Video Game / Rise of the Tomb Raider

Discover the Legend Within.

"Throughout history, the boldest have dared to go further. They risked death and in doing so live on forever. What drives these few to the ends of the Earth? The desire to discover something more? The search for something greater? The world is full of unanswered questions. Beyond all limits, all reason, the answers await. For some, discovering the secrets of the world... is the only way to live."

— Lara Croft

Rise of the Tomb Raider is the direct sequel to Tomb Raider (2013), developed by Crystal Dynamics. It was released on November 10, 2015, for Xbox One and Xbox 360, January 28, 2016, for Windows, and October 11, 2016, for PlayStation 4. The game was ported by Feral Interactive to macOS on April 12th 2018, with a Linux Port releasing the following week, April 19th, 2018.

Following the events of Tomb Raider, Lara Croft travels the world in search of myths and legends, to discover the truth behind the immortal beings she encountered on the island of Yamatai. Standing in her way is a sinister organization known only as "Trinity", who will stop at nothing to obtain the Divine Source for themselves.

A sequel titled Shadow of the Tomb Raider was released on September 14, 2018.

A fourth game, whose title and release date have not been announced, is in development.

Previews: Trailer 1, Trailer 2.

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The game contains examples of:

• 100% Completion: Achieving this rewards Lara the Thunderclap, a gilded break-action shotgun that can kill almost anything with one shot. Plus an achievement.
• Ability Required to Proceed: A lot of areas early in the game are inaccessible until Lara manages to acquire the right tools to progress, such as certain special arrows and the lockpick.
• Action Prologue: Of a sort. The game opens with Lara scaling a Siberian mountain, then cuts to the beginning of her adventure as she races to explore the Prophet's tomb in Syria before Trinity can destroy it.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: With the adaptation in question being the game's own gameplay elements. If you play the Baba Yaga DLC before you tackle the base game's final chapter (which you'll probably do for any number of reasons), you'll eventually come to realize that Baba Yaga's mooks are merely reskinned Deathless Ones, with all the same abilities, weapons, combat behavior and other gameplay mechanics.
• Advanced Ancient Acropolis: Kitezh, a city in Siberia founded by Byzantine refugees, who constructed elaborate devices such as a holographic map (the Atlas) and a mechanical Orrery before their city was buried beneath a glacier by its magically-charged, invincible army.
• A.K.A.-47: True to Tomb Raider tradition, Lara's guns are based off of real-world weapons.
  • The Revolver is a Nagant.

• The Heavy Pistol is a Desert Eagle Mk XIX chambered in .50 AE.
• The Assault Rifle is based on the Kalashnikov rifle family for an almost literal example.
• The Military Rifle is a G36, with the exact model depending on certain upgrades.
• The Submachine Gun is a snub-nosed MP7.
• The DLC-exclusive Hailstorm submachine gun (though classified as a handgun) is a Micro-Uzi.

• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • Subverted with Konstantin, who seems to earn a bit of sympathy from Lara in his dying moments, only to immediately smash her Berserk Button and try to goad her into killing him with her own hands. The player decides how this ends.
  • Ana is disposed of by a Trinity sniper moments after declaring she has at least one principle: not killing people she loves.
• All There in the Manual: While the game does mention the fate of non-Jonah survivors of the previous game, you'll still need to read the comics to learn the whole story.
• Alone-with-Prisoner Ploy: A villainous version. Ana pretends to be captured by Trinity in order to coax the location of the Divine Source out of Lara, who has also been captured. She abandons the facade after it's clear Lara doesn't know.
• Ancient Conspiracy: The Order of Trinity, originally an order of knights dispatched by the Catholic Church to hunt down the Prophet and his followers, pursuing them to Syria and then Kitezh in Siberia. In the present day, they're a lavishly-equipped and funded secret organization with lots of military muscle including Private Military Contractors, and have aims to cleanse and Take Over the World.
• And the Adventure Continues: The last cutscene of the game (barring the post-credits stinger) depicts Lara in her father's office, packing up for another expedition, with a map of Mexico and Central America on her father's desk. True enough, the sequel Shadow of the Tomb Raider revolves around the Mayan civilization that was native to Central America.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Lara gets new outfits with various buffs contingent on the completion of certain story or side missions.
• Anti-Frustration Features: The free-roam mode unlocked at completion of the story allows to go back to the Syria level, which allows to complete the collectibles hunt and the local challenge if you missed some of them during the prologue.
• Anti-Grinding: Done in a different manner from the previous game. The wildlife respawns after a while, so you can grind for salvage from them, but since there are a dozen different types of salvage, there's no point in grinding for deer hides if what you need to upgrade your equipment is nuts and springs, which are only found in crates or from soldiers. Also, there's an upper limit (upgradable to a point) to how much of each type of salvage you can carry, so after a while there's no point in grinding for more until you've used some of it (There is one point fairly early in the game where it is possible to get all available weapon upgrades and max out salvage before the next tier of upgrades becomes available).
• Apocalyptic Log: Several.
  • Those from the Soviets detail their occupation of the Kitezh mountain and their excavation of the outskirts of the city, before their slave laborers revolt and overpower them. Some of the last survivors fled to the Wicked Vale, where they were drugged and forced to live out their worst nightmares by Baba Yaga, who used a specialized hallucinogenic that also drove the original Kitezh settlers in the region mad.
  • Those from medieval Trinity knights relate their quest across the steppes to track the followers of the Prophet to Kitezh, with many dying to angry locals, sickness and starvation, and finally the Deathless Army.
  • A few of the survivors of the fall of Kitezh write about their last days studying and fighting the Deathless.
• Arbitrary Mission Restriction: In the final boss fight against Konstantin. While it's properly explained why you cannot use your weapons, Lara still has her pickaxe and can attack them with it. However, it completely arbitrarily doesn't do any damage and you have to kill him the way the game wants.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: In the Baba Yaga DLC, Lara is reluctant to accept the legend of Baba Yaga, despite having previously encountered a myth that proved entirely true. She's right: the apparent witchcraft is actually the effect of a hallucinogenic flower.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted. Trinity soldiers with body armor and the Deathless Army with their armor require more firepower to take down than normal enemies. More importantly, armored enemies invariably wear helmets that make them immune from being insta-killed via Boom, Headshot!, which tends to make stealth kill streaks a whole lot more difficult^note they're still not immune to poison arrows though.
• Arrows on Fire: Fire arrows are the third of four Trick Arrow types Lara acquires over the course of the game. The Remnant make occasional use of them as well (once to shoot down a heavy attack helicopter), and the Deathless Ones' archers deploy their signature Greek Fire arrows.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • The alleged deathcap mushrooms Lara uses as the toxic agent in her poison arrows look absolutely nothing like actual deathcaps. Also, while deathcaps are indeed very poisonous, their toxin is extremely slow acting. In some cases it takes over 24 hours before someone affected shows any symptoms, and it certainly wouldn’t affect anyone over quick resolving combat engagements.
  • There's also never been a documented fatal attack on a human by a Eurasian lynx. The lynxes in this game will attempt to kill Lara on sight and will never disengage.
• Ashes to Ashes: Deathless Ones burn up when killed and leave ashes from which they resurrect from, making them unable to die.
• The Atoner: The Prophet became this after his immortal army betrayed the city, killing everyone to hoard the Divine Source. He spent the rest of this long life protecting the secret of the Source so that no one would abuse it as they did. As he lay dying, he gave Lara permission to destroy the Source, knowing that it would kill him.
• Attack Its Weak Point: the Deathless Ones are especially vulnerable to headshots. Unfortunately, they all wear ancient Byzantine helmets and chainmail, meaning it takes more than one shot to put them down.
  • There's also a tomb reward skill that allows Lara to see the hearts of animals she's hunting while using Survival Instincts so she can inflict extra damage.
• Auto-Save: The game autosaves frequently, except on the hardest difficulty, in which you can only save at campsites.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The compound bow is by far the most powerful bow Lara can acquire, but its rate of fire and its draw time are hideously slow even when fully upgraded. Since most enemies are humans and even the weakest bow in the game can instantly kill unprotected humans with a single uncharged headshot, the compound bow's insane damage rating is almost always overkill. Couple that with the many, many enemies most battles throw at Lara, as well as all bows' requirement to Lead the Target, and you're better off with a more balanced weapon like one of the ancient horn bows (Grim Whisper especially due to its noticeably higher damage). However, if you're an above-average shot, it becomes Difficult, but Awesome.
  • Most of the improvised weapons skills fall under this category.
    • Incendiary Bombs: Sure, it's fun to fire-bomb mooks with exploding gas canisters or blow them up with proximity-triggered mines crafted from walkie-talkies, but the noise instantly alerts every hostile in the area and makes their patrol routes completely unpredictable. Just snipe them from afar for all those nice headshot bonus XP, plus another bonus for completing the segment without being detected. Using these things also impedes or completely disrupts Finesse kill streaks that are invaluable for gaining enough XP to acquire all skills.
    • Dragonfire shells / Hollow-point bullets / Grenadier: More powerful ammo types for Lara's shotgun/handgun/assault rifle, respectively. Absolutely redundant due to headshots with normal ammo being instantly lethal anyway. Fortunately, they don't count towards your normal ammo count so by creating these you can easily double the amount of ammunition you can carry.
    • Body Trap Specialist: This one easily takes the cake as it requires Lara to get up-close to a dead body in order to booby-trap it. That almost always means having to move into plain sight of other mooks, and if even one of them spots Lara, all hell breaks loose. You're more than likely caught in the open without cover, you forfeit the XP bonus for stealth and have to contend with every hostile in the area at once instead of taking them out one after the other. Sometimes mooks patrol the perimeter and can be killed and rigged without alerting their buddies, but then you have to lure the others to the rigged corpse, which just isn't worth all the hassle when you can just snipe them with your bow. What makes it even worse is the fact that setting up the trap requires one unit of salvage. Yes, that's exactly the stuff you need loads of to upgrade your weapons. Better spend it there.
  • Melee combos are fun and also surprisingly powerful, especially once upgraded to shatter armor, but in a game where good cover is crucial for Lara's survival, charging gun-toting enemies to smack them with climbing axes should be considered the absolute last resort. Naturally, this applies even more to the Deathless Ones because of their heavy armor and the ludicrous amounts of damage they deal in close combat.
• Badass Bandolier: The second ammo capacity upgrade for shotgun shells straps one of these across Lara's chest.

