It's rare that a game as old as the venerable Tomb Raider gets an update, and you'd think it'd be cause for celebration. Not necessarily so with the newest patch that came to Tomb Raider I-III Remastered last Thursday, which came bearing a new challenge mode and 10 new outfits that, well, just have a look for yourself:
As fans and customers we can't accept this level of quality from r/TombRaider
They're certainly rough around the edges, and the user reviews on Steam have not taken kindly to the free update. A review from Steam user Engram reads, "The new update broke the audio, broke a ton of visuals, broke the enemy AI, added what appears to be low-quality AI slop into the game and deleted all of my saves." Another post from user Harry DuN'wah, who has nearly 200 hours sunk into the remaster, states "Keep AI out of Tomb Raider, Lara deserves better than this."
I can't strictly confirm if generative AI was used in the creation of the new assets, but PC Gamer has reached out for comment. Giovanni Lucca, the original lead artist on the remaster, posted about the update on X, saying "I was not involved in the art direction of this new patch with the Challenge Mode for Tomb Raider I-II-III Remastered. None of the original developers at Saber was involved in it."
Two days later, he reposted a video showing the new outfits (which called the patch a "monstrosity") with a clown emoji. That said, some of Lucca's other posts just below those two are spent lamenting "activists and their woke shit," so maybe take his particular brand of outrage with a grain of salt.
Still, it's clear the patch is turning heads for all the wrong reasons. Concerns over AI usage are not new for Aspyr's Tomb Raider remasters, as just last September a slew of "unauthorized" AI voice lines had to be patched out.
