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Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the final game in the rebooted trilogy that refreshed the Lara Croft mythos, taking us back to her first adventures. Now Eidos Montreal studio head David Anfossi has spoken to our own Official Xbox Magazine about how the story marks the end of that journey. But don't worry, it's not the end for our favorite artifact hunter.
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"You can’t kill Lara Croft!" Anfossi tells OXM. It's a remark prompted by the studio's admission that as yet, there are no plans for Miss Croft after Shadow. "Honestly, we are not thinking about that yet. We have no plan on our side on Eidos Montreal for the next Tomb Raider at all. Nothing. Honestly."
The next game to follow this trilogy will be interesting. In Shadow of the Tomb Raider the storyline deals with the actual apocalypse, and will see Lara become the Tomb Raider of the title. Basically, this is where she completes her transformation from traumatized archaeology student into backflipping badass.
"This trilogy is not about the Tomb Raider franchise – it’s about Lara Croft," explains Anfossi. "If you played the previous games, from 1996 to now, at that time it was more about experiencing and discovering new stuff, blah blah blah. But Lara Croft was perfect. Two guns. Jumping. Flips. A tiger. Boom, boom, boom! It was like she was the James Bond of the time. This trilogy is more about her, and how she became the Tomb Raider she was meant to be."
Despite the game steering the character of Lara Croft back to that Bond-esque heroine, Anfossi is confident that the game will still hold some surprises for the Tomb Raider fans.
"It’s darker than before. It’s rough. Even the setting of the jungle, you know? She has to master it, but it’s a deadly setting. Everything in the jungle is dangerous. So for us, it was the best way to create this image that she’s going too far at some points and has to come back."
You can read the interview in full in issue 167 of Official Xbox Magazine, on sale now.
