Tools for a better View

Look:

A very important feature. It enables the player to look freely around to get a better view of the area Lara is in and to see possible obstacles, access ways and challenges.

Press and hold look and then use the arrows to move Lara’s head around to see. TRLE has a very illogical up/down setting: to look upwards you must press down and to look down you must press up. This irritating setting is repeated in many situations: when Lara swims or is using the binocular or the lasersight. Look up these.

When you hold look Lara will turn somewhat transparent to give you a better view. You can turn and twist her as much as a normal human. Therefore you won’t be able to see anything behind her – only owls are able to turn their heads 180 degrees and Lara is not an owl (superhuman maybe, but not an owl). So you have to turn her around and resume the look mode to see the area behind her.

It’s possible to use the look mode in all situations: while Lara is running, jumping, crawling, swimming or shooting.

As soon as you press look the arrows will turn from motion controls into view controls. This means that Lara no longer moves, but only looks around. The other controls, however, still function as usual so Lara can still jump, duck, roll, draw or holster her guns and shoot while in look mode. She will also automatically aim at an enemy if she has her guns drawn (if automatic targeting is switched on in the options).

Three warnings:

- Time is still passing while looking, so enemies advance or underwater Lara’s remaining air is consumed while you look at the scenery.

- As soon as you let go of look the arrows resume their control of Lara’s movements. Be very careful if you stand at the edge of something while you are looking around. I got Lara killed scores of times because I let go of look while I still had my fingers on the arrows so Lara ran forwards and fell off the ledge. Therefore: in dangerous areas first let go of the arrows and then of look.

- Carrying the torch sometimes makes the look function work poorly. The program doesn’t always notice that you press look and in stead Lara runs on (off the ledge).

The look mode can be used to break a camera view. Often when Lara has activated a switch or inserted a puzzle item a camera shows the result of the action. Some level builders make the camera view last for as long as Lara stays on the block where she carried out the action – it gives the player plenty of time to study the new situation, but the drawback is that the player is blind concerning Lara and during the attempt to get her off the block again.

When you tap look your view automatically returns to Lara. Use this to end the above situation or in cases where you are on a timed run and want to use little time seeing the result of your actions and more time running.

The look mode can also reset the camera following Lara. In TRLE there seems to be a bug when Lara is climbing around corners on a climable wall. For some reason the camera sometimes gets stuck and shows the side of the wall where Lara previously was and meanwhile she has climbed around the corner(s) and out of view. To make the view catch up with Lara you stop climbing and tap look (if Lara is still hanging on the wall you keep holding action) and everything is back to normal.

Flares:

When you press use flare Lara will light a flare and thus light the area she is in - assuming she still has any flares left. When the flare is burned down she will throw it away. You can make her throw the still burning flare away by pressing use flare again. This way you can light an area ahead of Lara, say, a dark pit in front of her to see if it is too deep to jump into.

Lara is able to do just anything with the flare in her hand: climb, swim underwater, crawl and use objects. But if you make her draw her weapon(s), she will let go of the flare. Once the has sheathed her weapon(s) she is able to pick the flare up again if it is still alight.

There is one risky situation though. The throw-used-flare-away-animation gets first priority in most situations. So if the flare burns out while Lara is about to grab a ledge she will not grab the ledge in time and fall down (because she is too busy throwing the flare away). You can usually see when the flare is about to burn out because it flickers more heavily than before. If that is the case when you prepare for a jump and grab then make Lara throw the flare away by pressing use flare.

Look up “crawling” for how to use the flare while crawling.

The flare bug:

A dreaded bug among custom level builders and players. If you try to make Lara light a flare, but it doesn’t light while she is holding it and only lights up when she throws it away, you have encountered the flare bug. That means the program is on the verge of crashing. Normally this happens if there are too many lit flames in the level. Flares also count as lit flames.

Save immediately! And don’t light any more flares before the first one has burned out. Avoid lighting any flares if possible. And don’t use the binoculars – that is a sureproof way of crashing the game!

Binoculars:

I’m very fond of this feature. It saves a great deal of flares and is usable if you are out of them. It also gives a closer look at distant areas so you can see if is worth the bother to climb/descend to them.

But the binoculars are only usable when Lara stands or crouches perfectly still on land. Sadly they don’t work in water.

To select it you enter the inventory by pressing inventory. Then you rotate the menu one way or the other with left or right till you reach the binoculars. And then you simply select them by pressing action or enter.

But as mentioned Lara must be perfectly still when you enter the inventory. If that is not the case you’ll just find yourself back in normal mode when you select the binoculars.

Once you have entered the binoculars mode you get a view like this:

You use the arrows to control the scope. And as mentioned the up/down setting is illogical: to look upwards you must press down and to look downwards you must press up.

You can zoom in and out too. To zoom in you press crawl and to zoom out you press dash.

The binoculars also have night vision. If you press and hold action you get a much brighter (and much greener) view of the area you are looking at, but only as long as you hold action.

The same vision with night vision off (the upper picture) and on (the lower picture)

To leave the binoculars mode you press draw weapon.

Be aware that the left-right and up-down range is limited as a consequence of Lara’s limitations in agility just as for the look mode.

Additional trick:

Some camera views can’t be broken by pressing look or draw weapon. They are meant to be unbreakable to hide things the builder don’t want to show the player (a secret way or limitations of the level and its size) or to force the attention of the player in a certain direction. Some level builders also use it as an artistic feature to give some variation.

But sometimes this artistic feature is limiting the gameplay. I have played levels where it was almost impossible to control Lara because she disappeared out of the forced view and I had no idea what direction she was going in or how I could get her back into view.

The binoculars can help you out of such situations. Even though the overall view is forced by the builder you can use the binoculars to look around the area you are in right now. But as soon as you leave the binoculars mode the forced view takes over again, so the binoculars work only as a mean of guidance to find your way around.

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