Unearthing the truth.
The brush-up of Lara Croft’s classic adventures to pilfer tombs and shoot dinosaurs has mostly gone down well with fans—we even gave it a very respectable 78% in our Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered Review. Turns out it could’ve been even better if you brought it on the—checking my notes here—Epic Games Store. Wait, really?
As spotted by several players, the remaster appears to have two different versions—the one available on Steam/GOG, and the one available on the Epic Games Store (thanks, Eurogamer).
This was initially discovered by one Maciej Wyżgowski on YouTube, who posted a video sweetly titled: “Instead of the ceiling I have such a beautiful view”—their version of the Palace Midas level was missing its roof. This was then picked up by Twitter user kroft_k, which prompted a channel called Small Medipack to investigate.
In an ongoing thread documenting the differences, Small Medipack found that the Epic Games version has a whopping 21 photo mode poses, updated textures, better snowflakes, improved water—the whole nine yards.
They also shared a video from YouTuber the sog, who made a direct comparison in the game’s Greece levels. As you can see for yourself, the differences in lighting are pretty stark—with several areas having a completely changed atmosphere.
Players on the game’s official Discord also grew wise. As if to prove they weren’t just all hallucinating, one player even directly ported their Steam save over to Epic Games. Surely enough, phantom panels appeared where there were none before.
(Image credit: RedPanda, Tomb Raider Remastered 1-3 Discord.)
As if that isn’t enough, it turns out there’s an entire bonus stage missing from the Steam/GOG versions of the game: All Hallows. In the original game, you’d get to this stage by finding every secret in the game. The same is true here—unless you’re playing on Steam or GOG, that is.
The only downside to the Epic Games version of the remaster right now? Achievements are busted. That’s it. I’ve gone ahead and reached out to the game’s publisher Aspyr for comment, and I’ll update this article if I get a response—but this kind of thing isn’t unheard of. Delayed updates between platforms can happen for any number of reasons.
It’s just… you’re usually told what’s going on and why, and at the time of writing players have been left relatively in the dark without a skylight in sight to guide them.
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