As reported in rumor form last week, there will be an NVIDIA bundle for Rise of the Tomb Raider's imminent PC release.
This has been confirmed via email, as you can see in the screenshots below. The game will be included in the new NVIDIA bundle if you buy one of the following cards (at select retailers) from January 7th, 2016 to February 23, 2016: GTX 970, GTX 980, GTX 980Ti and laptops with GTX 970M or above.
This is a little unusual. Tomb Raider, just like other Square Enix titles, has traditionally partnered with NVIDIA's arch rival - AMD.
In fact, the game implements the latest version of AMD's Tress FX technology for Lara Croft's hair. Here's an excerpt of Game Director Brian Norton talking about it:
We definitely believe the hair technology we developed with AMD was a foundation for the way we believe hair will be rendered in the future video game graphics. And, as pioneers of this - there’s not many people to look at for reference other than films - we have been pushing that technology to find ways to make it even better. And we have been developing techniques to allow us to have more hair but less physics. The hair is now in clusters, so the way hair naturally falls is that hair wants to be next to a adjacent hairs that create shapes. Now, the hair splines can follow these guide hairs and these formerly physics-grown hairs, so it feels a little bit more natural when it moves. That’s one of the evolutions, and in water we now have the “zero-gravity” effect; so, when she goes underwater, her hair will float and it’s important - when it comes out of the water - it will feel heavier and feel more clumped and obviously look wet and darker, so all these things, including snow and the snow accumulated in the hair, that we’ve been incorporating into our technology.
This is an entirely separate deal for marketing, then, and we shouldn't expect something like NVIDIA's GameWorks suddenly being added to the game at the last minute.
Rise of the Tomb Raider has been confirmed for a Steam release at some point in January. Creative Director Noah Hughes also recently spoke about the gameplay variety the studio added to this new entry in the franchise.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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