Lara’s shiny things
It was three years ago at gamescom that Microsoft revealed that Square Enix’s Rise of the Tomb Raider would be an Xbox timed-exclusive at launch. It was big news. The 2013 Tomb Raider reboot went over well and the sequel was hotly anticipated.
Now that the games industry’s sights are set back in Germany, people thought we might get a Shadow of the Tomb Raider reveal. Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. Instead, we get this trailer detailing how Rise of the Tomb Raider‘s Xbox One X update will make it superior to the original.
It does look very nice in this trailer, but, truthfully, it doesn’t look much different than the PS4 Pro update that released last fall (that trailer is embedded below). The Xbox One X version can boast native 4K while the PS4 Pro version is upscaled to get there. Also, PS4 Pro has 60 frames per second at 1080p, and, even though it isn’t explicitly stated, Xbox One X is possibly 60 frames per second at 4K; after all, that’s the target Xbox One X seems to be aiming for with most of its games.
Xbox’s trailer is filled with superlative adjectives like “superior” and “higher” and “enhanced,” and it’ll be all of those things over the original. But, the improvements are more negligible when compared to the same game on PS4 Pro. And there are only so many enhancements we can expect from a two-year-old game anyway. This is nice but everyone’s looking forward to what’s next from Crystal Dynamics, not backward.
