Tomb Raider multiplayer team hoping to convince doubters

Tomb Raider multiplayer producer Joe Khoury is hoping that players give the online game a chance before they dismiss it completely.

Many fans were sceptical when it was announced that the upcoming Tomb Raider reboot would include multiplayer for the first time in the series.

Khoury says he understands that Tomb Raider fans are all about the single player campaign, but once they try out the multiplayer then hopefully they'll be hooked.

"All the fans of Tomb Raider are single players," Khoury told ArabicGamers. "So we want it to be fluid. We want the player to finish the campaign and then want to continue with the story either with Lara or with another character. How could I do that?

"So the answer is when you finish the game you can give multiplayer a crack, try it. That's the most important thing because if they try it, I am sure they are going to see how much depth there is in it, which is also very important.

"You can't expect people to say CoD is the same thing, it's the fans of single player that we hope will want to play more time with Lara, spend more time with Lara's shipmates from single player, and to also enter the multiplayer and the exploration and to feel that everything they've learnt from the single player can be used to their advantage in the multiplayer."

Khoury added that the aim of multiplayer was to create those personal experiences from player to player that only online gaming could offer.

"We don't expect to bring in hardcore gamers, of course we'd be more than happy if they did, but the most important thing is the fans of the franchise want to play Lara and want to spend more time with her in the single player and to explore the other characters in the multiplayer, and create what we call personal experiences from player to player.

"We would like players to create experiences between themselves and friends. This is important to us."

We'll be publishing the full video interview with Khouri on Thursday, as well as an important announcement for the Arabic audience.

There'll also be a hands-on multiplayer preview later this week, where we give our early verdict on how it plays out. In the mean time you can read up on our single player preview here.