Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered developer Aspyr has confirmed it accidentally released two different versions of the game across Steam and the Epic Games Store, and changed what some deemed the better version back to the regular.
As reported by Eurogamer, players of the remastered trilogy noticed differences between versions and X/Twitter user @small_medpack posted a list of them online. The Epic Games Store version of the game included more poses in photo mode, higher quality textures and animations on the Nevada level, more realistic snowflakes, and more, though also had some broken achievements.
Surprising fans, Aspyr deemed this version the unfinished one and has updated it to match the intended version that was released on Steam. The enhancements mentioned above are therefore no longer available in the Epic Games Store version of the game.
“A development build with incomplete assets has been available for download on the Epic Games Store,” Aspyr said in a post on Steam. “Content in that Epic Games Store build contained some work-in-progress materials that do not represent our final quality expectations. We have corrected the build to match the live Steam version.”
Some fans are understandably confused by the mishap, and had expected the Steam version would receive the additional features rather than the Epic Games Store version losing them, but it also seemingly included other issues and incomplete assets beyond the broken achievements
“A development build that is superior to what we’ve got on Steam, not sure what to make of this mess,” said KeeperAdahn on Reddit. “They make it sound as if the Epic Games Store version is worse than the version we got? But from what I have seen on YouTube it looked much better,” added BenSlashes.
A bigger update is also coming though, presumably set to improve Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered across the board. “We currently are working on the first update, which we anticipate will launch in the next few weeks,” Aspyr said in the same post. “We appreciate your patience as we want to ensure that the quality is meeting the needs and expectations of our community.”
Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered arrived February 13 as an upgraded version of the original trilogy: Tomb Raider and The Unfinished Business expansion, Tomb Rader 2 and The Gold Mask expansion, and Tomb Raider 3 and The Lost Artifact Expansion.
Tomb Raider custodian Crystal Dynamics included a sensitivity warning in the collection for what it called “deeply harmful” racial and ethnic prejudices included, but said it didn’t remove them “in the hopes that we may acknowledge its harmful impact and learn from it”.
Its release was followed by the official reveal of protagonist Lara Croft’s redesign, which will presumably debut officially in Tomb Raider Next. The next mainline game in the franchise is currently being developed in Unreal Engine 5, with Amazon Games supporting Crystal Dynamics.
It will be the first new entry since 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which wrapped up a trilogy of games during the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One generation. That series reset Lara Croft’s origins in a grittier setting, but it’s unclear how Tomb Raider Next will fit into the equation.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
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