this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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He looks like a plushie michael-laugh

I guess the team behind this thing only had enough money to make new models for Lara Croft

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Man either do a complete remaster or just rerelease the original with fixes to run at modern resolutions and framerates. The pasting of hd textures and a few hd models into an ancient game is invariably goimg to look like shit.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I believe you're supposed to be able to toggle between the old graphics like you can with the Halo remasters.

It's weird that Lara and presumably the other human characters are the only ones getting PS2/PS3 quality models and then everything else is going to get this weird treatment. Tomb Raider is an interesting case for this kind of remastering anyway since the gameplay is heavily grid-based and the blocky level design is tied to it, so the levels now have high res textures and modern lighting but everything is still cubes

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

subdivide subdivide gaussian smoothing ship it

[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago

Literally all I want from classic tomb raider is a coop mode so I can play it with my brother. The coop feature in OpenLara was incredible and we had a lot of fun with it.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Is that skybox just a literal picture of the sky off someone's phone? Wowee what a remaster.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I noticed the same thing. Since these are all based on the original game engines I assume it's some kind of engine limitation*. The first Tomb Raider didn't even have 2D backgrounds so the entire game took place in a black void (as a kid I always thought the dinosaur valley was supposed to be underground). From what I've seen of this remaster, the lighting looks weirdly disconnected from the sky textures in Tomb Raider 2 and 3 as well.

Then again, the Halo 2 remaster ran off the skeleton of the old game and had fully remade graphics in remastered mode. I'm getting the vibes this remaster job was done on the cheap though- it's coming out in 3 days and the only recent pre-release footage from it on Youtube is from tiny channels uploading low res videos from who knows where

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

I liked the void in the lost valley in the original, made it feel spooky like it was at night or something. I remember the expansion pack had levels in egypt at night that had starry skyboxes and that was a big thing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

did grove street games do this remaster?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

In the original game that fight took place underground, though the devs apparently always wanted the fight to be outside. They just couldn't do it because of the technical limitations of the original Playstation.

I mention this because that skybox doesn't match the look of the rest of the game, and having the fight be underground honestly worked better imo. There's something positive to be said for technical limitations sometimes forcing good creative choices.

This also reminds me of the remaster of HALO CE that fucks up the art-direction of the flood reveal level, which in the original game was a dark and spooky swamp that really enhanced the spooky vibes. In the remaster just made it a bright-ass daylight jungle and all the textures were too clean and you could see the dumbass flood creatures leaping around in the background, while they were spooky shadow-shapes in the original.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

The Halo CE remaster was an eyesore all the way through, from the reused Halo Reach and Halo 3 assets, ugly new assets made by Saber and the awful, awful cutscenes where 2010-era character models are awkwardly pasted into 2001-era in-engine cutscenes

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Find it kinda funny also how there were two seperate attempts at a Tomb Raider Anniversary, but here they are "remaster" ing the original again. Admission that TR Anniversary was dogshit?

Also I wonder if this new rethingy is based on PC or Playstation code

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Find it kinda funny also how there were two seperate attempts at a Tomb Raider Anniversary, but here they are "remaster" ing the original again. Admission that TR Anniversary was dogshit?

That middle period of Tomb Raider sure was early seventh gen as hell (so early in fact that it started on the sixth gen). Overly linear levels, gimmicky vehicle sections, quicktime events, simplified Prince of Persia-inspired "hold stick and press one button" traversal...

Also I wonder if this new rethingy is based on PC or Playstation code

Apparently TR1-3 all include the PC exclusive expansion levels so it's safe to assume it's based on the PC ports.