Rise of the Tomb Raider update

Game Informer’s March issue reveals Rise of the Tomb Raider will be set in Siberia and Croft’s new stomping ground.

It’s the second Tomb Raider game after the successful reboot a couple of years back, which was localised in Arabic. It was the most best selling Tomb Raider game to date. And a good thing too as Crystal Dynamics (CD) are expanding the more confident Lara we left at the last game.

The new game will kick of in the icy landscape on a hunt for the lost secrets of immortality. There’ll still be hunting, gathering and crafting; necessary if you want to take on the larger puzzle tombs and a deadly new enemy… in the shape of secret society which was dormant in the last game, apparently.

In other news, however, CD has, for the first time, handed over development of a Tomb Raider game to another studio. CD will develop the XBO version, however Nixxes Software will develop the X360 version. Square Enix boss Darrell Gallagher told Game Informer the development by Nixxes would mean the XBO version would not be compromised.

“Nixxes put together a tech demo of Rise of the Raider content running on Xbox 360, and we were totally blown away by what they achieved. But the existence of that game isn't limiting our work on the Xbox One version."

Gallagher rightly refers to the already strong X360 base, citing the 84 million consoles sold, but it does raise questions about content equality; compromises of features and functionality across console generations.

Gamer Informer has said it has more information to come in a month of coverage of the Xbox exclusive to come, but in the meantime you can enjoy the newest images below.

Rise of the Tomb Raider will come later this year, Holiday 15, and will be exclusive to the Xbox platforms. It's expected the game will be released at a later date for the PlayStation platforms, but the timed exculisivity has been secured by publishers Microsoft.