• Battle Amongst the Flames: All over the place.
  • The Copper Mill's upper levels go up in flames barely a minute after Lara gets there. The rest of the level is then spent fighting through the inferno while neck-deep in Trinity mooks.
  • Lara and the Remnant, fighting in their burning village after Trinity discovers it.
  • Another example happens in the Flooded Archives thanks to the Deathless Ones' penchant for killing things with Greek Fire.
  • The final battle against Konstantin takes place under these conditions as well.
• Bears Are Bad News: There's several bears throughout the game, and they're easily the toughest foes - animal or human - Lara will face, and at least one encounter is unavoidable.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Well, Lara does get dirty a lot, but that rarely lasts longer until the next time she jumps into any body of water. More importantly, and unlike the previous game, she doesn't suffer any lasting injuries this time around. Not even her clothes get damaged no matter what she's put through.
• Big Bad: Konstantin serves as the main antagonist, though he's not in charge of Trinity.
• Big Damn Fire Exit: A staple of the series. In this game, Lara is trapped in a burning building in the Soviet camp, and there is just a perfectly aligned exit route.
• Bilingual Bonus: The Deathless Ones speak in actual modern Greek.
  • When preparing for battle, they say things like "They have weapons we have never seen before but we have the armour of nature, and when you fall, you will rise again!"
  • When Lara is spotted they say "She's there! I see her! Kill her!"
• Bittersweet Ending: Ana, Konstantin, and the Trinity force are destroyed, but the Divine Source is lost, taking with it Lara's only hope of rehabilitating her father's memory, and Jacob is dead, along with dozens of the Remnant. And Trinity is still out there...
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Unlike the spoken examples above, a few written words on a wall in the Soviet compound in Greek seem to be an automated translation of "Filthy unbelievers, leave" and, unlike the spoken sentences from later in the game, the translation is awful. The word for "filthy" is more commonly used in the literal sense, it says "unbeliever" in the singular and the word chosen for "leave" actually means to leave an object somewhere, not leave from somewhere. It's also not an imperative.
• Bling-Bling-BANG!: The Thunderclap shotgun in a nutshell - every component that isn't made of wood is coated in shiny, sparkly gold covered in intricate engravings. Justified, however, given its status as the game's Bragging Rights Reward.
• Blond, Brunette, Redhead: The game's female cast fits this trope nicely - Ana is blond, Lara is brunette, and Sofia is the redhead.
• Bond One-Liner: If Lara decides to not finish off the mortally wounded Konstantin after their Battle Amongst the Flames, he'll burn to death instead as soon as she turns to leave. Her reaction?
  Lara: Burn in hell.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: For some reason, Konstantin thinks it's a great idea to put Lara in a ancient crumbling prison cell with her equipment right outside it and leave her there without any guards.
• Boobs-and-Butt Pose: Lara strikes one in the equipment upgrade menu whenever the cursor hovers over something that isn't a shotgun shell capacity upgrade or an oil flask. Justified as these items are pouches she carries at the small of her back, and since she always looks at the item you highlight, she doesn't have many options here.
• Boom, Headshot!: Every human enemy that doesn't wear a helmet will instantly die to a headshot regardless of the weapon used. Arrows don't even need to be fully drawn to achieve this. A basic, quick shot is more than sufficient, although the extra damage provided by fully drawing the bow is useful for shooting off helmets in one hit. Headshots also grant significantly more XP than basic kills, so it's borderline mandatory to go for the head whenever possible if you intend to acquire all of Lara's skills. Several of those skills revolve around making headshots easier to pull off or more rewarding. Arguably the most important one, Finesse, grants increasing amounts of bonus XP for uninterrupted chains of stealth kills including, of course, headshots. Another one switches the Double Shot and Triple Shot skills' auto-aim feature from center mass to the targets' heads, allowing for multiple silent instant kills with basically one bow shot.
• Boring, but Practical: Handguns. They can kill unprotected humans with one headshot and armored ones with two, they're easily accurate enough to snipe enemies across half the map, they can be silenced by completing an easy side mission very early in the game, and Lara can carry up to 75 rounds for them. Their only disadvantage over the bow is that Lara can't craft ammo for them, but since that ammo can easily be scavenged in the world or looted from dead mooks, a decent handgun like the Semi-Auto or the Heavy Pistol alone can carry anyone with decent aim through anything that isn't a bear den.
  • The Tier I Avid Learner skill grants bonus XP for finding survival caches, documents and relics as well as for completing challenges. Doesn't sound like much, but the game world is positively littered with these things, so the additional experience adds up quickly. Grab it as early as you can - the sooner it's learned (and since it's Tier 1, it can be gotten as soon as Lara starts levelling), the sooner the bonuses start racking up.
• Bottomless Pits: Loads of 'em. Most are fairly sensible - you are in a mountainous region after all - but others like the one beneath the Orrery are just plain video game style elements.
• Bragging Rights Reward: The Thunderclap, a gilded break-action shotgun awarded for achieving 100% Completion. It boasts the highest damage stat out of any weapon in the game, but since it can't be unlocked before the credits have rolled, there's not much left to shoot with it except for animals or the occasional Trinity patrol encountered in the Playable Epilogue.
• Breast Plate: The Sacra Umbra, a black and golden suit of Byzantine plate armor rewarded for beating all challenge tombs and treasure crypts, sports one as its chest piece.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: The various DLC weapons are either truly unique equipment or named, palette-swapped variants of basic weapons that normally need to be assembled from multiple, often well-hidden parts collected over the course of the game. Though the latter examples are initially no more powerful than their basic counterparts, they are accessible the moment their respective weapon class becomes available to Lara, without the need for meticulous scrounging and exploration. Depending on player preferences, any of these weapons can make Lara's life a lot easier more or less from the start. What's even more important, considering the overall scarcity of resources: players can pour all their resources into their favorite gear right away without having to waste some on keeping intermediate equipment up to date with the enemies' increasing threat level.
• Brown Note: The Divine Source is sort of an inverted Brown Note; looking at it causes the beholder to gain immortality, though as Jacob and the Deathless Ones show, it can be more of a curse than a blessing.
• Calling Your Attacks: Trinity soldiers will loudly shout what they're about to do, such as throw a grenade or attempt a flank maneuver. Ostensibly this is for the benefit of their teammates (and when there's one remaining, he'll stop doing it), but it also allows Lara to anticipate their tactics. In real life, soldiers use secured radios or hand gestures for this kind of communication.
• Cardboard Prison: After Lara is captured by Trinity soldiers, they throw her in a prison so old and dilapidated she's able to break out of it in seconds.
• Cats Are Mean: Apart from bears, the main wild animals Lara has to watch out for are Eurasian lynxes. And, at the start of the Baba Yaga DLC, at least one Amur leopard.
• Cave Behind the Falls: One of the challenge tombs in Geothermal Valley is hidden in a cave behind one of the biggest waterfalls in the area.
• Character Tic: Lara has at least two of them. First one: whenever she swims (or nearly drowns as the case may be), when she gets back on dry land, she squeezes the water out of her ponytail (hilariously, even when wearing a hood). Second one: she seems to have an aversion to her lips touching each other. Rare are the occasions where you can see Lara with her mouth fully closed even when she isn't talking, and regardless of how frigid her surroundings are.
• Checkpoint Starvation: The hardest difficulty setting, Extreme Survivor, only saves the game at campsites. Prepare to replay a lot of sections.
• Clear Their Name: One of Lara's motivators for her quest for Kitezh and the Divine Source is a desire to rehabilitate the memory of her father, who was slandered throughout the academic community for his theories. Since Lara ends up destroying the Source to deny it to Trinity, she is unable to do so.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • Trinity uses this on the Remnants they capture, hoping to find the Village, Kitezh, and the Divine Source.
  • The people of Kitezh did this in the past. People who were heretics or criminals were put into stockades and made to pray.
• Collection Sidequest: Tons of them, all of which are required for 100% Completion and the related Bragging Rights Reward.
  • Like in the previous game, Lara can collect countless relics, documents and survival caches (roughly similar to the old GPS beacons), but Rise also adds crypt treasures, murals and coin caches to the mix. Every discovery awards a nice amount of XP at least, many give crafting resources on top of that, and most also provide background info on the region's lore and history.
  • Region-specific challenges return from Tomb Raider, and again they usually revolve around finding and destroying a number of things. They range from "not a big deal" to "supremely annoying", but at least they give a decent amount of XP upon completion.
