Tomb Raider The Angel of Darkness - What Happened?

hello and welcome once again to all seekers of cringe embarrassment and shame because you found yourself on the stage for another episode of wah ha ha if you need a reminder we take a microscope of Mirana tea some of the biggest scandals [ __ ] shows and Fiasco's of the videogame world and our subject today confidently nails all three of those descriptors with enthusiasm and it's even a bit timely to boot with shadow of the Tomb Raider having apparently been released and already forgotten about a few weeks ago it's time to shine a light on the darkest time period and Larrick Ross career and that of course would be her ps2 debut in the massive failure that was Tomb Raider the Angel of Darkness to properly set the stage we must step through the mists of time to arrive in the exotic hedonistic time period of 1996 england-based core design had struck lightning when they created the game that introduced the world to Lera Croft a potty toddy British adventurer that had the only thing you really need to be a real-life action hero money originally the game was supposed to feature the ability to choose between a male or female avatar but upon seeing the early models for the female character they decided would be more unique and help the game stand out if it had a woman in the starring role even then lera still had a ways to go in terms of design and several names were so being thrown around late into development including Laura Cruz among others when the game released in October of 1996 it was actually a timed exclusive for the Sega Saturn which is a bit strange in retrospect as Lara always seemed to be held in close association with the PlayStation brand hand hits edgy 90s marketing gimmicks the game being a timed exclusive for the Saturn actually helped Sony someone as the time between both ports allowed the team at core to fix several bugs for the PSX really making it the definitive version at the time the game was a smash so from then on out core design was mandated by their publisher I das to release a new tomb raider title every single gear so it was ordered and so it was done from 1996 to 2000 Lara was trotted out like a show pony rubbing shoulders with every other yearly mascot like John Madden and crash bandicoot the sales and critical reception to all of these sequels soon started to take a nosedive with some fans and game journalists sharing the opinion the Tomb Raider 3 was inferior to - this only got worse as the team got progressively more and more burnt out with the back-to-back release crunch they found themselves in 2000 was a critical year for the franchise as the core members of core were working on TR chronicles but I das wanted a sequel to be ready for the ps2 sometime during its first full year on the shelves and thus formed a new team within a developer to start work on Angel of Darkness concurrently with chronicles ambitious stupid but ambitious the game missed that release date PI like a lot finally landing with a hearty thud on the ps2 in 2003 leras dark brooding adventure was dragged over the coals by reviewers key team members then just straight-up quit and I das took Tomb Raider away from the group that created Tomb Raider so muhabba this is a classic case of upper management maybe getting more involved in the development process than they should promising things that they weren't even sure could be done and generally ruining everything for everyone Tomb Raider has always set the benchmark for games this game would be no different you can already see that bad decisions were being made nice and early as making too reader a yearly franchisee shows a lot of ignorance on how good games get made well it makes sense for sports because not a lot needs to be changed big complex 3d adventures with cutscene the storylines they need a bit more room to breathe also if it wasn't already evident setting up a new team to make a next-gen sequel is also a terrible idea that yes did actually happen but even so these inexperienced new hires did their best with what they had and what they had was tech and tools for the PlayStation 1 games this did not translate well on the much different ps2 hardware so they were struggling to port things over when chronicles finally finished up in the tail end of 2000 more senior members of core were then brought into the fold on Angel of Darkness they saw the problems and made the tough decision to scuttle everything that had been done up until that point they lost a year trying to redesign from the ground up for the ps2 hardware as the only thing they could reuse was concept art storyline and character models while all this was happening the marketing and upper management of AI das were promising the world with Angel of Darkness the game would have stealth segments that would put Metal Gear Solid to shame two playable characters contemporary locations that would require a whole host of new animations and even RPG like elements they seemed stronger the design of the game was ballooning every year but the game itself wasn't getting any better with the power afforded by the ps2 the team hunkered down on creating those brand-new animations but wound up placing too much focus on this instead of keeping the game you know sort of simple since they already had so many problems working on a new machine one other major decision that also proved to be pretty disastrous for the game and the morale of the team revolved around the idea that the game could actually be episodic and depending on how well online tests would go letting players download more episodes digitally in 2003 Angel of Darkness originally was going to have four large locations which including Paris Germany Prague and Turkey the thought was that they could split the game in two with Angel of Darkness being a box title featuring the first two environments with the rest of the game being a download it became quickly apparent that online instructure just wasn't there at the time but the idea of splitting the game was still in the cards I - would simply release a box sequel a year later called The Lost Dominion that would have completed the story however all four of the major cities were in various states of development so they would simply cut the ones that were lagging behind even if they were out of sequence with the storyline this proved morally