Sunie

I'm gonna complain for a minute. Spoilers for Shadow of the Tomb Raider's “Eye of the Serpent” mission.

So, I'm currently playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider on the highest difficulty level: Deadly Obsession. I'm doing this because I'm experimenting with friction in games. I'm still thinking about how I'm gonna tackle this topic, either with a blog post or a video, but I have thoughts about friction in games.

Modern (action) games are in it more for the spectacle than for actual challenge and for this reason, I've been playing the entire new Tomb Raider trilogy on their highest difficulty. Interestingly enough, the first one was still fairly straightforward, the second got a bit more challenging but this third one is giving me exactly the challenge I wanted. All three games have made it so you can only save at the campfires, completely removing checkpointing and manual saves. You die, and you get sent back to your last campfire save. This reminds me of the save crystals in the older Tomb Raiders games, specifically on PSX where you couldn't save manually. Shadow adds to this difficulty by taking away Lara's innate “detective vision” ability, where she can look through walls and spot enemies and this like. This makes enemy encounters a lot more tense, and I love that. They're challenges to overcome, and it's making me feel a lot more connected to the game. There's an item that gives you that sight back for a moment, but it's a consumable so I feel like that's a fair tradeoff.

Now, here's the thing. Shadow has been a bit rough around the edges with the placement of these campfires. I noticed it right at the start of the game, where you're thrown into a linear obstacle course with insta-death traps that went on for just a tad too long. I got worried there for a minute, but later segments weren't as grueling so I forgot about it.

But that's when the Eye of the Serpent came along.

This is another linear path, not only extremely long but also constantly broken up pace-wise. The trip towards the campfire wasn't that bad but it's what comes after that really grinded my gears. It took me maybe 15 attempts over 3 days to finally get on the other end of it.

Let me explain what happens. Just so I can get it out of my system.

You start at the campfire with your newly acquired shotgun and blast open a flimsy door. You then get one of those squeeze-through-narrow-opening animations that devs use to hide loading times. You know the ones, PS4 era games were horny for them. Then, there's a long crouching sequence. Slow, plodding, tension raising, that ends in a jump scare. Boo! you fall through the floor and fight a horde of animalistic natives. On this difficulty they can get you with just a few hits so there's no margin for error. Then, another crawling sequence followed by solving a waterwheel puzzle. Dive underwater to clear some debris, then spin the wheel and swim through. More walking, prevent getting skewered or shanked by a native, then a nasty jump and swing over spike pits. Better not die here, or get caught off-guard by Shadow's occasional unwillingness to get the jumping right, or you're roasting marshmallows.

Then we rappel down a hole and get a lengthy cutscene that gives us a birds-eye view of a lengthy environment puzzle. We move two more waterwheels but this time we need to move water-gargoyle-y poles to the correct position. Takes a while, but ok. After getting the first wheel turning you get another ambush, which thankfully can be skipped by jumping into the water and swimming to the second objective. Then we move more water gargoyle poles but this time we get occasionally interrupted by combat. I died here a couple of times because this one can't be skipped and they just kept coming out of the woodwork.

Then, a lengthy cutscene starts. Unskippable. Lara finds the place she's looking for, but her precious macguffin isn't where it should've been. A tremor goes through the hidden city, the natives get even more enraged and you start one of those spectacle running sequences. This one isn't too bad, but you need to be on your shit at all times, and occasionally wonder why this time you did get hit by their claws and arrows while the other 8 times you were here, you didn't. You must be getting sloppy but fucked if you could tell in what way! Ok, then, swimming. Thank god there isn't any Piranha stealth here.

yes piranha stealth did I stutter?!

This is an occasional mechanic where Lara has to hide in the tall weeds underwater while patrolling Piranha's do their rounds. If they see you, they swarm and kill you. Tough shit. Let's not dive into the fact that Piranha's only eat sick and easy prey but ok. No Piranha Stealth here. We move on. Swim swim swim, climb climb climb until we reach an overhang we can't climb on, since Lara can't hang that way yet. Luckily, just ahead, just after we do another squeeze through narrow opening thingies, we find a deserted campsite where a soldier got killed by a rockslide. We take his climbing gear so we can get past that overhang. Now if you thought “hey, campsite must mean campfire, we get a checkpoint here!” I'm here to dash your dreams against the rocks because NOPE. No campfire. This would've been the perfect spot but NAH.

Fine. So we climb up, now passing the previously inaccessible point and towards a terrifying jump that I always feel like it'll go wrong, but never did. Lara is hanging upside down and makes a leap of faith towards the ground and she lands just on the edge of the cliff for me, every single time. (which the video JUST NOW gave me the idea to rappel down first before jumping...:ALSDKFJS:LDFKJ:LSDKJF OK FINE THAT ONE IS ON ME.)

We climb up some more towards the biggest, most assholeish jump i've encountered in this game so far. It's a leap of faith where Lara has to throw her rappel axe into the cliff ahead so she can climb up. Problem is that the timing on this jump is mean as hell. It's so easy to throw the axe too early, making her overshoot and fall to her death. I had to look up a video after dying here the fifth time to make sure I didn't forget a mechanic. Turns out I had to throw the rappel axe later than my instincts told me. Even people on easy complain about this jump it seems, and they'd have the benefit of generous saving and checkpointing. Finally after that harrowing ordeal (which I'm positive has claimed a year off of my remaining actual life), I climb up and find another body of water to swan dive into. I'm so close to the end, I can feel it, I see the light at the end of the tunnel, so close...

SURPRISE! PIRANHA STEALTH!

I got mercilessly shredded to pieces the first time I got here after dying for like the 12th time. If I had been playing this when it came out in 2018, I would've been buying a new controller and/or monitor at this point.

The second time I got to this point (after dying s'more on segments that I thought I had handled at this point) I found an alternate route that took me past the patrolling piranha's without any hassle and then finally, FINALLY, the end of the water segment unceremoniously spits me out into the village that serves as a hub. Empty handed. No progress made in Lara's quest. I've posted a video under this post so you can see what that entire segment entails. Now imagine you die constantly and every time you do you end up having to redo all the challenges and pick up all the side content again and again, if you're a completionist. My god.

As I write this I am utterly deflated and I had to get this off of my chest. I honestly love Shadow of the Tomb Raider and how it handles its highest difficulty, save for segments like these that just feel like they didn't have a big priority on the list of things to be tested on this difficulty before shipping. Which is a crying shame, because I think the game shines on this difficulty, otherwise.

I'm going to bed. Probably gonna dream about the unskippable dialog and the freaking stealth piranha's. ugh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyAWG98j7A8&t=1008s

I write for fun, not for profit. It's not my job, nor do I intend to let myself get sucked in by gig-culture and turning my hobbies into jobs. That said, people have gladly supported me in the past, so if you feel inclined to do so, please follow my ko-fi link. Thank you very much either way <3