Tomb Raider reboot once featured horse-riding, colossi, flamethrowers, a companion

Games go through countless changes before the developers settle on a particular style, setting and feature-set - for instance, BioShock was initially a game about a cult deprogrammer, while Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2005 was originally a knockabout karting game starring Jack Nicklaus and Rory McIlroy and Donkey Kong. The recent Tomb Raider reboot is no exception. In an alternate universe, we're playing a game featuring horse-riding, a child companion, oh and giant colossi that burst out of the Earth. Yep - Tomb Raider was originally Shadow of the Colossus 2, as revealed in the game's Making Of thing .

Other titbits: the game was originally subtitled Tomb Raider: Ascension, before Kratos from God of War sent Crystal Dynamics a very angry cease-and-desist letter attached to a wriggling Gorgon head. Maybe. There were also flamethrowers, more open environments, and a giant untextured carrot lurking menacingly behind a little girl. Here is proof of that awful thing:

You'll find all this and more in the video below, and in this thread over on NeoGAF. As for the Tomb Raider we eventually got, be sure to check out our review .

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.