Headscratchers / Rise of the Tomb Raider

Freezeproof

• How did Lara not get hypothermia even once during the many times she swam in near freezing water? Spending a few seconds next to a fire isn't going to help when your' clothes are soaked.
  • It’s a possibility she might have been catching hypothermia by the time she came into contact with Jacob. He’s known for his healing prowess back in his hay days, and it’s not entirely farfetched to consider his influence has a lingering effect. She’s affected by the cold (as evidenced by her statements lamenting on the cold waters), but his ‘healing touch’ (no pun of any sort intended) might stave off the worst of the effects after he’s helped her out the first time around. It’s a stretch, but not utterly impossible an idea.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation

No Knife

• Why did Lara not bring a knife with her? There are so many other things you can do with a knife in a survival situation besides stab people and cut down flags.
  • Lara gets a combat knife down in the copper mines, but she doesn’t have one prior to that portion of the main storyline. I’m not sure what part of that you don’t get? Even if she had a knife on her prior to her capture by Trinity in the gulag, they took all her gear. And it’s not unbelievable to consider when Lara was captured outside the church while she was eavesdropping; the Trinity mooks stripped her of any hidden weapons on her person. They could have taken a hypothetical knife for themselves to boot, since they’re handy in all sorts of situations (as witnessed by Lara on multiple occasions throughout gameplay once she acquires the combat knife as part of her arsenal).
    • Going back even farther, she took a huge tumble at the beginning of the game due to that avalanche. There've been stories of people being stripped completely naked by the force of the snow hitting them, so it's not unrealistic that a knife could fall from its sheathe or the whole thing get torn off. Granted, none of that explains why she didn't bring a gun along, knowing Trinity was involved after Syria ...
    • The answer to the knife and gun question is simple: weight. Every single piece of equipment that Lara and Jonah brought while free-climbing a mountain mattered. You'll notice that both are carrying the absolute bare minimum amount of equipment, relatively light-weight clothing, and have left most of their gear at the base camp. Forty ounces of pistol (plus magazines and ammunition) may not sound like much, until you're dangling by fingertips or axe-point on the side of a mountain.
    • That's a good explanation for the pistol, but less so for the knife. A knife is a useful piece of kit while mountain climbing in case you need to cut a rope in an emergency.

Unencrypted Transmissions

• Why does Trinity not encrypt their radio transmissions? What's to stop someone from tuning in and knowing all about their plans?
  • Trinity has some pretty arrogant leaders, and their main footmen are comprised of hired mercs. They probably believe with their technological supremacy, that the Remnants (who are woefully unequipped arsenal and equipment-wise) won’t make such a hard pushback against them, or even think to intercept radio transmissions. Trinity probably doesn't even believe these isolated peoples, who still hunt with bows and arrows and wear animal skins for clothing, would even know what a radio was. And while it’s shown throughout the gameplay that the Remnants have some knowledge on things (drones, cameras, etc.) they don’t have the tech to replicate or produce or repair them on their own. And since they were shooting down drones, they could have done irreparable damage to them so that the Remnants couldn’t use those for themselves, either. You’ve got to remember, they’re pretty isolated, and they’ve working with really outdated, and not to mention salvaged, Soviet tech from the Cold War. They’re still using a mixture of carrier birds and CB radios and lighted pyres when it comes to communication valley-and-mountain-wide. Also, throughout the recorded journal logs, there is a Trinity mook whose logs mention that he had been hired to perform security. It could be he’s being purposefully incompetent, since he really just wants out a lot more than he had wanted in.
• Given that everybody appears to be using unencrypted transmissions on the same frequency, why does Trinity never listen in on Lara's conversations?
  • There's never really an opportunity for it to be useful. The conversations Lara has over the radio never really specify any information that Trinity either doesn't already know (they know where the Remnant are based, they get their hands on the Atlas, etc.) or that isn't immediately useless to them (like knowing that the Remnants are going to be supporting Lara as she goes after the Divine Source, considering that they're already in the middle of battling the Deathless anyway).

