Tomb Raider: Anniversary - exclusive look

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Part one of our week-long Tomb Raider blowout

The original game had a feeling of solitude - do you think the new version has a similar feeling?

Yeah it does - that's one of the things that we really noted from the original when we started out to make this remake of sorts, was the fact that the original one had a sense of solitude of Lara in these environments. It was just her for long periods of time with no music and just sort of her exploring and then she would come upon animals in her environment that she'd take out, there'd be another period of no combat, no music, just her ambient sound effects, exploration - we really wanted to recapture that mood and it's definitely become one of the things that we stuck to when we were redesigning the game.

Did you use any of the original game's source material or artwork?

Nothing is from the original Tomb Raider 1 - everything has been redone from the ground up. We drew inspiration for the locations and the environments and the gameplay and what-not from the original, but everything else has been completely redone from scratch from all the audio, sound effects, models, texturing, environments - everything is brand new.

And how about Lara's character? Over the different games she's changed a bit, personality-wise - what do you think she's like in this game?

I'd say her personality is closer to how she was in Legend, but obviously Legend takes place in the future from where Lara was when she was in Tomb Raider one, so we wanted to go back and create a character with more depth and complexity to her than the original one would be able to portray in its cut-scenes, but still keep it true to where we thought Lara was a person at that point in her life.

Check back tomorrow for Part 2 as we compare the new game side-by-side with the original and Jason talks us through the new Lost Valley... and that famous T-Rex encounter. See you there.

Justin Towell
Justin Towell
Freelance Writer

Justin was a GamesRadar+ staffer for 10 years but is now a freelance writer, musician and videographer. He's big on retro, Sega and racing games (especially retro Sega racing games) and currently also writes for Play Magazine, Traxion.gg, PC Gamer and TopTenReviews, as well as running his own YouTube channel. Having learned to love all platforms equally after Sega left the hardware industry (sniff), his favourite games include Christmas NiGHTS into Dreams, Zelda BotW, Sea of Thieves, Sega Rally Championship and Treasure Island Dizzy.