Cologne, GERMANY \u2013 Thirty years after bursting onto the video game scene, Lara Croft returns in a new Tomb Raider that plays up the pistol-wielding architect\u2019s \u201ccomplicated\u201d character.<\/p>\n
Taking on the most famous heroine in video game history is a \u201ctremendous responsibility\u201d, Raul Siqueira, director of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis said in an interview at the Gamescom video game convention in Cologne, Germany.<\/p>\n
Journalists and influencers were given a preview of the new game \u2013 a remake of the first Tomb Raider \u2013 that is scheduled for release on Feb 12.<\/p>\n
In the 20-minute gameplay sequence, Lara Croft \u2013 still in her famous blue top and brown shorts \u2013 explores an abandoned tomb in Greece, battling panthers and dodging giant swords falling from the ceiling.<\/p>\n
The British adventurer makes her acrobatic moves against a background of realistic graphics, complete with her trademark sarcastic quips.<\/p>\n
\u201cLara is a very complicated character with a lot of nuance. So yes, we\u2019ve adapted and changed some of the lines, but we didn\u2019t go as far to change the story,\u201d Siqueira said.<\/p>\n
Released in November 1996, the first Tomb Raider delighted a generation of players with its 3D graphics \u2013 cutting edge at the time \u2013 and its fearless heroine, who came to personify the entire games industry.<\/p>\n
Siqueira, 36, said it had a big impact on him personally.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were a lot of cool elements… the fact that Lara was a different protagonist, the first female protagonist of a game that I had ever played,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Lara may have beaten a path for more female heroines and encouraged young women around the world to pick up a controller, but in the early days, the publicity for the game leaned heavily on her shapeliness.<\/p>\n
With the market for video games now expanded well beyond the stereotype of adolescent boys, the team behind the new game says this time they are focusing on Lara as a strong character.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe way we\u2019re rebuilding Lara, we\u2019re trying to respect the fact that she\u2019s female and we\u2019re just trying to make her powerful, not as an object of sexual attraction,\u201d said the game\u2019s art director Arek Tomaszewski.<\/p>\n
Eight years after the last instalment Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and ahead of an all-new entry planned for 2028, Tomb Raider: Legacy Of Atlantis aims to revisit the original adventure \u201cthrough a modern lens\u201d, Siqueira said.<\/p>\n
Published by the video game division of Amazon, the game was developed jointly by US firm Crystal Dynamics and Polish studio Flying Wild Hog, both owned by the Swedish group Embracer.<\/p>\n
It took more than three years of work, including a complete rewrite of the script and Croft\u2019s dialogue, now voiced by British actress Alix Wilton Regan.<\/p>\n
The new game aims to draw a new audience to discover a title that has felt the passage of time.<\/p>\n
Gamers of 2026, accustomed to modern controls and graphics, would find it very difficult to play the original, Tomaszewski said.<\/p>\n
Created by British company Core Design, the Tomb Raider series lost its lustre as the quality of new editions declined over time.<\/p>\n
It was restarted from scratch in 2013 with a new trilogy dubbed Survivor, chronicling the adventures of a younger, less experienced Lara.<\/p>\n
The latest outing continues that story, Siqueira said. \u201cThe Lara that we saw in the Survivor trilogy is the Lara in Legacy Of Atlantis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe beginning of her career as a Tomb Raider was Survivor \u2013 that\u2019s how we show her first adventure\u2019s beginning, and this is her much later in life at the top of her game.\u201d AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cologne, GERMANY \u2013 Thirty years after bursting onto the video game scene, Lara Croft returns in a new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616156,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[61,60,80],"class_list":["post-616155","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616155","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616155"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616155\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616155"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616155"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616155"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}