Jacob's Immortality

• Based on conversations heard in the Geothermal Valley, the Remnant clearly knows Jacob is the immortal prophet. Why then do they accuse Lara of murdering him? They should know that's impossible.
  • They still wouldn't have taken the attempt on his life lightly. Maybe Jacob can die, but he'll get better? Still, if you were a nigh-immortal being and someone tried killing you, your friends and family and community in general probably wouldn't like it all that much, either.
    • This. If you did try to murder Jacob upon meeting him, you're either a psychopathic killer or a Trinity agent. Either way, the Remnant have no reason to let you live.
    • Furthermore, people who get resurrected retain all their memories, including that of their death — of all their deaths. This apparently corrupts them over time, which is how and why the Deathless became what they are. This in turn means that the Remnant would hate for Jacob to die because they don't want him to become corrupted, even though it seems to take many, many deaths until one becomes like the Deathless.

Freedom Station

• You would think the Soviets would send a team to investigate when they completely lost contact with one of their relatively large uranium mines.
  • It's implied they did, but were intercepted by Remnant or Deathless. The latter have murals dedicated to Soviet technology they've fought with, at least.
    • IRL the USSR would then send military the proper way to investigate, and THEN - all up to and including carpet bombing, artillery and napalm. Remnants would become remnants in literal sense.
    • Eh, the issue depends greatly on the timing, actually. The timing from "Baba Yaga" implies this is happening at the end of Joseph Stalin's reign over the Soviet Union, where A LOT of people disappeared without really much going on. In the chaos of his death, its' entirely possible this particular Gulag got lost in the purges.
    • Nope. The documents you find specifically say that the prisoner uprising occurred in December 1970.

Housebreaker

• What was the point of having Trinity break into Croft Manor to steal Lara's book? Ana was still trusted by Lara at that point, and was implied to have the run of the manor. She could have walked into that office and photographed the relevant sections of the book at any time without running the risk of Lara realizing that Trinity had copies of all her research and would be heading to Siberia in the near future.
  • Given her refusal to kill Lara's father, they might not have trusted Ana. Alternatively, it might have been intended as a further spur to get Lara to continue her father's research out in the world.

Timeline Pre-Siberia

• So according to this game, Lara started in London, went to Syria by way of Turkey (according to a letter from her uncle in the Blood Ties DLC), went to and explored the Prophet's tomb, returned to the UK (presumably the same way she used to get to Syria), went to Croft Manor in Surrey to find the location of Kitezh in her father's research, and then planned and underwent an expedition to a remote location in Siberia, all in just two weeks?
  • In terms of pure physical possibility, the timeline is feasible. London to Turkey to Syria and back could have taken about a week, assuming Lara headed back as soon as the events of the prologue are complete. Lara doesn't really stay in one place for all that long, and she's also aware that she's in a race with Trinity to track her father's progress. Judging from both Lara's overall characterization (someone who relies on good instincts, but can also be reckless) and how Lara's expeditions are framed in Expedition Mode, it's implied that Lara approaches her missions with on the fly-thinking and heavy use of the Indy Ploy more so than meticulous planning. She has the skill set needed to live off the land via hunting and foraging, and in both Syria and Siberia, she's traveling pretty light. Since she's both racing against the clock and isn't planning a traditional expedition backed by a research team, which requires significant supplies, she could probably have made the trip to Siberia in a matter of a few days after returning from Syria.
  • Also note that Lara has the resources she'd need to charter her own transportation to and from her expeditions. This would reduce planning and travel time significantly. Again, in Expedition Mode, she's being airlifted out directly after completing an expedition.

Source Inconsistencies?

