I’m too tired to make a Harry Potter post today so here’s a low-effort Tomb Raider II post instead.
Tomb Raider II starts with a cutscene of ancient — China, I think? Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s the Great Wall of China. A secret monastery of monks is battling an army with a green dragon. The dragon is gobbling and burning the monks to a crisp left and right until one of the monks pulls a dagger out of its heart.
It’s honestly kind of hilarious because the monk’s expression makes it look like an accident — like “oh hey, what’s this?” *pulls it out* — rather than a planned move, ha ha. I’d show a screenshot but honestly, I didn’t get a proper screenshot of his expression and the screenshot looks kind of bad anyway, what being almost thirty years old and rather blurry.
So the dragon dies and turns back to — whoever? And the army is probably vanquished and scattered, and the scene ends with the monks taking the dagger to some secret room with a pedestal that has a dragon’s head on it. They shove the dagger in, cue in mysterious purple mist, and the dragon’s spirit probably killing the monks.
So: ancient armies, monks, a mystical dagger. Easy enough to follow.
As in the first game, you can start at Lara’s home which also works as a tutorial level. It’s a fun, easy way to introduce the game mechanics to the player without imposing it.
The home section starts at the new obstacle course outside. Lara says she had it installed to train and because of the “nasty business last year”, and I knew she’d say that before she did. It was a nice bit of continuation and characterisation. I don’t know what’s the fastest time for the obstacle course but I did it in 1 minute and about 30 seconds. After Lara said, “that was my fastest time yet” and I was like, “I bet you say that to all the girls, Lara”.
The old man with the tray is the butler, Winston. Many a player has locked the poor man into the meat locker in Lara’s kitchen and I have to say I did too when I was a kid, ha ha. He was just so creepy when I was a kid but now I feel sorry for him. He seems a little senile what with tottering after Lara with the tea and I’m pretty sure he flatulates? But maybe I’m mistaking the sound? Interestingly, they made him younger in Tomb Raider V: Chronicles.
Lara’s treasure vault. She no longer has it in the third game and it’s my headcanon that she used it to pay for repairs in Venice and China. I mean, in Venice Lara takes other people’s boats for joyrides, blows up mines and abandoned houses, breaks every gondola, and shoots all the glass. Or at least I do as her. It’s like a compulsion. There’s shootable glass, you shoot it. I don’t remember all she did in China, but I certainly remember her blowing up a section of the wall, ha ha.
The training mat is gone from the music room, ha ha. And I’m pretty sure her bedroom is now on the other side of the house.
The prettiest room in the house is the pool, though.
People say that the original Tomb Raiders look terrible whereas I’m like, “but they look so pretty, though?”
I mean, these were released in the nineties. As much as it pains me to say this, they do look lovely for something from that era.
This is obviously not an exact comparison but thinking that everything except hyperrealistic graphics is terrible is basically the same as thinking that only one style of painting is valid.
The screenshots look kind of funny; probably because I couldn’t take in-game screenshots and instead I had to make do with windows screenshots.
Hiraeth 