The original Tomb Raider is often obtuse and obscure, challenging you to climb your way through intricate levels inch by inch. Later games in the series would gradually become more friendly, offering clearly marked pathways and handholds to prevent players from ever getting lost. For Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, the developers want to make sure those stretches of isolation and exploration are front and center once again.

"We celebrate those moments to say, 'Hey, let's not hold your hand. Let's let you go out there and hunt around, maybe find some stuff that you weren't expecting to find,'" Jeff Adams, experience director at Crystal Dynamics, says in Edge Magazine issue #429. "That's the idea, to have that sense of 'be adventurous, go out, explore, get on your own, get lost, then find your way back.' And that gives a lot of reward just by traversing the world."

The puzzle-driven spirit of the original game was certainly there in my Summer Game Fest demo of Legacy of Atlantis, and subsequent showings have demonstrated how the devs are walking a tightrope by modernizing the original spirit without getting trapped in the hand holding that dominates so many modern games.

But how do you decide what parts of the original game to keep for a new remake? "Imagine you just finished the first Tomb Raider, then you close your eyes and you imagine a playthrough in your head, and your brain remembers the things that generated the most emotions for you," Michael Kuk, creative director at Flying Wild Hog, explains.

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