Creatures of Greece
The ruins of Greece are beautiful, and they are anything but empty. In Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, Greece introduces a new roster of predators, each with its own personality and its own way of hunting Lara.
“We wanted to make sure that all of our creatures have personality,” says Raul Siqueira, Game Director at Crystal Dynamics. “When you’re playing and you’re fighting them, you get a sense for how they behave. Part of the combat challenge is for you to understand how a creature behaves and adapt your playability to that creature so you know how to fight it.”
The Leopard
The leopard makes you fear everything you cannot see.
“The leopard is a really interesting one,” Siqueira says. “As a player, you are getting used to being the apex predator, coming into all of these rooms and owning all of it. The leopard is probably our first go at, you’re not always going to know where your enemy is, which means you have to adapt to it.”
It stalks from the edges of your vision. “Leopards are in a league of their own,” says Lukasz Taborski, a Lead Engineer at Flying Wild Hog. “They move very quickly around levels. They jump over huge distances and can scale tall walls. They will stalk around Lara and try to get a jump at her when she least expects it.” Greece makes that hunt especially tense, with trees and tall grass everywhere for the leopard to vanish into. “Combat with him is a cat and mouse game where Lara is the mouse,” Taborski says. “You can hear the leopard, but you don’t really see it. It can hide in shadows, in tall grass, or holes you cannot enter, and it will jump out at you.”
The Crocodile
If the leopard hunts from the shadows, the crocodile turns something familiar into something dangerous: the water.
“Until you face a crocodile for the first time, the water feels like a place of respite where you can just relax and you don’t have to worry about anything,” says Billy Rösehag, Senior Technical Game Designer at Flying Wild Hog. “After facing the crocodiles for the first time, that’s not the case anymore. You never know if a crocodile is lying in wait, just getting ready to nab you down.”
Unlike the crocodiles of the original, these move freely between land and water. “They will lie in wait for you in the water and then grab you, try to keep you there,” Rösehag says. “But you might want to run away, and then they can chase after you, which is a nice dynamic, making it more agile and relentless.” And they are fast. “They’re great sprinters. You see the crocodile and you think, I have the advantage. And then it just rushes toward you, and you don’t feel safe anymore.”
The trick is to control the ground. “You do not want to fight a crocodile underwater. Bad idea. Both in game and in real life,” Siqueira says. “Part of what you’re trying to do is bait the crocodile to come out of the water so you can fight him on your own grounds. When he gets to low health, he will prioritize going back into the water, because it’s safer for him.” The advice from the team is blunt. As Bartek Schweiger, Lead Gameplay Designer at Flying Wild Hog, puts it: “When you’re fighting a crocodile, don’t get near the water. When it jumps out, then shoot it.”
The Mercenaries
Greece is also where Lara meets a new kind of threat: other people.
“The main force of antagonists from a human perspective are Natla’s mercenaries,” Siqueira says. “They are a lot more tactical than the creature enemies. They will take cover when they need to. They will reposition. They will try to flank you and reposition in a way that makes you move around the environment.”
They also arrive in escalating variety. “We don’t introduce all of the mercs all at once,” Siqueira says. “You will see varieties of them using assault rifles. They will have their shotgun. And then, finally, everyone’s favorite, the sniper rifle. When you enter an encounter and you see someone far away shooting with a sniper, you immediately go, that guy, I’ve got to take care of it. But on your way to getting that merc, you find different mercs using assault rifles, so you have to think about your flanks.”
The mercenaries round out a combat sandbox the team loves to mix. “Maybe we get a little crazy and we throw some wolves, we throw a leopard,” Siqueira says. “We start mixing and matching all of the different ingredients to make sure combat continues to be exciting as you progress.”
From the water’s edge to the tall grass, the creatures of Greece are built to keep Lara, and the player, off balance. Watch, listen, and never assume you’re the most dangerous thing in the room.
Pre-order Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis
Lara Croft’s greatest adventure begins February 12, 2027. Pre-orders are live now. Secure your edition before launch, and join us across the months ahead for new mini-documentaries, deep dives, and exclusive looks at the world of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis.
