It’s 4 AM, cold and raining, and I'm jumping into my car and heading for the airport. In 3 hours time I should be almost there… Amsterdam!

Sure enough, tail winds push my arrival forwards and soon my rendezvous with a fellow team member (Gorio) has taken place, and we jump into a taxi heading for our destination… Pathé Arena: Tomb Raider: Underworld Press Conference.

Soon we are there and coffee is the order of the day as we wait for the rest of the press to arrive… and of course Kurtie and Andy too. (Where the hell are they?) Our questions are soon answered in the form of a text from one much stressed TombRaiderBOARD admin, who is in a traffic jam.

It would also seem that some press traveling from Belgium were in the same position, so more coffee? YES, PLEASE!

Finally everyone has arrived and with greetings and introductions over, we bustle into the theatre, ready to view Underworlds latest progress. Once Kurtie has decided which seat he wants to sit in, we all settle and the lights are dimmed.

Eric Lindstrom, Creative Director, is on hand to guide us through various regions of the game, whilst Adam Phillips, Associate Producer, expertly manoeuvres Lara on her course.

Eric tells us: “My last 3 years have been spent as a Creative Director… and I can tell you Tomb Raider has taken over my life. My wife used to say Lara was ‘the other woman’ in our relationship, but as time has passed she now says she feels like SHE is ‘the other woman’!”

I guess this tells us just how passionate about the game Eric really is.

He says: “Legend was my first Tomb Raider game and boy have I learned a lot since then! Our largest goal was to make a game which was fast paced; with no track… we wanted the gamer to decide how they wanted to engage their own experience.”

There then followed a demonstration of the mechanics of the game… Adam would perform an action and Eric would explain. The only time Eric faltered was when talking of Lara’s assets and attributes… but I think that’s because Adam, in control of Lara at the time, seemed to have a different view of what assets he was speaking of… which totally distracted Eric… if you know what I mean ;)

Once back on track, houselights go up and there’s an air of expectancy… are we going to get a visitor…? Yes!

She’s here…

Lara Croft, aka Alison Carroll, slinks into the theatre with poise and that infamous Croft attitude. She flips, she rolls, she twists, and poses… you almost want to hold your breath till she’s done. And as soon as she is, she’s gone! Wow!

Back in the theatre foyer we are served lunch and have some time to chat with Eric and Adam. We didn’t take a long list of questions to ask, but we did glean some more snippets of information for you.

As you all know Underworld is unlike Legend in the fact that is has fully explorable areas, whereas Legend was ‘pathed’. This gives the player a greater amount of freedom and a greater gaming experience. Being fully explorable means the length of time it takes you to complete the game will differ greatly from player to player.

For example: if you take the ‘perfect path’ in Thailand, it might take you 20 minutes to complete; but if you fully explore all the secret caves, it could take you anything up to 2 hours. Taking the ‘perfect path’ still makes the game play 2-3 times longer than Legend, and many, many times longer if you’re exploring!

The events in Underworld take place after Legend, and many questions which were previously unanswered will now have their time. That said, we are assured that you don’t have to have played the previous games to understand what's happening, so this game is set to please from the new to the veteran raider.

Eric also explains how pleased they are with the new ‘Player Tailoring’ feature: “If you’re having a hard time with a puzzle you can go to player tailoring and ask for a hint. You can also increase or decrease enemy health. So either way… if you want to go heavy on the kill or heavy on the puzzle elements of the game, ‘Player Tailoring’ enables you to have your own way.”

One other interesting fact we learned was there is no foreshadowing of any storylines.
There are plans for Lara’s future already, but Eric was tightly gagged on that one!

Alison has now had time to regain her poise and it’s time for a closer photo shoot and Alison turns on the Lara charms yet again.

More interviews follow and Adam, Eric and Alison are caught up in many rounds of questions fired from many directions. And still they keep smiling… well, all but Eric, who tells me he gave up smiling after too many wedding pictures. ;)

As you can see I got hold of one of Lara’s guns in one of the pictures, and it was SO heavy! I have no idea how she performs her routine in those boots, let alone the weight of the guns too… and a backpack… it’s OFFICIAL: this girl ROCKS!

All too soon it’s time to go and with goodie bags in hand, we leave our new found friends. The pace at which these guys have been traveling the globe promoting Underworld has been explosive, and I know they have lots more goodness in store for all the fans.

I hope you enjoy the pictures we took and soon we will have the edited videos for your pleasure too.

One thing I will take away from this event was how proud they all were of Underworld, not for themselves, but for the fans. They have listened and learned and worked so hard to deliver something to bring joy to millions of fans around the globe. And though it’s impossible to please 100% of the population 100% of the time… I feel sure they won’t be far off!