  • Most important are the strongboxes scattered across the game world. Each contains one of the four weapon parts you need to assemble advanced gun models; some also provide additional gear that's required to proceed to new areas. The parts are guaranteed finds and always in the same strongbox, which removes the much-maligned arbitrary element from the previous game where many weapon parts were hidden in random loot boxes.
• Continue Your Mission, Dammit!: At certain points of the story, some characters will remind Lara of her next task via radio, sounding more and more impatient with time. Of course, you can still Take Your Time and ignore them completely.
• Continuity Nod:
  • One of the optional tombs revolves around changing the water level of a large chamber to reach the goal, a reference to Cistern, a level in the original Tomb Raider I.
  • Lara eventually comes across a lush green valley amongst snowy mountains, much like the Lost City of Vilcabamba (also from the original game).
  • The design of the pump-action shotgun looks much like the design used in Tomb Raider II through The Last Revelation.
  • Similarly, if you fully upgrade the semi-auto pistol (minus the extended magazine upgrades) it looks almost identical to Lara's iconic Heckler and Koch USP Match .45 pistols from the pre-reboot games and the film adaptations.
  • Some Trinity soldiers discuss being sent to Yamatai to clear out the Solarii remnants, shortly after the survivors of the Endurance escaped.
  • The antiquated submachine guns some of the Remnants are seen wielding are the same model Lara herself used during her previous adventure on Yamatai.
  • Lara's String Theory board in the title menu shows two newspaper clippings with headlines, "Mysterious Suicide in the Tube" and "University Shooting Leaves 8 Dead, 10 Wounded". They reference events in the interquel comics and novel respectively.
  • In Lara's house you can find several references to the out-of-continuity older games, such as a plush tyrannosaur in the library or a collectible dragon statue rumored to be from the Temple of Xian.
• Creator's Culture Carryover:
  • A number of artefacts and documents ^note particularly in the Blood Ties DLC have dates printed on them by I Cly British authors and/or creators utilizing the American format of 'Month Day' (IE, July 12) instead of the British format of 'Day Month' (IE, 12 July or 12th July).
  • The lead hunter of the Remnant, descendants of Byzantine Greeks living in almost total isolation within Siberia excluding the Soviet occupation, refers to one of the animals in her hunting document collectibles as being 'ornery', a phrase exclusively used in North America.
  • To a more minor extent, and one that even non-local Brits would likely not notice, the address given for Croft Manor in a series of documents found within the Blood Ties DLC list that Croft Manor is located within the boundaries of Guildford, Surrey, but has a postcode beginning with 'AL'^note St Albans, Hertfordshire rather than 'GU'^note Guildford, Surrey. This is likely an intentional Shout-Out, as the postcode is the real-life postcode of Hatfield House, which was used as a shooting location in the films and which the in-game manor is closely modeled after.
  • Whenever British-born Lara refers to her mother in the American 'Mom', instead of the British 'Mum'. This extends to the subtitles. Made somewhat more egregious since unlike the films, Lara here is voiced by Berkshire native Camilla Luddington, who definitely would have known that wasn't correct.
• Crosshair Aware: If you get any game that's alerted to Lara's presence in your sights, you have a split-second at best to pull the trigger before it either runs away or, if it was already moving, changes direction almost instantly. This makes startled herbivores the most difficult-to-hit entities in the game by a considerable margin, especially while wielding a bow due to its projectile travel time and the slight delay between pressing the shoot button and Lara actually releasing the arrow.
• Cruel Mercy: Lara can inflict this on Konstantine. After their final Battle Amongst the Flames he's left mortally wounded thanks to two axe strikes to the back plus one knife jab to the chest. When Lara turns to walk away from him, he tries to goad her into finishing him off by bringing up her father's death. If she doesn't take the bait, she'll coldly say that he's Not Worth Killing, so instead of getting axed through the head he dies an agonizing death by burning alive when the floor gives way beneath him moments later.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Lara deals these out like candy to Trinity and even the Deathless Ones.
  • The Deathless Army also butchers the unlucky Trinity forces they encounter.
  • Trinity themselves deal this to the Remnant; though it's far from as effortless as the above two examples, the results are still quite thorough.
• Curse Cut Short: Lara is interrupted in the middle of calling Ana a "cunt" by a backhand across the face.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: The cutscenes largely stay true to what Lara is capable of in actual gameplay, but there are a few instances where she emerges largely unscathed from nasty falls that would've killed her while under player control.
  • At one point, Lara shoots Ana in the shoulder with whatever handgun she's currently equipped with. Not only does she land a pretty good hit from a considerable distance, at a small target that's standing far above her, with what's essentially an angry, impulsive shot from the wrist - she does so one-handed. Depending on what DLCs are installed, the gun in question might well be a silenced, heavily upgraded magnum revolver or a .50 AE Desert Eagle, both of which are almost as long as her arm and would require muscles like the T-800's to be wielded in such a way. Needless to say, in actual gameplay Lara always uses both hands for firing her handguns.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The button for using rope arrows in the previous game has been reassigned in this one; many, many, many trick arrows have been wasted in attempts to cross gaps. In addition, the hotkeys for shotgun and rifle have been swapped, and the default key for dodge/drop down has changed.
• Dead Guy Junior: Jacob mentions that his wife reminded him of a woman from his past, named Sofia. Sofia is also the name he and his wife eventually gave their daughter.
• Dead Guy on Display: The Remnant left a number of the bodies of the Soviet soldiers who tried to enslave them hanging up in prominent places. They're in miraculously good shape given that they've been there for forty-five years.
• Death from Above: Lara is on the receiving end of this from Trinity helicopters and trebuchets crewed by the Deathless Ones. She can return the favor. Sofia also uses a trebuchet to provide fire support for Lara's assault on the Chamber of Souls and to shoot down Konstantin's helicopter.
  • The Brawler skill set offers a Tier III skill with exactly that name. It enables Lara to jump onto any enemy soldier (even armored ones) below her current position and instantly kill them with her combat knife. With the right setup of support skills to make it completely silent, plus some planning and proper timing, it can be a situational yet quite helpful tool in a couple of instances later in the game.
• Developer's Foresight: If you grind yourself to a nub, you can get enough Byzantine Coins to purchase the Refinement Tool in the Supply Shack in the first Hub Level before you find the Crafting Tool en route to the next Hub. It still only Double Unlocks the second tier of upgrades, and the other two tools work just fine as well.
• Dirty Commies: The Soviets came to the Kitezh region, and upon meeting resistance from The Remnant, they suppressed them and then press ganged them into forced labour, in horrible conditions, to mine the mountains protecting the city. They even broke through to the city gate and were in the process of pulling it open when the Remnant staged an uprising and drove them out.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • Depending on your preferences concerning Lara's loadout, some of the DLC weapons can quickly outclass anything else in their respective category since they're either powerful uniques (the magnum revolver) or palette-swapped version of basic weapons that wouldn't be available until much later in the game. Granted, the latter aren't necessarily more powerful than some of their alternatives, but they're often more tactically flexible, have more upgrade options and can be upgraded immediately (within their unlocked tiers) without having to waste resources on other models in order to bridge the gap. The Moonshadow for instance, a unique Heavy Pistol, can kill any basic human enemy in one hit to the body, more powerful ones with a single headshot and armored ones with two headshots, and the game has barely begun when you can equip it. This gun alone can carry Lara through much of the game, especially once she acquires the handgun silencer, which is as easy to do as it happens early.
  • The Shadowhawk DLC outfit makes it so that looting common animals sometimes results in a chance to receive a rare crafting material pickup. While this isn't enough to fully throw game balance out the window, it will allow the player the chance to get mid-to-late game upgrades far earlier than normal, particularly because the outfit is available from the very start of the game.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Some of the journals in the Baba Yaga DLC sidequest are from a woman who was sentenced to five years in a gulag for throwing a drink in the face of a party official. She's Baba Yaga.
• Doing In the Wizard: The first half of the Baba Yaga DLC is all about Lara proving to Nadia that there's nothing supernatural about what's going on in the Wicked Vale. Specifically, all the stuff about a witch throwing fireballs from within a house that walks on chicken legs, demonic wolves with Glowing Eyes of Doom, demonic warriors that crumble to ashes upon death and so on, mostly comes down to a serious case of pollen-induced Mushroom Samba. The other half is stopping the still pretty nasty shit that is going on there.
• Door to Before: One of these can usually be found and opened after almost every platforming sequence. Others become available after certain story events have unfolded, to allow access to previously locked collectibles. And of course there's the game's fast-travel system, accessible from any campfire at any time except for a couple of story-related locks.
