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M-rated Tomb Raider a possibility?
Eidos recently laid off 30 employees at Crystal Dynamics, including Tomb Raider: Underworld creative director Eric Lindstrom. Understandably bitter about Eidos' cost-cutting, Lindstrom is now answering fan questions on a popular Tomb Raider fan forum, giving an intriguing and frank insight into the development process (including details Eidos probably didn't want publicized).One of the more interesting factoids to emerge from Lindstrom's open Q & A session is that Crystal Dynamics was held back by Eidos from making Underworld an M-rated title. "I wanted to do things that a Teen rating prevented," explained Lindstrom, "but I also wanted it to get the players the first unrated games, did. In the end it didn't matter because publishing wanted it to be Teen."So far, the Tomb Raider franchise has contained only Teen-rated games, but was a Mature title still a possibility? Says Lindstrom: "The managers who said it had to be Teen left some time ago, so maybe that could change sometime." We assume such a game would either include more violence, or, as some sites have been quick to suggest, a more risqué depiction of Lara.Though something evidently has to change after Underworld's disappointing sales, does anybody else find such a prospect depressing? We'd prefer it if Eidos concentrated on shipping games that, y'know, functioned correctly. Also, while we're discussing Underworld, we figured this would be an appropriate place to mention the Zero Punctuation review, which just popped up in our RSS feeds -- catch the video after the jump!%Gallery-29889%
Tomb Raider: Underworld creative director speaks out on his layoff, DLC rumors
Now-former creative director of the Tomb Raider franchise at Crystal Dynamics, Eric Lindstrom, has broken his silence about recent layoffs at the developer -- including his own -- and rumors that the upcoming Xbox 360 exclusive DLC for the game was "held back" from the final release for profit's sake.Posting on the site Tomb Raider Forums, Lindstrom says that he was let go as the result of there being "too many captains for the number of ships" at the studio, suggesting that the new, leaner Crystal Dynamics won't be working on multiple concurrent projects. Linden likened the layoffs to "musical chairs," saying that, "when the music stopped all the seats were taken."Lindstrom also used his new "free agent" status to dispel rumors about the 360's two additional, downloadable missions, which are coming soon to XBLM. "We had a production issue that was going to make us miss our ship date," he wrote, revealing that, "It was my idea to cut what was cut, and I did hope that it would one day be made available as a download mission ... but on the day we made the cut, it was made purely for Underworld production reasons."
