Upon its release in 1996,
Tomb Raider was a huge critical and commercial success for developer
Core Design and publisher
Eidos Interactive. While Gard had been unwilling to populate the game with human enemies,
Tomb Raider II put a greater focus on combat with armed human opponents, alongside a greater variety of animal and supernatural enemies. This was also done in response to player complaints about a lack of combat in the original. While the higher combat meant there was more focus on action, Smith noted that the exploration that was a focus of the first game remained important. There were also more boss-like battles compared to the original, and the enemy AI was improved so they could pursue her onto raised platforms. Rather than starting over from scratch, the team used the same engine as the first game, focusing on tweaking and including new features such as climbing and wading. Adding in all the new elements, both graphical and gameplay-related, was described as challenging as the team wanted the game to be seen as its own game more than a sequel. Grenades were originally planned for the first game, but were not finished in time for release, so were not included in
Tomb Raider II. A notable leftover glitch from the first game was the "corner bug", with Boyd intentionally placed a health item in the game that could only be reached by using the glitch. A new level editor tool was designed so areas could be put together quickly, speeding up the level creation and allowing for quick detection of bugs. There was a greater variety of level environments created, including a number of outdoor areas. The in-game camera was also adjusted to correct awkward camera angles that could occur in the original.
Tomb Raider II was described as similar in length to the first game, but with more detailed environments and expanded gameplay elements. Atkinson attributed the inclusion of vehicles as his suggestion. Three proposed actions that did not make it into the final game were crawling through narrow spaces, swinging on ropes, and a "hand-over-hand" gymnastics move with an unspecified application. Planned sections riding a motorbike and a horse had to be cut. The game was to have ended with the dragon battle, but this was felt to be anticlimactic, so an epilogue level was added. Due to time constraints, the team set the epilogue in the existing Croft Manor level. Winston the Butler was intended to appear in this final level armed with a blunderbuss, though he would not actually attack the enemies. His appearance was cut due to time constraints. The final shower scene, with Lara breaking the fourth wall, was a response from Core Design to the notorious "
Nude Raider" fan patch. They similarly included a secret code that blew Lara up rather than its rumoured function of stripping Lara.
Audio McCree was allotted much more time to score the game than he was with the original
Tomb Raider, allowing him to not only write twice as many tunes, but also plan out ahead of time how his music would be used in the game and generally become more directly involved in the game's development. He worked on the game's music and sound with sound designer Matt Kemp. McCree enjoyed finding ways of arranging the main theme, with its simplicity making variations after the first game easy. One of the pieces he remembered fondly was "Venice"; describing it as "an exercise in stylistic writing", he wrote it to sound like a piece of
Baroque music such as
Antonio Vivaldi and
Johann Sebastian Bach, with the major challenge being to make the violins sound real. He spent three months working on the score for
Tomb Raider II. McCree and Kemp later called their work on the game stressful due to not knowing the space they had available, and needing to cut and rearrange the music and sound up to the last minute. The team considered incorporating interactive
MIDI sampling, but discarded the idea due to poor sound quality. While Lara's original voice actress
Shelley Blond was offered the chance to reprise her role, she was unable to do so due to other commitments, but she gave permission for her effort noises to be kept. Judith Gibbins became the new voice of Lara. Gibbins, who had worked in amateur dramatics, was recommended to audition by her brother Martin Gibbins who worked at Core Design. Her role in the game was kept a secret, though she did confide in her son. The secrecy was part of the marketing strategy that Eidos was employing to make Lara seem like a real person. Voice recording took place in London and lasted months due to the need to re-record due to frequent script changes. She would voice the character only once more in the following game. ==Release==