• Double Unlock: Nested. Every upgrade requires a certain amount of resources to be scavenged from all over the game world, but that's just the beginning;
  • The rare resources require an unlocked specialty skill - one of which can only be unlocked by a late-game optional mission. Even then, they're a Random Drop.
  • Each tier of upgrades after the first requires a special tool; one is available to purchase at the first Hub Level(too expensive for all except the most determined, and intended to be the last the player acquires), but the other two must be found in combat areas.
• The Dreaded:
  • Lara and Konstantin are both this to the Trinity forces.
  • The Deathless Army is this to the Remnant, to the point where they haven't ventured into the ruins of Kitezh in centuries.
• Dual Wielding:
  • Lara has two climbing axes now, not just one.
  • The Deathless Ones' close quarters specialists do this, either with sword and shield or with two swords.
• Dug Too Deep: Averted. The Soviets mined the mountain that hid Kitezh from the world and excavated some of the city ruins, but were driven from the area before they could breach the city gate after the Remnant incited an uprising at the gulag the Soviets used for their forced labor. They never even came close to the Deathless Ones.
• Elite Mooks: Trinity's special forces wear body armor and wield fast-firing assault rifles with deadly accuracy. They always operate in teams and throw grenades liberally to flush Lara out of cover. Also the flame-thrower troops in the Playable Epilogue, most of whom can't be headshot, or even taken out by stealth kills.
• Enemy Chatter: Lots of it from the Trinity soldiers, who discuss things ranging from their old lives, their current jobs, or the mission at hand to how hard Lara is to kill.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Konstantin for his sister Ana. His quest for the Source is founded one part on megalomania and one part on genuine desire to cure his sister's terminal illness.
• Exposed to the Elements: The game is simply all over the place with this. Lara starts the adventure wearing proper mountain climbing gear, albeit without the coat zipped up all the way, but soon loses her hat in an avalanche. Then her coat and gloves are taken from her when she is captured. Shortly afterwards she jumps into a partially frozen lake. The narrative treats it like she nearly drowned, rather than froze to death. In spite of the fact that she is always seen huddling for warmth in her idle animations.
  • Though it is possible for players to manually select an outfit for Lara that is not appropriate for the climate (Like giving her the Commando outfit - which includes a tank top - during a blizzard).
• Exploding Barrels: "Exploding Vessels of Greek Fire", actually, although they are red.
• Extremely Short Timespan: If the day-night-cycle is anything to go by, the game takes place over two to three days at most.
• Eye Scream: Konstantin uses his thumbs to gouge out the eyes of some poor mook in a You Have Failed Me moment.
• Fake Wizardry: Lara encounters someone pretending to be Baba Yaga in the Wicked Vale level. Her apparent possession of sorcerous powers is made possible through the use of hallucinogenic spores that grow in the area and ransacked leftover technology.
• Fast-Roping: Trinity forces are fond of this. Shooting them while they are roping down leads to a One-Hit Kill.
• Gas Leak Cover Up: Inverted. There's a gas cavern in Kitezh that the locals believed was a gateway to hell. They performed exorcisms on madmen by repeated successive treatments of drowning and huffing. Then exploded them with fire arrows at volatile gas if they couldn't recover from madness.
• Game Hunting Mechanic: Lara Croft can hunt wild animals to get items for crafting.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation: To a lesser extent than its predecessor. Lara still takes down an unrealistic number of mooks and retains her One Girl Army status, however Rise offers far more options for taking enemies down via stealth instead of direct combat, if not avoiding them entirely. In fact the stealth approach even offers bonus XP.
  • Although the Deathless have No Ontological Inertia and just plain cease to exist once the Divine Source is destroyed, returning to the Lost City during the Playable Epilogue sees small groups of them spawn around the city.
  • One sidequest involves Lara gathering mushrooms and boar meat to provide rations for the young and infirm members of the Remnant. The mushrooms that are already in Lara's inventory at the start of the quest are considered acceptable, despite the fact that Lara had gathered them because they were poisonous.
  • Early on in the story, Lara must kill multiple mooks who are quite visibly armed with automatic rifles, but she's mysteriously unable to take one for herself and isn't allowed a rifle until the particular button-press scene that lets her acquire one for the first time.
  • The Boss Battle against Konstantin opens with him taking the bow out of Lara... which magically disarms her entirely. Then the game expect to use specified sequence to fight him, using distractions and then following sneak-up with melee attacks. You just can't attack him in melee, despite it being a perfectly viable strategy against any other humanoid in the game, as the game simply won't recognise your attempts as attacks. Worse, you can still craft explosives out of the those cans, yet Konstantin won't be affected with even direct explosion in his face - but somehow two hits with an ice-pick will take him down.
  • In the Blood Ties DLC, one of the information you need to find is Richard and Amelia Croft's wedding date. Finding clues which seemed useful but turn out to not have the information is commented by Lara, and when you pick up the right clue, she points out she found the correct date. If you don't find those clues in the intended order^note Those clues count as relics or documents for the DLC, so picking up each of them is required for 100% completion, those lines play exactly the same, resulting in Lara complaining she still doesn't know the date despite actually knowing it.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The main characters are Lara, Ana and Sophia (female) and Jonah, Konstantin and Jacob (male). They even break into three just as gender-equal subgroups: Lara and Jonah as the outsider heroes, Ana and Konstantin from Trinity, and Jacob and Sophia of the Remnant.
• Gone Horribly Right: From Trinity's perspective. Lara's therapy in between the games was, ultimately, a ploy to push her to uncover her father's secrets and continue his work... A villainous version of Create Your Own Villain (or perhaps Nice Job Fixing It, Villain).
• Gravity Barrier: Both at the borders of a map, as well as within a map (mostly to prevent too much backtracking). You can unlock an ability to survive long falls, but in many instances, Lara will still die midair before she even touches the floor.
• Greater-Scope Villain: The Order of Trinity, which orders Konstantin's expedition to find the Divine Source and is still active after the conclusion of the game.
  • Documents and other information you can find throughout the game hints that there's even one for Trinity itself: They're answering to and bankrolled by somebody in the Vatican.
• Grenade Spam: Enemies have limitless grenades and apparently are programmed to know this, as every shootout will usually involve a lot of them thrown your way. Don't expect to be able to remain in one position for more then a few seconds before a grenade will force you to move.
• Grievous Bottley Harm: Lara can stealth kill mooks with glass bottles laying around, as well as throw them for a distraction.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: Indirectly. Lara can learn how to set up poison gas traps on any mook she killed. The trap will go off as soon as another mook tries to investigate the body, silently killing him and everyone else unlucky enough to be caught in the lethal cloud.
• Grim Up North: Most of the game takes place in a mountain valley in Western Siberia (real life mythology places the lost city of Kitezh in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast).
• Guide Dang It!: The Supply Shack in the Soviet Installation always sells the next tier of the upgrade tools you need to unlock additional weapon upgrade levels. Nowhere is it ever mentioned that the first two tools are found during normal gameplay, with only the third and final one being exclusive to the shack. The amount of ancient coins in the game is limited, so if you pay the 175 coins three times instead of only once, you won't have nearly enough left to purchase everything else on offer. Granted, none of the items are indispensable, but at the very least it prevents you from unlocking an achievement, and the three most expensive items (Military Rifle, Pumpgun, Grenade Launcher) are very powerful weapons that can become impossible to acquire this way.
• Guns Do Not Work That Way:
  • When they first encounter during the Baba Yaga DLC, Nadia threatens Lara with a Nagant revolver and Lara calls her bluff by pointing out the chamber is empty. In real life, the Nagant's chamber are completely closed, which means Lara wouldn't be able to notice the gun is not loaded. And even disregarding the atypical construction of the Nagant revolver, there could be simply One Bullet Left, already aligned with the barrel.
• Hairpin Lockpick: After Lara is captured by Konstantin at the Soviet gulag and thrown in a cell, she unlocks her shackles with a hairpin.
• Hand Cannon: The Heavy Pistol - a Desert Eagle Mk XIX chambered in .50 AE in all but name - is very powerful and looks positively huge in Lara's slender hands. With a silencer installed, it's almost as long as her arm. And then there's the Venom Hand Cannon, a DLC-exclusive magnum revolver that packs even more of a punch.
• Harder Than Hard: The difficulty levels are Adventurer, Tomb Raider, Seasoned Raider, Survivor and Extreme Survivor. That's Easy, Normal, Hard, Harder Than Hard and Even Harder Than Hard.
• Healing Hands: Jacob, using the powers granted to him by the Divine Source.
