I don’t want to make too big a deal about this but did you see the way her shoulder knocked those bricks loose???
I’m replaying Rise of the Tomb Raider on PC, and have been appreciating some of the smaller details about the game as I’ve played.
Most of the time, when Lara Croft moves through a cave entrance or some other nook or cranny, she does a canned “Lara moves through a small space” animation similar to what Nathan Drake does in the Uncharted games.
It looks like this:
She kinda sidesteps through, not actually touching anything as she goes.
One time, however—during a prison break sequence about a third of the way into the game—the transition is different. Check out the full clip:
Look at that shit! It’s ridiculously detailed. As Lara works her way into the gap she’s punched in the wall, her left shoulder knocks two bricks loose. Then she commits and pushes through, with her right shoulder taking out some additional bricks on the way. Check out her character animations, too, how she massages her right shoulder after pushing through, working back to an equilibrium and taking in her surroundings.
Why on earth did this one transition get so much more attention than every other transition in Rise of the Tomb Raider? Was it part of a press demo, or something like that? Could be. I believe this is the only transition like it in the game, though if it does repeat, it repeats very infrequently.
Regardless of the whys and the hows and the whens, the fact remains: Someone programmed those bricks, man. Someone rigged them up, and someone put the whole thing together. Here’s to those bricks.
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