• Why is it that when the Source gets smashed, The Deathless burst into flame, but Jacob appears to be not immediately affected (implications that he simply succumbs to his wounds and isn't revived)? Presumably Ana and Jacob operate under similar rules in that they are simply not going to be revived whenever they die, but why do the Deathless operate under different rules?
  • Jacob wasn't impacted by the Divine Source in the same way as the Deathless Ones. For example, he gained healing powers and they didn't. One of the journals of the historical Trinity agent indicates that the Deathless Ones seemed to lose a bit of their humanity with each revival, so by the time Lara destroyed the Source, they were pretty much just supernatural horrors. Ana didn't live long enough after being exposed to the Source for anyone to see whether the same would have happened to her.

Atlas

• Given that Richard Croft and Atlas de Mornay despised each other, to the point where Atlas was deliberately sabotaging Richard's efforts to secure funding for his research, why did Lord Croft allow his brother-in-law to have any control over the Croft estate?
  • He didn't. Richard Croft died without a will, and Lara was still a minor when he died. Given these circumstances, it's likely Atlas would be the default candidate for maintaining the estate until Lara was old enough to receive it as inheritance.
  • Richard was mentally ill-equipped after his wife died, as he built an Egyptian tomb under their house and started looking into immortality.
    • It should be noted Lara may have lucked out, as it's implied Ana wanted to get Richard to marry her, which would have made Lara her ward.

Atlas seizing the Manor

• The general rule with inheritance in Britain is that if there is no will, the estate goes to the next of kin, unless there are no surviving relatives to within a reasonable degree, at which point the estate goes to the government. As Richard's daughter, Lara would be considered next of kin to Richard, and thus would be her father's default heir whether her mother was dead or not. Atlas is not a Croft by blood, so while he might have been able to claim the right to manage the estate on his niece's behalf while she was underage, and could potentially claim Lady Croft's belongings as her brother while she was considered missing and not dead, he should have no claim on Richard's estate whatsoever.
  • That's why Atlas was trying to use the Yamatai experience to get Lara ruled incompetent to manage her own affairs, such as by suggesting she get counseling.
    • Nope, Lara was in danger of losing the manor to Atlas because she had no proof that her mother was actually dead, hence the whole DLC revolving around trying to find Lady Croft's crypt, and once Lara finds it, Atlas backs down from trying to seize the manor.
    • The comics have an Author's Saving Throw in that the reason Lara is having severe issues with her uncle is because she came back from Yamatai talking about ghosts, goblins, and demons, so he was afraid she'd gone "crazy" like her father. He used that to argue she needed to be kept from her inheritance and have him as a guardian for it. It's just he's a snake and was going to use it to steal all of her family inheritance.

The language used by the Remnant

How is it that Lara is able to converse with them with no trouble at all? Logically, they should probably speak a distorted version of Byzantine Greek. Lara can apparently read the written form they use, but depending on how the pronunciation has shifted, the spoken language might not be intelligible. Yet the lack of a language barrier is not even commented upon, and Trinity has no trouble getting understood when they interrogate prisoners. Also, why does she hear the Deathless as speaking Modern Greek with no subtitles?

• The Remnant has had contact with the Russians quite a bit, even having been required to work under them, so likely most if not all of them also speak Russian. Lara, and presumably Trinity, are probably just conversing with them in Russian.
  • As for the Deathless speaking Modern Greek, that's probably just because it's easier to find voice actors who speak that compared to finding voice actors who speak Byzantine Greek.

The death of Amelia Croft

The plot behind Blood Ties is that Lara has to find proof of her mother's death in order to retain possession of Croft Manor. But if Lord Richard was able to bring back Mrs. Croft's corpse from the Himalayas, how come her death was never entered into public record? Did Richard just not tell anyone?

• Basically, yes. When you complete Blood Ties, you find a letter from Atlas stating that Richard had hid the exact circumstances of Amelia's death, including her actual body, from the De Mornay family. Considering that performing occult magic to revive a cadaver probably wouldn't fly too well in the public record, it's safe to assume that this is why there are legal issues in transferring ownership of the estate to Lara. Also note that even Lara didn't know the exact circumstances of her mother's death, and in the main story, her mother's status is referred to as a "disappearance."