Tomb Raider: Legend - Serpent Level bug, or why the lever will not work during the boss battle

Sep 02 2010

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	Tomb Raider: Legend - Serpent Level bug, or why the lever will not work during the boss battle

Solution This occurs because of a bug in the game, a replacement copy will not solve this issue as the bug is in all versions and all platforms. The only thing we can offer is information on how the bug is occuring, and how to avoid it.

The bug occurs due to two issues, a UK English meaning of the word tap and the nature of a Tomb Raider game. In the first level of the game the tutorial text says that if you "tap" a certain button to make the grapple hook grapple faster. The sense they were implying was "to press" and many people have infered this to mean "press-release-press-release-press-release....."

The bug itself was not found until after the game had recieved certification from most of the 1st party groups (Sony, Microsoft, ect.). This means this bug went through our internal QA process and the strict process of certification for all consoles without being discoverd. Thanks to a dedicated QA member,Â we were able to reproduce this bug in house so we could at least understand it when customer's encountered it.

As I said this bug usually occurs due to the nature of a Tomb Raider game, to that by its nature you are exploring a Tomb for the first time, and trying to get a feel for what everything is or what everything does. As with most Tomb Raiders if you can manipulate something, there is a sure bet that you will need to use it either now or later. In this case the room in which you fight the Serpent is passed through earlier in the level. As a normal Tomb Raider fan would, when you first enter this room and there are levers on the wall that you can activation, you are going to flip switches trying to figure out the what their purpose is or if there is a sequence to pull them in. The bug occurs a specific timing event. If you press the button to grapple the lever at the precise moment that the cage reaches the top of the cage, the lever becomes unselectable. As I said before the tutorial tells users to tap the button, so the most common occurance of this bug is due to that multiple tapping and the sheer random chance that they press the button at the same time the cage hits the roof. Also working against this bug, again is the nature of the series again. If you have "activated" this bug, and the lever is unselectable, as a long time fan of the series you simply assume what ever was needed is now done, and you continue the level progression. In reality, what you are doing is continueing to a save point, which saves the lever stats in the incorrect position. So now technical the save is corrupt, as you cannot reset the switch.

The only two "solutions" both include the terms "don't do that." The first involves restarting the game and when you get to the Serpent level don't use the lever until the serpent battle and make sure to only press the button once the cage has fully reset on the ceiling. The next solution would be to go back to a previous save where the lever had not been reset. In most cases people do not run with multiple saves, so their only option is to restart. It is a good lesson to learn as corruption can occur in any save file at any time. It is always good practice to back up your data.

That being said there is a 3rd work around, you can go to www.tombraiderchronicles.com and download the save file for the level right after the serpent. Unfortunatly this is only availble to PC users.

Article Details

Article ID:

557

Created On:

Jan 09 2007 12:26 PM