"I’m not sure if you noticed it, but Dark And Darker Gold one thing that didn’t work out in Rise: if you were playing stealth and you got spotted, you were spotted, you were being shot at," says lead level designer Arne Oehme. "In Shadow, you can disappear again ... giving the player the power to re-engage with stealth if he or she desires to do so." 

Guards will be more aware of their surroundings, too. They interact with one another more, meaning they’ll notice if a guard you’ve taken down doesn’t respond on the radio. As enemies become more afraid of Lara, they’ll make mistakes. 

"They’re reacting," says gameplay director Vincent Monnier, "they’re talking to each other. And so these dynamics—being able to understand their fear and how their level of fear is evolving while you are actually manipulating them, that’s a pretty cool thing."

Another key part of Shadow is the jungle—it’s both an environment Lara will be fighting in, but also a manifestation of her state of mind. "There’s so many adjectives that people think of when they think of the jungle," says Dozois. 

"It’s alive but it’s also death. It’s dangerous but it’s also beautiful ... it’s all these things. Lara is being hyper-focused to the borderline of obsession in there … She’s becoming the environment, she’s becoming what the jungle can be in all its full array."

I see just a sliver of this mindset in the demo. For the most part, combat feels similar to the previous games. It’s been a couple of years since I played Rise of the Tomb Raider, but I quickly fall into Dark And Darker Gold for sale old habits—throwing bottles to attract a guard’s attention, or running in to bring down more heavily armoured enemies with the shotgun.