Cologne, GERMANY – Thirty years after bursting onto the online game scene, Lara Croft returns in a brand new Tomb Raider that performs up the pistol-wielding architect’s “difficult” character.
Taking over probably the most well-known heroine in online game historical past is a “great duty”, Raul Siqueira, director of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis mentioned in an interview on the Gamescom online game conference in Cologne, Germany.
Journalists and influencers got a preview of the brand new recreation – a remake of the primary Tomb Raider – that’s scheduled for launch on Feb 12.
Within the 20-minute gameplay sequence, Lara Croft – nonetheless in her well-known blue prime and brown shorts – explores an deserted tomb in Greece, battling panthers and dodging large swords falling from the ceiling.
The British adventurer makes her acrobatic strikes in opposition to a background of lifelike graphics, full together with her trademark sarcastic quips.
“Lara is a really difficult character with numerous nuance. So sure, we’ve tailored and altered among the traces, however we didn’t go as far to vary the story,” Siqueira mentioned.
Launched in November 1996, the primary Tomb Raider delighted a technology of gamers with its 3D graphics – leading edge on the time – and its fearless heroine, who got here to personify the whole video games trade.
Siqueira, 36, mentioned it had a huge impact on him personally.
“There have been numerous cool components… the truth that Lara was a special protagonist, the primary feminine protagonist of a recreation that I had ever performed,” he mentioned.
Lara could have crushed a path for extra feminine heroines and inspired younger ladies around the globe to choose up a controller, however within the early days, the publicity for the sport leaned closely on her shapeliness.
With the marketplace for video video games now expanded nicely past the stereotype of adolescent boys, the workforce behind the brand new recreation says this time they’re specializing in Lara as a robust character.
“The best way we’re rebuilding Lara, we’re attempting to respect the truth that she’s feminine and we’re simply attempting to make her highly effective, not as an object of sexual attraction,” mentioned the sport’s artwork director Arek Tomaszewski.
Eight years after the final instalment Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and forward of an all-new entry deliberate for 2028, Tomb Raider: Legacy Of Atlantis goals to revisit the unique journey “by means of a contemporary lens”, Siqueira mentioned.
Printed by the online game division of Amazon, the sport was developed collectively by US agency Crystal Dynamics and Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, each owned by the Swedish group Embracer.
It took greater than three years of labor, together with an entire rewrite of the script and Croft’s dialogue, now voiced by British actress Alix Wilton Regan.
The brand new recreation goals to attract a brand new viewers to find a title that has felt the passage of time.
Players of 2026, accustomed to trendy controls and graphics, would discover it very tough to play the unique, Tomaszewski mentioned.
Created by British firm Core Design, the Tomb Raider collection misplaced its lustre as the standard of latest editions declined over time.
It was restarted from scratch in 2013 with a brand new trilogy dubbed Survivor, chronicling the adventures of a youthful, much less skilled Lara.
The most recent outing continues that story, Siqueira mentioned. “The Lara that we noticed within the Survivor trilogy is the Lara in Legacy Of Atlantis.
“The start of her profession as a Tomb Raider was Survivor – that’s how we present her first journey’s starting, and that is her a lot later in life on the prime of her recreation.” AFP