Shadow of the Tomb Raider lets you independently adjust difficulty of puzzles, traversal and combat
A Lara options.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider has an impressive set of difficulty options that lets you independently adjust difficulty for puzzles, traversal and combat.
It means players who enjoy the challenge of solving puzzles and exploring but struggle with combat, for example, can tweak the game to suit.
There are four unique settings for puzzles, traversal and combat, developer Eidos Montreal said in a blog post. These are easy, normal, hard and the brilliantly-named Deadly Obsession. (Pick Deadly Obsession and it applies to all three categories, which means you can't change the difficulty for the remainder of the playthrough.)
Set exploration to easy, for example, and you'll see obvious white paint on the critical path, enjoy a longer saving grab timer and base camps are lit. Put exploration on hard, however, and there's no white paint on the critical path, you have a reduced saving grab timer, there's no Survival Instincts during exploration and base camps are unlit.
Here's how it looks:
Set puzzles to easy and Lara will give you direct hints on the next action to perform. Survival Instincts will highlight interactable objects, and highlight objects necessary to progress in blue. You also get a longer window of opportunity for timed mechanics.
Put puzzles on hard and Lara won't give you any hints, there's no Survival Instincts and you have a shorter window of opportunity for timer mechanics.
Here's how it looks:
Talking of Survival Instincts, you can toggle beacon (next objective location) and glow (interactable objects) on or off regardless of difficulty settings, except when playing on Deadly Obsession.
These difficulty options come alongside cool accessibility and customisation options that work similarly to the wonderful accessibility options in Uncharted. You can reduce camera shake, for example, play with one stick for movement by centering the camera horizontally so it's soft locked on Lara's back, hold button press prompts rather than repeated tapping and push the stick directionally for crank control prompts rather than rotate.
In short, nice work, Eidos Montreal!