Overview
Shadow of the Tomb Raider, released on September 14, 2018, closes out the rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy that began with Crystal Dynamics' 2013 entry. Eidos Montréal takes the helm here, shifting the tone darker and leaning harder into the idea of Lara as a hunter rather than a survivor. The story picks up two months after Rise of the Tomb Raider, with Lara and her companion Jonah Maiava tracking the paramilitary organization Trinity into Mexico, where a single impulsive decision sets a Mayan apocalypse into motion.
The narrative is the most morally complex the series has attempted. Lara triggers the very catastrophe she's trying to prevent, and the game doesn't let her off the hook for it. Pedro Dominguez, the head of Trinity's High Council, operates as an antagonist with genuine motivation rather than generic villainy. The hidden city of Paititi serves as the story's centerpiece, a living community with its own politics, religion, and history that Lara has to navigate carefully rather than bulldoze through.
Gameplay and mechanics
Shadow of the Tomb Raider makes stealth its strongest selling point, a notable shift from the combat-forward design of its predecessors. Key mechanics include:
- Mud camouflage for blending into environments
- Underwater stealth kills and traversal
- Canopy traversal for vertical ambushes
- Skill tree progression across Seeker, Scavenger, and Warrior paths
- Difficulty sliders for combat, exploration, and puzzles independently
The independent difficulty sliders are genuinely useful. Players who want brutal puzzle challenges without frustrating combat can tune the experience precisely. Tombs are the best they've been in the trilogy, with several challenge tombs requiring sustained environmental thinking rather than simple switch-hunting.
World and setting
Paititi is the game's most ambitious environment. It's a fully populated hidden city built into Peruvian jungle cliffs, and it functions more like a hub world than a simple backdrop. Residents have schedules, conversations, and opinions about the cult controlling their city. The contrast between Paititi's warm community life and the encroaching Trinity forces gives the setting genuine weight.
The jungle environments outside Paititi are dense and deliberately claustrophobic. Cozumel's opening sequence, set during a Day of the Dead festival before a tsunami hits, remains one of the more striking openings in the series. The shift from Mexican coastal town to Peruvian rainforest to underground temple complexes keeps the geography varied across the campaign's roughly 15-hour runtime.
Content and replayability
The base game ships with a substantial amount of optional content. Challenge tombs, crypts, side missions tied to Paititi's residents, and collectible documents flesh out the world beyond the critical path. The game received seven story DLC packs post-launch, each adding a new challenge tomb and expanding on side characters from the main campaign.
New Game Plus carries over skills and equipment, and the separate difficulty sliders mean repeat playthroughs can feel meaningfully different. Players chasing completionist runs will find the tomb raiding content alone worth a second pass, particularly the later challenge tombs that demand more creative use of Lara's traversal tools. The game is available on Windows, Xbox, PlayStation, macOS, Steam, and Epic Games Store.
