LARA CROFT RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER SERIES

I think there is a natural point in creative content where it might make sense to do a reboot, and I think the longer you have these franchises go, the more it might make sense. There was Bond and Batman and some of these things. A lot of our inspiration came from film, been around a little bit longer and has done a few more franchise reboots. How do you feel about video game reboots in general? There have been so many of them lately. There was a lot of pressure to outdo ourselves, but in some ways it wasn’t quite as scary as rebooting a franchise. You really want to build on the success of the first one and make it an even better experience-any of the feedback you get you want to address, things like that. In the end, I was very happy it was relatively well-received. The reboot was probably bigger pressure, because we were doing something very different than people had seen from Tomb Raider and we’ve seen that go well with franchises and bad with franchises. I think each has its own flavor of pressure. It’s part of the aesthetic we’ve been building through the reboot.ĭid you feel more pressure working on the sequel or the original reboot? And as we take her to these hostile locations, dressing her appropriately for the situation becomes part of that. So anything from her dress to her proportionality was meant to ground her and place her in the world in a more believable way. At the outset of the reboot, an important part of humanizing her and making her character come through was really to ground her as a relatable human. We don’t think about it too much as we go.

How important was it to keep her from being needlessly over-sexualized?

I noticed in this game that she wears a parka in the cold instead of the sleeveless shirt she wore in the snow at the end of the last game. In the past, Lara has been something of a sexualized character. After the three-hour session, I talked with the game’s creative director, Noah Hughes, about Lara Croft, women in video games, and more. With the solid base Tomb Raider built and the many improvements that have been made since, Rise of the Tomb Raider is clearly going to be awesome, and it’s going to be huge. You climb trees, stealthily take down enemies with a well-placed arrow, then raid some tombs. This is an action-adventure game in the purest sense of the word. From ice climbing up the sides of a snowy mountain to coming face-to-face with a grizzly bear, to escaping from a burning building, there’s a lot to get the blood pumping. There have been many games where worlds crumble and crash around you in real time, including in Tomb Raider, but the scale here feels so much more intense. On the Xbox One, it’s one heck of a looker. I spent just under three hours with the new game, seeing what there was to see and marveling at the visual spectacle of the whole thing.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is bigger and bolder than its predecessor. Now, it finally feels like they’ve gotten into their groove. Crystal Dynamics has been working on the franchise since 2006, and the team has overseen some serious ups and downs for the character. In early November, developer Crystal Dynamics will release a sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, exclusively for the Xbox One and Xbox 360.

LARA CROFT RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER SERIES

It’s one of the biggest and most recognizable video game brands-and its star, Lara Croft, is even bigger (thanks in large part to Angelina Jolie’s portrayal in said not-so-stellar films.) In that time, the series has changed significantly, and in the past decade has undergone two reboots, most recently with the critically acclaimed Tomb Raider (2013), which has sold more than 8.5 million copies. In its nearly twenty years, the Tomb Raider franchise has seen ten games, a handful of spinoffs, a pair of less-than-stellar films, comic books, and even theme park rides.

Lara croft rise of the tomb raider