Naughty Dog 'honoured' by Tomb Raider's new direction

24 Oct 2011 at 17:17:03 by John Robertson

Uncharted 3 devs "want to bring to the industry up and raise the level of the games".

We've all seen (and some of us played) the upcoming "reimagining" of Tomb Raider and series protagonist Lara Croft. The first thing that strikes you about it? It looks a lot more like Naughty Dog's popular Uncharted series. 

Just watch the trailer, you'll see it.

We recently caught up with Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception's lead game director, Justin Richmond. We asked him about the new direction of Tomb Raider and how it feels to be imitated by the very franchise that clearly had a massive influence on Uncharted 3.

"It’s an honour, but at the end of the day I just hope that those guys make an awesome game," Richmond told us. "The reason we make these games is so that we can play them."

Richmond went on to say that Naughty Dog are always eager to share their ideas and let others in on how they solve the numerous problems that crop up in a big to "bring the whole industry up".

"I’m really interested to play the new Tomb Raider.., we’ve always been very open as a studio, go to GDC [Games Developer’s Conference] and there’ll be 15 talks about exactly how we made the game. We don’t hide that stuff.

"And there’s a reason for that, we want to bring the whole industry up and raise the level of the games being made. I think the Tomb Raider guys are doing what they want to do and they’ve made some bold choices with the way they’ve approached the design of Lara. I haven’t played it but I hope it comes out really amazing."

Naughty Dog's community manager, Arne Meyer, echoed Richmond's words, saying that sharing leads to better games overall.

"They might have learned stuff from us but I’m sure there’s stuff we’ll learn from them, too. That’s the whole point about sharing and playing other people’s games."

Our review of Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception can be found here.

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