Tomb Raider 2013 has some insanely unique concept art that I want to talk about. But before I do, a couple of things to note. The first is that I am not showing all of the concept art here because the art book is in the game. Second, these works don’t feature any spoilers.

The first image I want to discuss involves this horse and Oni. From early concept art, we can see that the team experimented with the idea of Lara having a horse. Which would’ve changed the game significantly. For starters, a horse wouldn’t work well on the island we got, so the whole terrain would’ve had to be different.

The second image is this shot of Lara with a flamethrower. This shot has a different creature in it, plus a completely different environment from what we’ve seen. I adore this shot because it changes the tone of the game completely. Both of the shots together make Tomb Raider (2013) seem like more of a survival horror game with stronger paranormal themes. Which I would’ve loved.

The point of this tiny post, though, is to point out how different the games would’ve been with a horse and monsters. The whole island would’ve been different because the horse would’ve needed space to traverse. There would also have needed to be a section in the game with the sole purpose of getting Lara that horse. To follow up on that, the map design would’ve been different with just oni because these creatures seem to have needed a lot of space to jump and climb, and they each have a different body build. 

If you introduce these elements early, we likely would’ve seen more of the paranormal in Rise of the Tomb Raider. But I do think it would’ve made for a great introduction to the universe to include these elements.