5 new badass skills in Rise of the Tomb Raider

[MUSIC] Rise of the Tomb Raider is doubling down on skills, so players can customize Lara to their play style. Whether it's taking down multiple enemies at once, crafting new weapons, or learning languages There's a lot of new abilities that we haven't seen before. So we talked to game director, Brian Horton, to go in depth on some of the new skills for adventuring, hunting, and combat. We've broken skills down to three separate categories. In the last game, we had categories, but we had to unlock them in such a way that didn't really give you the choice. On which area you would invest in. You'd have to sort of do them all universally. Now we're giving you choices. So for instance if you are more of an aggressive player the Brawler category might be great for you. And what we do is we use our skill points which you earn in game to unlock certain abilities. And one of our favorite abilities is death from above. The natives set snares in the clearing. There was a plan for us to pursue. [BLANK_AUDIO] At the beginning of the game, when you climb up a tree, you're prompted to knock a guy out from above. This is multi-stage process. You jump down, It knocks them on the ground and you have to pick up a rock and take them out. Which is both slow and also a little bit loud. Not perfect for stealth. So when you achieve this upgrade. You're able to use your knife and do a death from above in one single shot. It's more stealthy. And it's a great move to really show her escalation in power and ability. Stay silent predator. [SOUND] That must be them. Was hoping they'd [UNKNOWN]. Oh well. The second category is the hunter category. This helps with Lara's hunting and scavenging abilities. And one of our favorites in this area is the double shot. This allows Lara to line up two targets in one pull. You get two [UNKNOWN] that form over those targets. And you release, kills both targets in one shot. [BLANK_AUDIO] The third category is Survivor. This is crafting an exploration. So one of our favorite skills for this is the body trap specialist. What this allows you to do is Take one of the bombs that you crafted, assign it to one of the corpses in the game. This sends out a ping in the world. Innings will be gravitated to this ping. And as soon as they get into proximity, the poison gas will go off in an area affect. It takes out multiple enemies in one shot. It's extremely satisfying to pull off. [MUSIC] [SOUND] You hear that? I'll go look. [SOUND] [MUSIC] There's more to our skills than just combat-centric abilities and upgrades. We also have these skills that really help you if you're an explorer. If you really like to collect 100% of everything in the game, we have one called eye for detail. And that allows you to illuminate things, challenge objects, everything in the world that you might wanna collect. And gives that player an ability to really get 100% of the items that we have to offer in the game. Illuminates them, where to find them, so it's great for that. The ultimate [UNKNOWN] in a heart is an archaeologist. She's someone who loves to explore these ancient spaces. In doing so, we wanted to improve on some of the systems that embrace that part of a personality and that's where art language system can be place. There's getting medalist all throughout the world that [UNKNOWN] will have to decipher in different languages. She first encounters one that's in Greek in the Syrian Tomb and she'll be able to decipher these by going up to murals, reading journals. Using that as an ability to build her language skill and ultimately translate these monoliths. The monoliths are great because once you translate in them, they give locations all throughout the world that you'll be able to collect things like such as gold coins that we use later on in the game that you'll be able to trade for more powerful weapons or. A new outfit that the player might want to collect. So these, this is a really cool economy and also just feeds into the idea of what Lara is all about. Which is being this archeologist, this person that discovers these ancient locations. [MUSIC] We'll have to wait until November 10th to see how deep Lara's skill customizations go. And hoe much they influence individual play style. Check back with us later this week when we're gonna go in depth on creating Lara's character and the new world you'll be exploring in her latest adventure. [MUSIC]