• The Hero Doesn't Kill the Villainess: Lara kills every male member of Trinity she comes across but leaves the sole woman Ana alive to interrogate her about who killed Lara's father. Unfortunately, Ana is killed by a Trinity sniper before she can reveal any vital information to Lara.
• Hidden Elf Village: Jacob's village, which seems to be composed of the decaying remnants of the outlying suburbs of what has been Kitezh.
• Hired Guns: Not all of the members of the Trinity force are members of Trinity itself. Lara can overhear conversations from mercenaries that Konstantin hired who only recently became aware that Konstantin seriously believes all of the One World Order Knight Templar rhetoric he says.
• Honey Trap: Ana, to Lara's father, Lord Richard Croft. Subverted in that she fell In Love with the Mark.
• How We Got Here: The game starts with Lara and Jonah climbing a mountain before cutting back to two weeks before this event in England.
• Hub Level: The Soviet Installation and the Geothermal Valley both connect to several adjacent areas and are revisited a number of times as the plot progresses. They also contain the largest amounts of collectibles, multiple caves and tombs that require advanced equipment to access, and the Soviet Installation harbors the supply shack where Byzantine coins can be traded in for a number of very useful items.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Pistol, shotgun, bow, rifle, two climbing axes, combat knife, glow sticks and a ton of ammunition, on top of all the raw materials (wood, oil, animal hides, feathers, leaves, cloth, scrap, etc.) she lugs around as well for upgrading and crafting. And that's just what she can equip at one time - depending on how you interpret Lara's stash of weapons at campsites, she may actually be carrying an additional twenty or so different bows and firearms.
• Immortality Inducer: The Divine Source causes anyone looking at it to become immortal. They can still be harmed, but if their injuries become lethal they'll spontaneously burn to ashes, and then regenerate a while later. Their immortality is only contingent on the Source itself being in one piece.
• Impossible Item Drop: If you kill the Deathless Army soldiers with firearms, they'll be dropping ammunition for those guns despite only relying on medieval weaponry to combat you.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: The game rewards you with the "Trick Shot" achievement if you throw a bottle and manage to shoot it out of the air. Adding a culinary twist to such a test of marksmanship, another achievement can be earned by catching one of the many chickens found in Geothermal Valley, throwing it skywards, and then shooting it midair with a fire arrow. The name of this achievement? "Rotisserie". Mmmm, grilled chicken...
• In the Hood: Lara wears a red parka while in Siberia. She loses it after being briefly captured by Trinity, though you can put it back on her as soon as you find another Base Camp.
• Incurable Cough of Death: Ana has one. Judging by her smoking, it's probably lung cancer.
• Inner Monologue: Lara at the campfires.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: There are sections which you think you should be able to pass only to be unable to.
• Internal Homage: Much like Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Rise of the Tomb Raider finds Lara continuing her father's work by racing the malevolent secret society that killed him, in the search for an artifact of possibly divine power. And much like the film, she must destroy it to prevent it from falling into their hands. The idea of Lara following in her father's footsteps by becoming an archaeologist and adventurer also draws more inspiration from the film series than either of the previous iterations of the game continuity.
• Irony: In the first trailer, Lara's psychiatrist tells her to venture into the world more as part of her rehabilitation, only for it to be revealed that Lara has been (or will be) fighting through the wilderness, and mercenaries, in far off lands.
• I Surrender, Suckers: At one point, Jonah has Konstantin at gunpoint. Konstantin begs for his life, only to shank Jonah and escape when he's distracted.
• It's Personal: Ana, and Trinity at large, is responsible for Lara's father's death.
  • Lara's father's professional reputation as a historian was also ruined by his relentless quest for the Divine Source.
• Item Crafting: Lara has to hunt for items to use to upgrade her arsenal.
• Keystone Army: The Deathless Ones, who burn to ashes and STAY dead after Lara destroys the Divine Source.
• Killed Offscreen: Dialogue from the Trinity soldiers confirms that this is what happened to the remaining members of the Solarii Brotherhood after Lara and her friends were saved from Yamatai, courtesy of Trinity.
• Kill It with Fire:
  • Some elite Trinity mooks are armed with flamethrowers. Lara can use flaming arrows, Molotov cocktails, and incendiary shotgun shells. Jars of Greek Fire and braziers of burning oil are also useful against the Deathless Army.
  • The Deathless Ones are all over this trope themselves. Every single ranged weapon in their arsenal, from arrows over grenades to freaking trebuchets, revolves around burning the target to a crisp.
  • There's a codex upgrade for Lara that turns her fire arrows into Greek Fire arrows. This is as awesome as it sounds.
• Last Stand: The Trinity forces, after they seize the Chamber of Souls, are slaughtered to the last man by Lara, her allies, and the Deathless Army.
• Last Villain Stand: After his helicopter is shot down, Konstantin takes Lara on in the last boss battle of the game. He dies taunting Lara about her father's death.
• Lighter and Softer: Downplayed. The game is more personal to Lara, hitting home to her relationship with her father, but she herself sustains far less injuries than the previous game, and almost none of her allies end up dying (in contrast to the previous game, where every single male except Jonah died). In this case the only ones who do die are Konstantin and Jacob, with the former being the main antagonist and the latter performing a Heroic Sacrifice. The game also dials back on the previous one's infamously numerous, cruel and very graphical ways for Lara to die, to the point that there are almost no cinematic death scenes at all.
• Like Father, Like Daughter: Invoked by Lara, who believes being a swashbuckling adventurer, like her father, is her calling in life.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me:
  • Trinity occasionally deploys Elite Mooks equipped with heavy batons and huge riot shields that are completely impervious to anything short of explosives. If none of these are at hand, improvised weapons and dodge counters are your best bet, especially during the segment where Lara has to battle two to three of them at once. You can also aim hear their heads, which will cause them to raise their shields and render their legs vulnerable. However, they'll drop the shields to protect their legs if you aren't quick on the draw, so this isn't as reliable as the other options.
  • The Deathless Ones make use of shield-bearing fighters as well, although their shields are noticeably smaller. Shooting them in the foot will cause them to lower their protection and expose their head for a short time. The downsides are that the Deathless Ones deal much more damage in close combat and move somewhat faster.
• MacGuffin: The Divine Source, a mysterious blue glowing crystal that has the power to grant immortality. Also, for a portion of the game, the Atlas that identifies the location of the Source.
• The Man Behind the Man: The game sets up Konstantin as the Big Bad, since he's commanding the Trinity forces. However, it gradually becomes apparent that Ana has been manipulating him for a long time, and is driving Trinity toward the Divine Source in order to use it to prolong her own life.
• Mercy Kill:
  • Just like the previous game, there is a part where Lara runs into some soldiers who have been slaughtered almost to a man by the supernatural soldiers, with many killed by Greek Fire. One is still barely clinging to life, and begs Lara to put him out of his misery. Unlike the last time though, she doesn't tell him to go to Hell afterwards, making it an actual act of mercy.
  • You also have the option of doing this for a soldier who had his eyes gouged out by Konstantin.
• Molotov Cocktail: Lara can craft these from bottles of alcohol lying around. Stretched a bit, in that while it's understandable to find vodka in the Soviet gulag, it's hard to explain how they're found in the Remnant's Hidden Elf Village, and even harder to explain how they're found in ancient ruins that have lain dormant for centuries.
• Mook Horror Show: Whenever Trinity fights the Deathless Ones. It's telling that they're more terrified of them than they are of Lara.
• Moving Buildings: During the Baba Yaga DLC, her house serves as a boss fight. It's just clever construction aided by a Mushroom Samba.
• Multishot: Lara has perks that allow her to shoot first two, then three targets with her bow at the same time. Another perk makes these multishots always hit their respective targets' heads. Three simultaneous headshots, no aiming.
• Mushroom Samba: The whole point behind the Baba Yaga DLC. There's nothing supernatural there. Just an old woman who weaponized a hallucinogenic plant to bring the myth to life in the heads of anyone who wandered into the Wicked Vale, both as a means of protection and as revenge against the world.
• Mythology Gag: The Blood Ties DLC, which has Lara exploring Croft Manor, is chock-full of them:
  • Several for Tomb Raider II:
    • One document from Winston rants to Lara's father about how she lured him into the walk-in freezer and locked him in. A reference to a famous act of player dickery.
    • The phonograph in the library plays the Venice theme.
    • There's a jade statue of a dragon in Richard's secret lab, along with a mention of the Temple of Xian.
  • Lara's mother is revealed to have died from injuries she received when her plane crashed in the Himalayas while en route to Tibet. This is a nod to Lara's background in the original and Legend continuities, in which Lara's Call to Adventure was the partly the result of surviving a plane crash in the Himalayas. This was also how Lara's mother died in both Legend and the film series.
