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It's hard to believe it's been 30 years since Lara Croft first somersaulted onto Sega Saturn in a game so good it's already been reworked twice. Well, after 2007's Tomb Raider Anniversary (ironically not its anniversary year) and 2024's Tomb Raider I-III Remastered, the icon is back this year in a fourth version of Lara's most iconic adventure. Scott Amos, Crystal Dynamics' head of studio, and the studio's game director, Will Kerslake, sat down to talk to us about the new reimagining of the iconic Tomb Raider.
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is being developed in tandem with Lara's newest adventure, Tomb Raider Catalyst (due next year). While under the supervision of a core creative team, notably each game will be tackled by a separate game studio. Flying Wild Hog is handling this remake, with Crystal Dynamics focusing on 2027's all-new adventure. Amos says this new setup means shared tech and assets between the teams, which are both working with Unreal Engine 5.
Our heroine will be voiced by Alex Wilton Regan, who played Samantha Traynor in Mass Effect 3 and Aya in Assassin's Creed Origins among other prominent gaming roles. She's voicing both new games, so continuity should be a cinch. "From the very beginning, Alex got what we were trying to do; bring all the confidence of the character forward, but continue to push on the emotional depth that we need for modern storytelling," says Kerslake. "[She's] been enthusiastic and excited about it the whole time, which has been great."
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With no original core design members working on the remake, longtime fans will be wondering just how close to 1996's Tomb Raider this reimagining will be. Amos confirms its classic enemies are returning, but the gameplay will be modernized. On its release, Tomb Raider's levels were built on an (almost) invisible grid and the gameplay was based on understanding Lara's limitations and abilities in order to methodically traverse the game world like a constant, spatial puzzle.
Sure, you had wolves to shoot, dinosaurs to scream at and water to swim through, but the main bulk of the game involved a very rigid, rule-based framework. The new game will almost certainly not play like this, because everyone's now too used to modern, analogue control where 'up' goes 'into the screen' no matter which way Lara is facing. Not necessarily a bad thing, but a clear separation from the source material.
With that cleared up, there's a lot to be excited about. Amos says the game has been made by fans for fans, which bodes well. While Tomb Raider Anniversary was good, it was riddled with 2007's tropes like QTE battles, even taking the T-Rex battle out of your hands at key moments. I'm not suggesting for a minute the 1996 T-Rex fight is perfect - in fact it's rather clumsy and is only really memorable for the T-Rex's entrance, rather than the fight itself.
Amos explains: "We've taken all of those things that were critical from that [first] game and then [asking]: 'What can we do to push it through a modern day gamer's lens?' How to update camera and controls, and how to take things like that signature moment that all of us as gamers played, and now saying, how is that reimagined today for an epic action adventure moment that can create a new core memory for players who've never gotten to experience it as that first time? Or if you're a longtime fan, you now get to experience it as a 'first time' again."
And what about the new, live-action Amazon Tomb Raider TV series coming soon? Will that have any crossover content with either game? Amos is careful not to announce anything ahead of time, so it's unclear, but he did conclude by saying: "Certainly it's a great opportunity for us to have all of these things going together and having so many things in development for Tomb Raider, the fans benefit from all of it." Oh, you big tease.
The original Tomb Raider is still one of the greatest adventure games you can play, but its brilliance is obscured by outdated controls and visuals. Fixing all that while sympathetically bringing it up to date could give us a defining moment of this generation too. I'm cautiously optimistic – this could be sublime. Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is set for release on PS5, Xbox Series and PC in 2026, with its stablemate Tomb Raider: Catalyst set for next year, 2027.
