Rise Of The Tomb Raider DLC Revealed

Some of the long-term DLC for Crystal Dynamics Rise of the Tomb Raider have been revealed. The game will have three major expansions released over the course of the next year, and it reveals a little bit of something about the game regarding “competing” with friends.

Over on the Xbox store the season pass details what the game will come bundled with, which includes three major expansions for Rise of the Tomb Raider. The first is called the Endurance Mode, which is about surviving in extreme conditions. I do wonder if this is a focus on the game's eating and survival aspects? It was one of the more underutilized aspects of the first game, where Lara rarely had to actually hunt animals to eat – it would be interesting to see if they focus on that aspect as well as the weather conditions for this Endurance Mode.

The second major expansion is Baba Yaga: The Temple of the Witch, which will see Lara exploring a new tomb with all new challenges to overcome. One of the biggest complaints about the first game – or rather, the reboot that released back in 2013 – was that Lara didn't get to raid enough tombs. In the original Tomb Raider games it was literally all about raiding tombs. Just lots and lots of tombs to raid and dealing with plenty of traps, puzzles and even dinosaurs and tigers to battle.

The third major expansion will be the the Cold Darkness Awakened. This expansion is about combating waves of infected creatures, or rather “infected predators”. These predators aren't really detailed as to what they do or how they go about doing what they do, but I assume this is like a zombie survival mode where players will utilize Lara's skills and weapon arsenal to take down the infected. This mode actually sounds like it would be really cool if it were designed with co-op in mind.

But speaking of multiplayer... while it's been made known that Rise of the Tomb Raider is a single-player adventure the season pass bundle appears to indicate that there are multiplayer competitive aspects. The first part of the season pass description reads...

So what does that mean? Competing with friends? Do they mean leaderboards? If so why not just say leaderboards? Or do they mean some sort of asymmetrical competitive multiplayer where maybe you're earning or unlocking new content and competing with friends when it comes to achievements and unlockables, perhaps? That seems redundant, however, given that Xbox Live already tracks those stats and in a way offers players that kind of meta-competition with things like the Xbox app and the Xbox Live friend activity feed.

It's an interesting bit of wording for sure and I imagine we'll learn more as the game draws closer to release.

Back in early September it was reported by sites like Forbes that Crystal Dynamics had opted to axe the competitive multiplayer mode that was present in the Tomb Raider reboot to focus more on the single-player portion of the game. However, maybe that's in relation to a full fledged multiplayer mode and not necessarily something like a horde mode or a co-op mode where you work with a friend or two to fight off wave after wave of enemies? We'll find out soon enough when Rise of the Tomb Raider launches on November 10th.