  • One of Winston's documents references William Blake, which was an important clue in the first film.
  • The color of the dress young Lara wears in one photograph she finds is the same color as her tank top from the original series.
  • In Blood Ties, Lara's mother was arranged to marry the Earl of Farringdon, much like Lara herself was in the original series. Both of them broke off the match.
  • The code for Richard Croft's hidden lab/vault is 142, Lara's canon birthday ( February 14).
  • The cover to Richard Croft's book uses artwork from Tomb Raider: Underworld on the cover.
    • Furthermore, the book's title, Truth Behind the Myth, references a line of dialog between Lara and Zip in Legend.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Played completely straight - Lara's arrows will always fly in a perfectly straight line without any projectile drop whatsoever regardless of distance. They'll also never hit anywhere else than where the crosshair is pointing.
• No Body Left Behind: When the Deathless Ones are killed their bodies vanish in a cloud of dust.
• No-Gear Level: The final battle against Konstantin has him strip Lara of her gear, forcing her to hide and strike from stealth. And no, you can't deal damage to his armor with non-stealth axe strikes.
• No Ontological Inertia: The Deathless cease to exist the instant the Divine Source is destroyed. Except for the roving parties Lara can still encounter during the Playable Epilogue.
• Not Even Bothering with the Accent: Almost every character in the game has an American accent, regardless of what nationality they're supposed to be.
• Not Worth Killing: A heroic example - kind of. Lara will say this almost word for word if she chooses to walk away from a dying Konstantin instead of venting his skull with her climbing axe.
• One Dose Fits All: Rabbit? Wolf? Deer? Trinity soldier? Doesn't matter, they all die instantly when hit with the green cloud of painful death emitted by Lara's poison arrows. The only thing in the game that doesn't keel over on the spot are bears; they "merely" get stunned for several precious seconds. No wonder poison arrows are counted among the game's foremost game-breakers.
• Only Six Faces: The game has far fewer unique character models compared to the previous game. Most weirdly of all is the fact that all three of the game's female characters (Lara, Ana and Sofia) have virtually the same face with only slight modifications. Jonah's face is also reused for random Trinity soldiers.
• Perfect Poison: Lara's deathcap poison arrows kill anything smaller than a bear in about one second. While deathcap mushrooms really are deadly poisonous, their toxin naturally doesn't work nearly this fast. In fact, it's well-known for not showing any symptoms until many hours after ingestion.
• Permanently Missable Content: Interesting aversion of the trope. While you can't return to Syria during the actual story to retrieve any collectibles you might have missed, you CAN go back after the end credits during freeplay when the fast travel points open to finish up.
• Pet the Dog: Among the various plaques throughout the game screaming Soviet propaganda, Lara can find one praising the Soviet Union's cosmonauts for their contributions toward world peace, "lighting the flame of progress."
• Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Lara is noticeably smaller than virtually everyone else she comes into contact with, even moreso than in the previous game. Men in particular tend to tower over her, often by one head or more. Still doesn't prevent her from tearing all of them several new ones if they're dumb enough to get in her way.
• Playable Epilogue: Available upon finishing the game, allowing you to complete any challenges, tombs, and missions left over. A few enemies respawn in certain areas, allowing you to eavesdrop in on their conversations. Some want to get the hell out, others remark on the deaths of Konstantin and Ana, the latter of whom Lara is accused of killing.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Lord Richard Croft's suicide after the academic community ridiculed his attempts at proving Kitezh's existence spurs Lara into trying to redeem his legacy.
• Point of No Return: Right before the final battle, the game warns you that you can't revisit any areas until you beat the game.
• Private Military Contractors: The bulk of the Trinity forces are simple mercenaries looking for a paycheck. Averted by Trinity's special forces, who seem to truly believe in that they are doing the work of God.
• Psycho for Hire: Most of the mercenaries Trinity employs are dangerously psychopathic, and at least one of their soldiers (as revealed in audio logs found throughout the game) is a literal Serial Killer who goes so far as to kill a Trinity technician to satiate his bloodlust. Konstantin gives him a promotion.
• Put on a Bus: Sam is relegated to a few photos and mentions in the documents of Lara's therapy sessions, and Reyes and Kaz (a friend and flatmate introduced in the comics) are never mentioned.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Zigzagged. Large sections of Kitezh have collapsed from age if not war damage, or do so as soon as Lara touches them, while others contain elaborate machines and architecture that are still fully functioning.
• Rain of Arrows:
  • The Deathless Army subjects Lara to this in their first appearance, driving her out of the Cathedral.
  • The Remnant uses this to bring down a Trinity helicopter.
• Reality Is Unrealistic: Some critics and players felt Lara's voice sounded like an American attempting to affect a British accent, largely on account of Lara using "mom" instead of "mum" when discussing her mother. However Luddington is actually English and speaking with her native accent, (Berkshire, to be exact) and while "mum" is more common in British England, "mom" does appear as well. It should be noted, however, that Luddington moved to the United States at age 14, and has been living there for more than 20 years now.
• Really 700 Years Old: Jacob.
• Recycled Trailer Music: James Horner's "The Car Chase" from the A Beautiful Mind soundtrack is used to great effect.
• Regenerating Health: Like in the first game, but only available in full on the two lowest difficulties. Seasoned Raider allows it only outside of combat, and it's completely disabled on Survivor as well as Extreme Survivor.
• Resurrective Immortality: A manuscript reveals this is how the Divine Source bestows immortality. You can still be "killed", but your body will dissolve into glowing ash. You will reform from the ash within a day, with all of your memories intact.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: The first handgun Lara acquires in this game is an antique Nagant revolver left behind by the Soviets. One of the DLC packs adds a much larger and much more powerful magnum revolver to the roster: the aptly named Venom Hand Cannon. It's one of only two DLC weapons that isn't merely a Palette Swap of an existing one with identical stats (the other example being the Hailstorm submachine gun).
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves:
  • The driver who takes Lara towards the Prophet's tomb in Syria probably didn't expect to get gunned down by Trinity after he agreed to sell her out to them.
  • Arguably, Ana. Considering her betrayal was much more personal, there's likely not a lot of tears lost from Lara or the player when she gets sniped in the Stinger.
• Riddle for the Ages: It's never revealed what exactly the Divine Source is or where it came from.^note Although during a conversation with Lara, Jacob makes a point to theorize that its origin may have in fact, been anything but divine...
• Ripped from the Headlines: At the time the game came out, Syria was full of extremists who were looting and destroying historical sites, so Trinity's blowing up the Prophet's tomb would not have looked out of place.
• Rock Beats Laser:
  • The Remnant puts up a pretty good fight against heavily-armed Trinity forces with air support, even managing to down one of their attack helicopters with nothing more than Soviet-era small arms and a Rain of Arrows.
  • The Deathless Army manages to annihilate the Trinity forces they encounter with nothing more than Byzantine-era arms and armor. And fire. Lots and lots of Greek fire.
  • And by the end of the game, Fire Rock Beats Helicopter. With some ignition from a gun, though.
• Rogue Agent: Ana and Konstantin, to a degree. Though the whole operation is Trinity's show, they have no intention of simply surrendering the Divine Source to their bosses.
• Scaling the Summit: We first find Lara on an expedition climbing some Siberian mountains to reach a lost city she thinks is beyond them.
• Schizo Tech: The Remnant's technological level is all over the place, using arrows and guns interchangeably, communicating over radio and by carrier birds. Explained by the fact that a lot of their more impressive technology is either scavenged Soviet gear or relics of Kitezh, neither of which they have the knowledge or resources to replicate.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The Deathless Army of the Prophet, who have been guarding Kitezh and the Divine Source for centuries. The Remnant dare not venture into the city ruins because of them, and the Trinity forces who encounter them are butchered almost effortlessly.
• Ship Sinking: Supporters of the S.S. Endurance from the previous game are not pleased with the absence of Sam - despite that game ending with Lara doing Bridal Carry of Sam. To add insult to injury, Sam got quite unceremoniously removed from the continuity in the Interquel comics series from 2014, created ostensibly to sink said ship and straighten certain things out.
• Shout-Out:
  • Lara can find an old wooden game in the abandoned Soviet base, with some familiar-looking loose tiles^note Also doubles as a Genius Bonus if you know that Tetris was created by a Russian programmer, who in turn based it on a much older board game. It's not too far-fetched to accept that, In-Universe at least, the game Lara finds in the gulag might actually be the inspiration for Tetris as we know it today.
  Lara: These pieces look familiar...I know I've seen something like this before...

