Hunting Demo

The Hunting Demo is the second demo of Tomb Raider (2013), first shown at E3 2012. There are multiple versions of this demo, varying in length. It always starts where the first demo, the Scavenger Den, leaves off, and usually continues up until the first Skill Point upgrade. There are versions that continue further on, up until Lara escapes the Scavengers.

Content

Lara starts out atop the cliff where she escaped the collapsing scavenger den. She makes her way along the coastline, spotting the life boat of the Endurance, across the old wreckage of a plane blocking her path and down ledge where she finds Sam's backpack. She continues down a slope and finds the first Base Camp, where she rests and tries to contact Conrad Roth. The next day she continues downhill and encounters the hanging body of a Dead Hunter. She manages to get his bow and sets out hunting for deer. (Thus "Hunting Demo".) She kills a deer, gets meat and returns to base camp. (The GamesCom 2012 publicly playable demo ends here.)

From here she continues through the door of a bunker like building, finds the Old Pry Tool which she uses to open a door that allows her to continue through the tunnels. After coming back up to the surface she finds Sam and Mathias and the situation soon escalates. (The publicly available E3 videos end here.)

Lara gets trapped in a bear trap and has to fight off wolves attacking her. She is found by some other survivors of the Endurance, among them Dr. Whitman, with whom she set off from the second base camp to find Sam. To open a gate she has to find Salvage to strengthen the old pry tool. Soon after entering the gate they are taken prisoners by the scavengers. Lara manages to escape and sneaks through the camp, but finally she is discovered by a Russian speaking scavenger she is forced to kill, the first human life she has taken. The demo ends with her picking up the gun again.

Gameplay

The Hunting Demo teaches the player how to use the bow and the Old Pry Tool, the basic weapon and tool in the game. Manual aiming the bow proves rather difficult and has to be practised. The player also learns about Base Camps, XP and Skill Points and how to enhance Lara's abilities to survive in the wilderness. For the first time Lara has to find Salvage.

Other concepts are revisited: Finding and using the torch to open new pathways.

Throughout the demo secrets can be found: Yamazaki's Journal, Japanese Noh Mask, and the book A Father Worries. Also Lara can find and shoot Totems in a kind of side quest called Ghost Hunter.