More options for stealth, but agreeable to action
As you could imagine, any stealth game that doesn’t overly punish you for going in guns blazing with its combat scenarios will see a significant size of the population take that route. Talking to gameplay director Daniel Drapeau, he noted that Eidos Montreal wants to give the player both loud and stealthy actions and let them choose how they want to play the game.
However, that doesn’t mean that the Shadow of the Tomb Raider team hasn’t been working hard at creating a more dynamic combat system, including a bunch of stealth options. The developers want to treat the jungle terrain as something of a secondary character in this game, with Lara showcasing her prowess by hiding in vine-laden walls and taking out enemies right in front of their eyes.
This helps build the natural turn of Lara’s character, who started out as prey and now has become a predator. As I played through a level in Mexico, I got caught after killing about 75 percent of the enemies in an area stealthily. That prompted a short cutscene showing the enemy going on high alert, highlighting the dynamic gameplay as it shifts from stealth to action-heavy combat with rifles and shotguns.