• In the Blood Ties DLC, the postal code of Croft Manor is AL 9 5NQ. While this is a Surrey post contradicts the game's claim that the house is in Guildford—being a Surrey postcode—this is actually the postcode of the real-life Hatfield House, which served as the exterior of Croft Manor in the original films.

• Shown Their Work: While the game still retains an upgrade system completely detached from reality, a mention should be still made about the revolver model used. It's heavily based on the Nagant M1910, a gun extremely popular in Russia since late Tzar era, especially in frontier parts and produced from 1910 until the 1950s, making it the most likely revolver to be found in a former Soviet installation. And one of the few revolvers that can actually be equipped with a suppressor due to its unusual gas system. The revolver is also famously having a cylinder with seven chambers in it, a feature included in the game.

• The Siege: Kitezh suffered one of these after a Trinity operative led a Mongol horde to its location. The Mongols, expecting a swift sacking, were quickly bogged down by the Deathless Ones and were finally repulsed after the Deathless turned their siege engines on the nearby glacier, burying the city.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Baba Yaga's costume, which Lara can wear after beating the DLC, has a prominent wolf skull for a headpiece, and talons attached to the fingers.
• So What Do We Do Now?: The Playable Epilogue has Lara and Sofia wonder about this. Overheard conversations reveals that many of the Remnant villagers are leaving the village since with Jacob and the Divine Source gone, their entire purpose has been lost.
• Sociopathic Soldier: An audio recording by a Trinity soldier recounts how he, not satisfied with slaughtering the natives, murdered a technician from another squad to slake his bloodlust, only to be forgiven by Konstantin.
• Sole Survivor: Ana is the sole survivor of the Trinity force tasked with retrieving the Divine Source. She doesn't survive for long, though.
• Spiritual Antithesis: To Tomb Raider Chronicles. Anyone remember this exchange?
  Winston: I'm sure Ms. Croft would be the first to apologize for her not entirely courteous behavior regarding some of the more delicate religious artifacts, Father Patrick.
  Father Patrick: No need, my friend, all in a good cause. At least we knew they were in secure hands, and fortunately, the church was above sending a bullet-proof envoy to retrieve them.
• Still Wearing the Old Colors: The Deathless Army, still wearing centuries-old Byzantine armor, towing around ballistae and operating trebuchets, and marching into battle beneath their old battle standards.
• The Stinger: After the credits, Lara confronts Ana about her father's death. Ana says that Trinity was responsible for Richard Croft's death, but it wasn't by her hand. A sniper kills her before she can reveal any more, and then the sniper is ordered to let Lara go for now by an unknown party.
• Storming the Castle: Both Lara and the Deathless Army attack the Trinity-occupied Chamber of Souls at the end of the game in order to reach the Divine Source.
• Super Drowning Skills: Prior to getting the rebreather, Lara can only hold her breath for about 20 seconds, which is pretty substandard for someone of her athleticism.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: The rebreather allows Lara to remain underwater indefinitely. You get it fairly late in the game, though, so you'll still have to hold your breath for earlier underwater tombs and segments.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome:
  • Turns out nobody believed Lara and the other survivors experiences on Yamatai, which included fighting undead samurai and an ancient storm goddess. However, this is mainly due to Trinity doing everything in its power to discredit Lara and the others, from a smear campaign to destroying all the evidence of Himiko, her multiple bodies, tombs and remaining undead Stormguard and cult members on Yamatai. If they hadn't, Lara and the others would have easily proven their claims to the world.
  • The Remnant are forced to fight with bow and arrow as being isolated from all civilization prevents them from getting their hands on more modern weapons. What few guns and modern tools they have were scavenged from an old abandoned Soviet facility and those are worn down after decades of use. On top of that, various characters mention the quickly dwindling supply of ammunition and various specialised objects under the sudden pressure of Trinity soldiers.
  • Konstantin throws wave after wave of what he considers expendable soldiers at Lara, the Remnant, and anything else that gets in his way. By the time they finally get the Divine Source, there's barely anyone left at the site to protect the one remaining Trinity officer holding it, and nobody left to fight the horde of angry, frothing soldiers surrounding them. Lara steals it easily.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
  • The Deathless Army to the Storm Guard from the first game.
  • The Remnant (strongly religious natives of a hidden, mysterious location, using a combination of primitive tools and scavenged modern technology) and Trinity (ruthless religious fanatics under the command of an evil blonde guy) have both inherited different traits of the Solarii, though neither is a perfect match. ^note The Remnant are sane and even friendly, just a bit suspicious of outsiders, as opposed to the Solarii's Ax-Crazy ways; Trinity is high-tech and well-organised, as opposed to the Solarii being a ragged bunch of desperate survivors.
• Take Your Time: The whole game is basically a race against time with Lara and her allies desperately trying to reach the Divine Source before Trinity does. The final levels in particular make very sure to emphasize this fact in several radio calls to Lara. There's still nothing stopping her from fast-travelling all the way back to previous areas for some looting, scavenging, level-grinding or plain old shopping. The bad guys will patiently wait until she returns to kick their butts some more.
• Tap on the Head: Lara gets knocked out by taking a rifle-butt to the face, and wakes up without so much as a minor bruise.
• A Taste of Power: Lara has a semi-auto pistol with infinite ammo in the Syria level, which she doesn't keep once you procede to Siberia. The semi-auto pistol is not the handgun you get first and is eventually reacquired a few hours later^note One part in Siberian Wilderness and the three others in Soviet Installation (one is locked behind completion of a sidequest), and infinite ammo were a unique gimmick specific to the Syrian dungeon.
• Technicolor Fire: Greek Fire burns blue, and continues burning for a long time with no fuel.
• There Are No Therapists:
  • Averted in the first trailer, at least; Lara goes to visit a shrink in an attempt to get over the trauma of what happened to her on Yamatai. Whether or not the therapy is successful is another matter that we'll have to discover.
  • Also in the game itself. Among the documents are recordings of several of Lara's sessions with her therapist.
  • Ultimately subverted, because the therapy was a ploy by Trinity to push Lara into uncovering her father's secrets, rather than being actual therapy.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Nothing's stopping you from hunting cute defenseless animals like rabbits with explosive arrows or rifle grenades. You actually unlock an achievement in case you stoop so low: "Was That Really Necessary?"