defeating from many members of the staff who worked hard on certain sections of the game for months only be told their work would be cut for an imaginary sequel that everyone felt was increasingly less and less likely to come out the Knik scene of these big chunks of the game is also one of the chief reasons Angel of Darkness is as derided as it is its storyline I'd hate for you to become a personal problem that I have to come back and tidy up one of the pillars of a good Tomb Raider is the narrative as it keeps the player focused on their goal as they globetrottranne objective - objective however angels storyline is as you can imagine fractured and disjointed mostly because the game is literally fractured and disjointed oh now what could be worse than that well people hated the levels themselves one of the main tenants of this new Tomb Raider was to get rid of all the tombs you explore the back alleys of Paris and nightclubs for a good chunk of a game with marketing feeling that players were bored with pyramids tombs and caves they were not lots of reviews cited the lack of familiar locales as absolute negatives along with all the new gameplay focused on stealth and giving Lara a stamina bar that limits all of her physical actions the other more notable and underbaked part of the game is the second playable character curtis striker or curt curtis trent some generic video game guy that the game introduces late into the story he was meant to be a much bigger focus originally I was going to have a whole repertoire moves abilities and animations that send him apart from Lara however as development dragged on and on Curtis whoever was dramatically scaled back each time with his moveset getting cut down to the point where he became a near carbon copy of Lara was slightly more expanded combat sections this obviously added nothing to the game and was generally viewed as a completely useless addition and finally bugs lots of bugs with the constant cutting of content working on new hardware and implementing lots of gameplay styles that weren't quite working out QA had their work cut out for them on Angel of Darkness the game is notoriously unpolished barely even finished in terms of cleaning it up for a public release and with online patches not really a thing yet stayed that way it's been said that the game was submitted to Sony for certification and approval eight times which of course costs I toss money with each and resubmission the game was finally pushed through the approval process before the April first accounting deadline which is a move that might have saved I das in general with no tomb raider games being released for over three years during angels development the company was facing financial troubles as they were lacking blockbuster hits during this critical time in the PlayStation 2 era core begged I das to give them more time so they could polish what they had but the decision was made and Angel of Darkness found itself gulping and sweating on store shelves in June of 2003 if I dass had delayed the game one more time there was a very real chance they would have gone bankrupt as we've already covered Lara's dark venture got lambasted critically but did eventually managed to sell 2.5 million copies this was a better number than Chronicles achieved in 2000 on the aging PlayStation 1 but that game was considerably less costly to make than Angel of Darkness to begin with and that 2.5 million metric is still to this day the second lowest number this series has ever dipped to with a failure this large a lot of blame was placed and bucks were past the second Angelina Jolie movie that released that same summer the Cradle of Life achieved similar dismal numbers both critically and commercially and even more hilariously Paramount Pictures blamed Angel of Darkness for this downturn in business citing the quality of the game damaged the brand and resulted in the movie getting a bad rap in the process you know completely ignoring the fact that the movie is a steaming honker in its own right I'm sorry you would have been welcoming the senior producer who is tasked with overseeing Angel of Darkness Jeremy Heath Smith was also a casualty of the game as well he was originally a co-founder of core during the classic Tomb Raider heydays on the PlayStation and was promoted to senior official at idose a few months later he's immediately fired upon the game's release I was basically Co running I das and we were having software problems because Sony changed the development systems we've been working on after 18 months so we had to start all over again but honestly Angel of Darkness just about killed us all and it was a life-changing experience for everyone involved in it and not necessarily a great one after an experience like this one is it any surprise that mr. Smith doesn't even work in the games industry any longer now what about cor I dass famously took the IP away from the team that birthed it and instead give the keys to the franchise to the only country that could save it America in all seriousness though this was viewed as sacrilege by some members of the fanbase taking away a british-born series from Britain and given it to california-based Crystal Dynamics looking back on it now though a crystal deep did fine in retrospect and special mention has to go to the awkward conversations that had to happen when they were tasked was straight-up just remaking Kors own work with the release of Tomb Raider Anniversary the remaining members of core were soon bought and absorbed into another notable UK published her / developer rebellion and became rebellion Derby in 2006 they then went on to the brighter greener pastures of rogue warrior of God Rogue Warrior was expunged in two stores in 2009 and unfortunately a rebellion Derby was closed down less than a year later in 2010 if you know of any other catastrophes you'd like us to point and laugh at feel free to suggest some in the comments below or send a frank and professional email to Matt muscles at gmail.com thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 603,239

Keywords: Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider The Angel of Darkness, Worst Sequels, Eidos, Core Design, video game disasters, Wha Happun, Matt McMuscles Flophouse

Id: qhhrVBYeXoM

Length: 15min 3sec (903 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 03 2018