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Q&A session with Emily Britt, European PR Manager
Question: We have a lot of cinematics in Legend. Are they still going to be there in Anniversary?
Emily: Yeah, there are still going to be cinematics telling the story. The story is the exact story as Tomb Raider 1 so that's the main source of inspiration for this game, so those cinematics will tell the story of why she goes from place to place and what she's looking for, and who her key enemies are and why. But you haven't got the same kind of interaction with - there's no interaction with Zip and Allister. She does not have someone on her side like she did before. And you can still go into Croft Manor as well and jump around.
Question: How did Crystal Dynamics approach this game. Did they play the first one over and over again?
Emily: Yeah, that's exactly what they did. I think kind of two years ago when the designers decided to start to really revisit the first one for inspiration. And then we did a lot of research. I think we had almost 300,000 requests over the last ten years to remake the first game, so there was a lot of naturally-done market research by our community asking for bits that they liked and so we used those. And of course they've got Toby back on board, so Toby's been very - in fact Toby's job is to look at Lara - he's like the Lara guardian.
Question: So if this game turns to be very good, are there any plans of remaking the other ones?
Emily: Well there will definitely be other iterations of Tomb Raider, but no we definitely have not talked about doing some of other ones. Some of them definitely could be redone and improved on, but maybe they are better left how they are - like Angel of Darkness.
Question: The difference between Tomb Raider 1 and Legend is that the gameplay is very short. What about the remake? Did you eliminate a lot of levels?
Emily: Well, no the first one was 40 hours worth of gameplay and in a way when I was doing the summary and finding out why this game was really popular alot of people would say, 'It was 40 hours long - it was brilliant.' But a lot of those 40 hours was that you found a piece and then you'd have to run back through the various environments and that kind of thing we think modern-day gamers wouldn't tolerate as much, so it won't be 40 hours long, but it is definitely harder, more challenging, and longer than Legend was. It is really rewarding to play this one. You feel rewarded for making the difficult journeys and in a way that Legend didn't quite let you feel because it was a little bit too easy.
Question: So you had a deal with Sony Playstation. Is there also a version coming out for the PS3?
Emily: No, not of Anniversary, but when we take the next Tomb Raider 8 to, when that all gets mapped that's very much the next gen.
Question: Will there be any connectivity between the PSP version and the PS2 version? For example you collect a picture and you can share them?
Emily: Unfortunately not. A shame, but that kind of thing is quite technologically time-consuming and the turnaround time has been quite quick for this so it wasn't possible.
Question: What about time trials. Do they come back?
Emily: I need to check. I'm almost certain you can but you are the first person that asked me that so I'll have to check on that.
Question: A question about Karima and Keeley Hawes (who does the voice of Lara Croft). Why have you chosen to pick the same girls again to do it? Well, maybe not for the voice, but why Karima again?
Emily: Karima is the first one that we taught to speak. That sounds utterly patronizing and ridiculous. She's actually had elocution lessons, and she's had SAS training, and she's had a personal trainer to get her body to look like Lara. So that's an enormous level of investment in terms of making her into the person that she is, so it would've been a bit silly to only employ her for the 9 months of the Legend campaign, so we'll definitely keep her.
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'Anniversary' Press Introduction: the video
