. The story gives secondary characters like Jacob opportunities to grow, something that Tomb Raider lacked. The optional tombs are more elaborate and thus require more thought. Some natural additions to the gameplay were made in the form of item crafting. All in all, it's a wonderful game.
A post-credits scene leaves the series ripe for the next sequel--and thankfully Shadow of the Tomb Raider is planned for release later this year! Also, I hope to obtain, play and separately review the season pass DLC content in the near future.
Content:
1. Violence: Like its predecessor, Rise of the Tomb Raider can be fairly violent. There is no explicit gore, but blood is common, as are fights.
2. Profanity: Several characters use profanity throughout the game.
[1]. See here for my review of the movie and of the first game in the reboot series:
A. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/movie-review-tomb-raider.html
B. https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2018/03/game-review-tomb-raider-xbox-one.html
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