The studio currently building the beautiful-looking upcoming Tomb Raider title, Crystal Dynamics, has been waxing lyrical on the subject of new IP, which apparently might be pretty “off-the-wall”.
Scot Amos, in a Crystal Dynamics podcast, spoke about the team’s reasoning behind the decision to create something completely new at this point.
“We have all these great IP, now is a great time, looking at what’s coming in the future, what’s coming up in the console space, what’s going to be happening next… Let’s start now, with a blank page,” he said.
“We take that kind of bold step of, let’s make something new, something where we don’t already have a finger in that particular pool, and let’s try, from scratch, to make a new game with all of our abilities and skills. What would be a new great experience for our future?”
Creating new IP will let Crystal Dynamics make something “off-the-wall”, said Amos.
“Working from a blank page, and literally saying, we can do anything, we can do something that’s completely off-the-wall and that nobody’s ever heard of, we can go make up mechanics and be completely innovative and inventive.
While the use of completely new ideas is a fantastic thing in the eyes of many, Amos made sure to mention that it’s often helpful to leave in gameplay elements gamers are famililar with so they aren’t left in the dark too much.
“Problem is, if you go too far away from what people are familiar with, one of the phrases we use a lot is ‘fresh and familiar’. Where something is similar enough that, oh, I understand that, I’ve seen something like that. Immediately, people can get bought into it and say, I kind of expect a certain type of experience. And then you put a couple of really unique twists on top. Like, oh, I haven’t seen anybody combine these types of mechanics or this type of world with that type of system. And you start putting a little bit of that new, fresh face on top of something familiar, and you get people hooked.
“So I think… Trying to take what you know, build on top of that, and then take something that they don’t expect and just blow them away.”
The studio is giving nothing away right now, not even platform information, but there’s certainly something in development.
“So we’re still very much in the early throes of creating both the team and this product,” he said. “But certainly from a conceptual level, we’re on a path that we’re very happy with. We can’t go into details until we actually announce it.
If you look at what we just showed at E3 for Tomb Raider, you get a sense of the kind of experience and expertise that this company and this studio has. The kind of things that the talent, the tech, and the tools can do.
“But if you look at what we just showed at E3 for Tomb Raider, you get a sense of the kind of experience and expertise that this company and this studio has. The kind of things that the talent, the tech, and the tools can do. Being able to take that and leverage that into a future product, again, an original world, original script, all new content, all kinds of new mechanics… But taking that as a starting base gives us a huge advantage for making a new game. Honestly, that’s as much as I can say right now.”
In other Crystal Dynamics news, ex-God of War director Cory Barlog has joined the team to work on another project. Could this be the Soul Reaver remake we’re hoping for?
