The person in charge spoke as he switched on the conference room television and connected it to a PlayStation console.
"This is the kind of game whose exceptional quality can only be understood after you play it yourself. Try it personally, and you'll understand. Seeing once is worth hearing a hundred times."
Ken Kutaragi picked up the controller, his expression still stern.
Ten minutes later.
Ken Kutaragi's fingers moved swiftly and rhythmically across the buttons as Lara performed an exceptionally fluid sequence of running, jumping, and climbing motions on the screen.
He said nothing, but his eyes remained locked on the fully 3D environment, his pupils contracting slightly.
The intelligently tracking camera, the polygon collision detection precise to an outrageous degree, and the motion-captured movements so smooth they looked human.
Ken Kutaragi came from a low-level hardware technology background. He knew all too well that, under the capabilities of current 32-bit consoles, achieving such silky smoothness in a fully 3D sandbox action game required formidable foundational technical expertise and godlike code optimization.
This was absolutely not something some ordinary third-rate studio could have made!
This was a peerless jade gem buried beneath dust!
"Its gameplay is incredibly pure and strikes straight at the pain point." The person in charge gave his explanation at just the right time. "Players don't need to understand complicated stories or systems. Buy it home, insert the disc, and immediately get the finest 3D action experience. It perfectly fills the psychological void players feel after finishing heavy RPGs like Final Fantasy VII."
Ken Kutaragi drew a deep breath, put down the controller, and turned around, his gaze sharpening.
"How is Eidos's financial situation right now?"
"Extremely bad," the person in charge answered truthfully. "Several games they published before this all flopped. Tomb Raider is practically the