The New Tomb Raider Retrospective

 My hero

With the displacement of the Tomb Raider IP from the active producers over at Square Enix to the new question marked conglomerate known as 'Embracer Group', it's clear that for this series and its contemporaries, the state of the franchise will shift. Whether that means the games will go back into hibernation after this coming game that is still being worked on is anyone's guess, and I think that from this point forth buck really stops with guys over at Crystal Dynamics and whatever it is that they want to do in order to remain profitable. I mean, for all we know they could deep-six the the Tomb Raider franchise tomorrow and go all in on running Marvel's Avengers back out of the pit they left it in. It would be insane to do so, but it was equally as insane to put together Marvel's Avengers as they did and not expect it to crash and burn. (Maybe we can blame everything that went wrong on the exes, that's usually a sure bet.) But assuming nothing is certain about the future, because it isn't, we can at least smile upon the times we had so far.

This new revitalisation of Tomb Raider, coined 'The Survivor Timeline' has done a fantastic job of establishing Lara Croft as a modern day action game protagonist; such to the extent that new Lara has practically replaced her otherwise iconic older model in the current stretch of gamer knowledge. We recognise the human, battered, ponytailed duchess just as well as we used to recognise her green-topped, cargo pant-wearing, immune to weather, predecessor. (Let it never be forgotten that the very first time we see Lara in her iconic outfit in the very first game, it's at the top of an icy mountain absolutely draped in snow. And she has shorts on. As if.) Which speaks to the talent of Crystal Dynamics for identifying what made Lara a fun character to follow in the past and how that gameplay loop could be improved upon to totally overshadow the series of the past.

Nowadays Lara is spending a lot less time shooting dinosaurs in the face and tackling thousand year old Russian Atlanteans, she's a human woman suffering the wear and tear of surviving in the wild, duelling with the elements and playing the one girl army against a secretive nation of illumanti-esque treasure hunters. The wear-and-tear system wherein Lara's player model will become scratched and bruised as moves through the grand adventure is as much a part of the series now as the actual Tomb Raiding itself. As depicting the fragility of the human at the centre of the action seems to be a key thematic device the team keeps coming back to. Whether struggling with being a lone survivor of a terrible boat crash, coming to terms with the violence she has been forced to commit and continues to pursue in the name of a vengeance that might just take as much as it relieves, or learning to get over the guilt of triggering the end of the world and indirectly wiping out a small South American town- (Not sure if she deserves forgiveness for that last one, honestly.) there's a real heart in the character of these stories for the player to identify and connect to.

The Tomb Raider Remake from 2015 rehabilitated the almost Sonic-fication that the series was beginning to go through after the main line series of games lost their direct number designation. When Lara was beginning to show up in so many disparate projects that she was becoming more of an icon of a character rather than an individual character. (Not that she was ever much of a personality to begin with, 90's video game writing being what it was.) We were given a Lara in her late teens going through her first adventure with the promise that this would be the origin of the hero we'd come to know. It was a backhanded promise, because even then Crystal would have to have known they were actually heading in a much more realistic direction and new Lara wasn't going to suddenly transform into an enigmatic, double pistol-wielding, psychopath trading bullets with mercenaries on skateboards overnight. (People tend to forget just how weird the original Tomb Raider was.)

Perhaps the most impressive new addition to the lore of the character was the inclusion, and utter image assimilation, of the bow; now existing as such an integral part of her new Lara that it's almost jarring to look back on the old box art of the original series and not see the string of a Recurve Bow strapped over her shoulder. The bow serves as a thematic device as much as a practical one, being indicative of a pre-automatic age which is representative of her lack of being prepared and outfitted with the gadgets that would achieve exactly what she'll need for the situation, demonstrating the amateur she currently is. All the while simultaneously being a versatile tool of the resourceful, representing adaptability and rugged, survivalist, tactics requiring ingenuity and rewarding struggle. It's the difference between someone having their dinner packed in their backpack and having to hunt it down and cook it with their hands in order to live; cutting to the heart of who new Lara is in comparison to old Lara.

Rise of the Tomb Raider ushered in some of the more time-honoured Tomb Raider plotpoints, like Lara's battle against the secretive 'Trinity' agency, as well as an embracing of the more globe-trotting elements of the series. Additionally, the games no longer had to pussy-foot around with the concept of mysticism within this new universe because that bottle had already been well and truly uncorked with the finale of the first game. Lara's famous daddy-issues became more prevalent too, with her family history finally entering into the picture, and I think it's around about this time that we got to really settle into this woman as a character rather than just the abstract of her struggle to survive; allowing the player in enough that they could actually come to care about what happens to Lara as her toils take a notable effect on her life. Oh, and Jonah became a main character instead of Samantha like I was initially expecting. (Kind of upset that Sam was totally sidelined given how important she was to the events of the first game.) But I guess this is a fine compromise too; everyone can get behind a bit of Jonah in their lives, I think.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the point at which Lara was supposed to ascend into the character she was in the old games, although as I said before Crystal probably knew well in advance they were heading a totally different direction tonally. Personally I think Shadow has some big pacing issues that offset the progression on the plot with sections of tedium and ill-placed flashback sequences. Also the over-reliance of Trinity as a plot point nestled back into the franchise far too quickly for my liking. Still, the gameplay was good enough that even the elements that had become somewhat stale after 3 decently similar outings didn't grate too heavily. The huge hub spaces of Shadow were a definite standout from anything the franchise had pulled off before. (Although the series had tried such scale before, with 'Angel of Darkness' if I recall rightly.) Visually it was undeniably stunning, and as such Shadow became something of an industry benchmark for graphical fidelity at the tail end of the last generation.

Right now we have a next gen Tomb Raider game in the works by Crystal Dynamics which was not initially disclosed when they first imagined their 3-part Tomb Raider narrative, implying that this could be the launching off point for the next part of Lara's life story. Or it could be a one off from Crystal Dynamics to stretch their muscles; the game hasn't even been officially announced yet so we can only speculate. Personally what I want from this new game is exactly how I wanted the last one to end; I want us to meet this universe's version of Natla and start that whole 'Atlantis' questline, only significantly spruced up in order to meet the standards of today's gaming narrative writing. I want it to push the boundaries of the big show stopper set pieces that has make this modern day series so exciting. (Like the plane engine run-away scene from 2015's Tomb Raider or the huge flood in 'Shadow') And last of all, for myself, can we have Lara end off in a slightly better mental space this time around? I shouldn't have to worry about the metal wellbeing of a fictional character so much; you made me care, Crystal, now you have to reap what you sow!