• This Is Gonna Suck: Lara's face all but screams this when she's about to sneak up on Ana in the Cathedral, only to suddenly be surrounded by approaching Trinity forces and realize she has no choice but to take Ana hostage if she wants to survive the next ten seconds.
• Too Dumb to Live: Jonah, twice. The first time he could have kept Trinity from getting the Atlas by just dropping the thing as he was being lifted out of the observatory. Second, he felt like he couldn't kill Konstantin after taking his gun away from him because he felt wrong about killing an unarmed man. Except Konstantin very clearly had a knife on him, which he then uses to stab Jonah with.
• Took a Shortcut: It takes quite a bit of effort for Lara to arrive at the platform to Baba Yaga's lift. Nadia, on the other hand, just shows up there once you manage to make it.
• Trick Arrow: Given how bows are Lara's signature weapons in this continuity, this shouldn't come as a surprise. Most of them, like rope arrows and fire arrows, return from the previous game, the latter of which can be upgraded to napalm arrows and/or Greek Fire arrows. Additional fun can be had with grenade arrows (upgradable to cluster grenade arrows) and poison arrows. A special bow exclusive to the Baba Yaga DLC changes the latter's function from killing anything smaller than a bear to making humans attack everything in sight, including their buddies. Armor-piercing arrows are automatically acquired near the end of the game, but they merely add more penetrative power to Lara's regular bow shots instead of constituting a separate piece of equipment like the other types do.
• 20 Bear Asses: Lara will need to collect a large number of feathers, antlers, sprockets, hides, and so forth to fully upgrade her weapons and equipment - including from a few actual bears. Although this can take a while, spawns are common, and animals you hunt will always have at least one appropriate hide or other applicable part.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: It doesn't matter how many Trinity Elite Mooks you kill, Lara won't get her hands on modern firearms until the second half of the game, and the first example of each weapon category always requires a specific story-related cutscene to unlock. Everything beyond that must either be assembled from parts scavenged from all over the game world, or purchased at the supply shack. The only things you can loot from dead enemies are ammo, crafting materials and walkie-talkies^note can be turned into proximity mines with a specific skill.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The chickens running around the Remnant village can be caught and tossed into their pen to complete a challenge. They can also be tossed down the village well, for 10 XP apiece! (Hilariously, there's a split-second delay between tossing a chicken into the well and the "+10 XP" award appearing on your screen- accounting for the time it took the fowl to plummet to its death.) If you throw one chicken at another, this kills the target chicken.
• Viewers Are Goldfish: The game will incessantly remind you how to do things you've done a thousand times like craft arrows, heal yourself, what magnesite ore is, etc. Over and over again. There's no way to turn it off, either. Obviously because you'd just turn it off by accident and then complain the game is too hard or something, you moron.
• Villain Ball: Konstantin torturing Jonah for answers. Problem is he literally just got the location for the Divine Source a minute before. He also knows Lara is still alive, and that the Deathless Ones are causing problems for his men as well. He literally had no reason to keep Jonah alive at that point.
• Waif-Fu: Subverted. Given weapons and room to maneuver, Lara can go through Trinity mooks like tissue paper. Unarmed and at close range, though, the Trinity agent who breaks into her father's study becomes a real threat - because under those conditions, being so much shorter and lighter than your opponent is a serious problem. ^note She still manages to put up a serious fight, but again this is by grabbing improvised weapons and using dirty tricks to the extent that the situation allows.
• Warp Whistle: Lara can Fast Travel between campsites that she has discovered.
• We All Die Someday: One of the villains is looking for the Divine Source specifically so she can cure her own terminal illness. When she finally has the treasure in her hands, Lara tries to convince her to give it back by arguing that death is inevitable.
• We Have Reserves:
  • The attitude Konstantin takes towards his forces, sending wave after wave against Lara, the Remnant, and the Deathless Ones. Subverted in that they do actually not have reserves, and are suffering from severe manpower shortages by the end of the game.
  • Earlier in the game, a Trinity officer objects to going down into the Lost Archives without additional reinforcements after Lara massacred their rearguard, but Ana countermands him saying they're spread too thin in the valley.
• Wham Episode: Lara is captured by Trinity while trying to sneak into an abandoned gulag and awakens to find herself handcuffed and sitting across from Ana, who was apparently kidnapped. Konstantin comes in and starts choking her with a garrote wire, demanding Lara to tell him where the Divine Source is. When she says she doesn't know, Konstantin lets Ana go... and uncuffs her, revealing that Ana has been working for Trinity all along.
  Ana: That's enough. She doesn't know.
• Who Wants to Live Forever?: Jacob, who longs to be released from centuries of guilt over the thousands who died as a result of his good intentions. The Deathless aren't as willing, but they're too far gone to think about anything but defending their city and killing anything that moves.
• You Have Researched Breathing:
  • Just like in the last game, Lara must earn and spend a skill point to retrieve arrows from dead enemies and animals. This time, however, it only works some of the time.
  • Likewise, she requires skill points to "master" Dual Wielding both ice axes in combat, despite the fact she carries two with her everywhere as a means of scaling craggy rocks.
  • Lara needs the Crafting Tool to get the Wrapped Magazine upgrade for the assault rifles. Visually, all it does is adding strips of leather around the magazine. Worse, the assault rifles upgrade Taped Double Magazines requires the Enhancement Tool (Crafting Tool Level 2), just to be able to, well, stick two magazines together with some duct tape.
• You Killed My Father:
  • Lara's beef with Trinity.
  • Averted with Ana, though, as she truly loved Richard and couldn't bring herself to kill him.
• You Shall Not Pass!: The name of a chapter, actually, wherein the Deathless Army tries to stop Lara from reaching the Chamber of Souls.
• You Shouldn't Know This Already: Zigzagged. Survival Caches can be spotted and dug up without finding the respective Survivalist Satchel that marks them on the map beforehand. Ancient Coins, however, can only be salvaged after their monolith has been found and translated, even if you know the coins' hiding place from a guide or a previous game.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Upon entering the optional Ancient Tomb in the Soviet Installation, the shrine is right out in the open in front of you. You just have to jump off a board onto the climbable wall... until the wall breaks up and sends you back down to the water beneath, forcing you to find another way up there.

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