Aspyr's remasters of Tomb Raiders 1-3 were well received when they released last year, giving Core Design's foundational 3D action-adventures a graphical spit 'n' polish and a modernised suite of controls. But for the upcoming remaster of Tomb Raiders 4-6, Aspyr is going further, bringing back several features that were cut from the final game in that trilogy: Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
Revealed in a blog post on the Tomb Raider website (via Eurogamer) These restorations cover several different areas of the game. For starters, Aspyr's remaster restores a weapon wielded by Kurtis Trent, the second playable character in The Angel of Darkness. Named the Chirugai, this is a melee weapon that resembles the Glaive in middling eighties sci-fi film Krull, a metal disc with blades sticking out the circumference.
Alongside this new(ish) toy, the remaster empowers Kurtis with the ability to "project a psychic shield around his body" and enables him to "sprint like Lara and shoot around corners while in stealth mode." These latter changes appear to be Asypr's own additions rather than restored content, aimed at making Kurtis more useful and fun. They seem like sensible tweaks, though I question Aspyr's characterisation of Kurtis as having "immense untapped potential".
As well as a cut weapon, Aspyr's remaster introduces an area of the game chopped prior to release. This is an "unfinished training area" that was supposed to be located in the Parisian Back Streets level, designed to teach the commando crawl ability. This has been reinstated in the remaster, with Aspyr adding that players can "choose whether they want to take this route or the one from the original game."
Other restored content includes unused voice lines for both Lara and Kurtis, an updated version of Werner Von Croy's notebook, and several [[link]] inventory items. Moreover, while not strictly a restoration, two in-game stores, Rennes' pawnshop and the herbalist, have been reworked to be actually useful, selling items like a silencer and laser sight that players can purchase by collecting [[link]] Euros.
If you never played The Angel of Darkness, and are curious about why Aspyr is showing it this extra love, it's because the game was an infamous stinker when it slopped onto PCs back in 2003. Richard Cobbett wrote at length about the game's many failings, describing it as "arguably one of the worst sequels ever" in his Crapshoot column. "Even if The Angel of Darkness had been released in its intended state, instead of the buggy, half-finished mess that was eventually thrown on the shelves, it would have been awful. As it was, it was both awful and barely playable—as if Core had never played Tomb Raider, never mind created it."
Hopefully, Aspyr can go some way to fixing [[link]] the "barely playable" part. These restorations certainly seem geared toward making The Angel of Darkness less broken. But its flaws ran far deeper than iffy controls and missing features, and given Aspyr's update is a remaster rather than a remake, I wouldn't expect a miracle when Tomb Raider 4-6 Remastered launched on February 14.