Developer Crystal Dynamics and publisher Square Enix are keeping information on their upcoming Tomb Raider reboot close to their vests. We received a nice trailer at E3 and dug into every tidbit the developers posted back in June, but that pretty much has had to tide us over. With the launch date slated for the third quarter of 2012, there's a lot of time for more details to emerge, but for now, let's share what we know at this point.

Lara Croft starts this journey fresh out of the academy and hungry to put her archeological skills to use. What she doesn't expect, however, is to be tested to the limit, both physically and emotionally. Yet that's exactly what happens, and it does so rather abruptly. She heads to a remote island off the coast of Japan aboard the salvage vessel, Endurance, but the ship doesn't live up to its name when a brutal storm rips it in two. Lara attempts to escape the sinking ship but ends up plummeting into the briny deep. With the uncanny luck that most heroes of her sort carry, she manages to stay alive—although certainly not unscathed—as she is washed up on shore.

Keeping an inkling of her physical attributes from past titles, her reincarnation in this game is meant to make her more real than before, allowing us to feel a stronger connection as she tries to escape native captors, fend off feral beasts, and climb perilous cliffs. The infallible, unblemished, twin-pistol-wielding heroine we're so familiar with has been replaced with a young girl, frightened and alone, who is required to be resourceful in order to survive.

Top 10 Most Overrated Video Game Characters

Top 10 Most Annoying Characters Of 2012, So Far

Top 10 Games With Stupid A.I.

Top 10 Characters You Hate To Love

More Special Features...

You'll find this to be a hard task when you finally get your hands on the game. There seems to always be a sense of urgency, with danger always lurking nearby. The game will have a very cinematic feel throughout, and interactive cutscenes will pop up at a moment's notice, requiring some quick button combinations to progress. Failure will have Lara meet her demise in many different ways, none of which are very pleasing, giving us all the more reason to help her succeed as we're pulled deeper into her plight.

Real-world physics are taken very seriously in this adventure, with fire, water, and sound all playing important roles. A torch can be lit, but only lasts a brief period and is quickly extinguished should it meet water. A primitive alarm system using hollow materials from the island and shipwrecks will resonate through the caverns, alerting the inhabitants to your presence. And the puzzles, always a big part of the series, will be believable this time around, requiring manipulation of the environment and whatever tools are readily available rather than stepping on pressure plates or pulling sequences of levers.

With an innate resourcefulness, Lara will be able to use survival instincts to highlight items in the surrounding area that can be interacted with. However, there will be little in the way of tutorials or tips, so it will be up to the player to figure out how all the pieces work together to form a solution.

With such beautiful yet foreboding backdrops, the art direction certainly looks to play well with developers' goal for realism. Water and fire effects look near perfect, and all the rocky walls, mossy platforms, and untamed florae blend seamlessly with the unnatural items you are able to manipulate.

The sounds are also authentic, with every drip of water adding to Lara's anxiety, and the possibility of a surprise attack at any moment will keep you at the edge of your seat. The crew at Crystal Dynamics is putting together a truly blockbuster-worthy score; it's so good, in fact, that a separate soundtrack to the game is being produced. The only sounds that I'm personally on the fence about are Lara's grunts and cries of pain. I'm glad to see that with a new beginning we are hearing a fresh voice, but so far most of her cries sound more like she's getting pinched rather than being impaled by a rusty iron rod.

Many are applauding the fresh direction Tomb Raider is heading, and, for the most part, I am too. But here's a deflating thought: This puts the game on a very similar path to the one just about every other action-adventure game seems to be taking nowadays. So will name recognition alone allow Tomb Raider to emerge with a high sales yield? Lara looks to have many more interesting things in her back pocket, but only time will tell whether gamers will have lost the desire for the modern survival gameplay formula which is slowly saturating the genre. Change can be taken a little too far, after all, and Lara Croft deserves to stand out rather than blend in.

By Sean Engemann
CCC Contributing Writer