Uncharted Territory

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Crispy Gamer: Did you also motion-capture a champion target shooter? Or champion puzzle solver?

Lindstrom: Actually, Heidi is also a stuntwoman, but we did bring in another stuntwoman to do the gunplay and the kicks.

Crispy Gamer: One thing about this game that's gotten a lot of attention is the decision to change Lara's look. She's not wearing her usual aquamarine tank top and tan shorts, and she's ditched the braid for a ponytail. Why did you decide to make these changes?

Lindstrom: Well, what does the braid mean to you?

Crispy Gamer: I don't know, maybe she just wanted a change. I mean, it's not like she ever hit anybody with it.

Lindstrom: Yeah, yeah. What's interesting is that nothing about this game has attracted more scrutiny than our decision to change her look. She's actually going to have a number of different outfits in the game.

Crispy Gamer: But why did you decide to change her basic outfit? I understand adding new ones, but why ditch the classic?

Lindstrom: Well, we feel that Lara's look is iconic, but that it transcends her poster image. She's not Mario where, if you take him out of his plumber outfit, do you still have Mario?

Crispy Gamer: No, you have Ron Jeremy.

Lindstrom: Ha! Right. But we don't feel that Lara is tied to a particular outfit, though she is tied to a particular style. It's kind of like with James Bond, he doesn't always wear the same black tuxedo, but he does always wear a tuxedo.

Crispy Gamer: Right. Did changing her hair from a braid to a ponytail add more time to the development of the game because you now had to figure out a new mechanic to make her new hairstyle move?

Lindstrom: That's interesting, I don't think I could give you a good answer based on my involvement in the last two games, though I know there's a fair amount of cloth tech utilized in the game.

Crispy Gamer: Is it weird working on a game where something as minute as a hairstyle change would become such big news that people would ask you about it in interviews?

Lindstrom: Well, it could be weirder. I look at the forum all the times, and the reaction to these decisions hasn't been unanimous. Some people like the ponytail.

Crispy Gamer: Was it also weird to play Uncharted: Drake's Fortune and realize that it was kind of like Tomb Raider, if Lara was trigger-happy and a dude?

Lindstrom: That was actually my concern going in to that game, but when I played through it, it wasn't very long before that feeling went away. It's a very good game, it's just a completely different genre. It was mostly Gears of War on an island.

Crispy Gamer: Are there any plans to add some multiplayer modes to the game?

Lindstrom: Nope.

Crispy Gamer: How come?

Lindstrom: Well, there are a lot of reasons. The biggest, and most obvious, is that Lara's a solo operator. Nobody's as good as her, nobody can follow her, so the idea that she'd need someone to, say, give her a boost up to a ledge doesn't fit.

Crispy Gamer: Have you guys ever even brainstormed what Tomb Raider multiplayer would be like?