When it comes to high-flying adventures and mythological excavation (with a side of puzzles and combat), Tomb Raider has been going strong. For 30 years, Lara Croft has been travelling across the world in search of life’s mysteries, all with a side of charisma and dual pistols.
In 2027, players will get a chance to return to the ruins of Atlantis and beyond in a reimagining of the 1996 classic, Tomb Raider, with Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis.
I got a chance to check out a demo of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis at Summer Game Fest and loved my time with it. Its gorgeous graphics and modernised gameplay made it feel like it could be the definitive version of Lara’s inaugural outing in gaming.
After the preview, I was able to chat with three of the leads behind the project: Jeff Adams (Experience Director at Crystal Dynamics), Arek Tomaszewski (Art Director at Flying Wild Hog), and Raul Siquiera (Game Director of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis). In our talk, we discuss the impact of Tomb Raider, our favourite parts of the series, and how Legacy of Atlantis is less of a remake and more of a reimagining of the 1996 classic.
Reflecting on 30 Years of Lara Croft
Michael Murphy: 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of Tomb Raider. How does it feel to have the series last this long and its impact?
Raul Siquiera: Energetic. I would say it’s the first word that comes to mind. We’ve been doing the interviews, we’ve been talking to people who are playing the game, and as game devs, it’s easy for us to get into a place of being very harsh and critics to our own work. The moment that it goes out and people see it, and we start to hear the feedback, and we start to see how much they like it, it just breathes new life into you.
So to be able to do that, to your point, with over 30 years with such an iconic character like Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, it’s just a tremendous honour.
Jeff Adams: Yeah, I mean, how many games get to evolve in this direction? Since her inception, she kind of stepped off the screen, right out of the game, and into a broader kind of pop culture sensibility.
And the fact that she can still exist there now just goes to show how much of a cool character she embodies a lot of characteristics that people just are drawn to. We use the word ‘magnetic’ to describe Lara because once you’re in her periphery, you just kind of get snatched.
MM: Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is the second remake of the 1996 classic. What now would you say makes it a worthwhile venture for seasoned fans?
Jeff: It’s actually the first reimagining.
Raul: Oh! Ooh, nice!
Jeff: Tagline! (laughs)
Raul: Keyword drop! (laughs)
Jeff: It’s actually an important distinction, because I would argue that in a lot of ways, Anniversary was a little bit of a reimagining, too, and that’s kind of just in the DNA of how we work as a studio. We like to move forward and push things further than they ever could have been. We always just make sure that we’re framing our development around the idea of what the original devs would have wanted to accomplish if they had been equipped with the technology that we have today.
And so, we try to preserve the core ideals of what that is, and then find new ways to update it in a way that it appeals to modern players.
Raul: You think you were kind of hitting on that before we started recording, but the Survivor trilogy taught us a lot about Tomb Raider. It taught us a lot about Lara, about how to make those types of games and how to modernize it to a new audience.
So, it almost feels like the goal of the reimagining was to bridge the gap between what a modern Tomb Raider should look like, while respecting the original game, because we didn’t want to just say, here is 1996’s original but now like the Survivor trilogy, nor did we want to say, this is just 1996 with better graphics. We wanted to find what that middle ground was, because I think it’s important for us to have a conversation about where this franchise is going, what the next few games are going to be, what the next few things are going to be.
There’s no better way to do that other than re-looking at the first one, and then taking back everything that we learned in 30 years of development, and being pretty confident that if the devs at the time had the technology that we have today, they would probably do something similar to this.
Arek Tomaszewski: Just to add to that, the first one is such an iconic game. The story deserves to be told again for the new players, and for the old players to just basically play through with our own flavour and what we want to expand on from the original.
A New Lara and a Reimagined Classic
MM: The fantastic Alix Wilton Regan will be wielding the dual pistols of Lara Croft. How was the casting process for her, and how was the search for the right Lara?
Jeff: We didn’t have to pick her. She made it apparent to us that she’s the only person who’s going to play her, hands down. She’ll walk into the room, and she’ll take the script, and she’ll see what we’re going for, and then she’ll say, “I think she would maybe do it this way”, and it’s never in a way that takes it backwards. It only pushes it forward, and Raul has a great thing. I’ll let you say it; he has a great take on this that sums it up perfectly.
Raul: Yeah, it was important for us just to set up what we’re talking about. It was important for us to find someone who represented Lara naturally. We didn’t want someone to force it and feel unnatural, or to feel like this person is attempting to be someone so iconic, someone so fierce, someone with so much personality, right?
And then you sit down with Alix, have a conversation with her, and within five minutes, you believe that if she wasn’t an actress, she might just be Lara Croft in real life (laugh). I think everyone, when we started the conversation, it was a pretty clear, like, yep, that’s her.
MM: The game looks to integrate the new style of the Remake games with the adventure of the old. How was it finding that balance?
Raul: It was difficult. It was, without sugarcoating it, the biggest challenge we knew we were going to face. It was “how do we find the balance between respecting the original, but making sure that we’re modernising?”
We took a couple of different approaches to make sure that we were on the right track. The first thing that we did was that we went back, replayed the original, replayed Anniversary, and then tried to look at it through the lenses of what are some of the key moments or key beats throughout the games that are so iconic that we have to preserve them, that they have to stay as they are?
Also, what are some of the things that, had the devs had the technology that we have today, would they make it different? Do we have some room to colour outside the lines, add some additional puzzles, add more collectables, and maybe change how combat works a little bit? Reimagining is a process. It isn’t that we make a plan and then we execute. We make a plan, we execute, we fail, we make another plan, we execute, we fail, and then we do that over and over again.
Jeff: Or we find a different way forward that we didn’t even imagine in the first place. We’re like, okay, that’s clearly where we need to go.
Raul: Yeah. So part of game development is getting used to failing early and failing often. And I’m saying this a lot. It is not a bad thing to fail. It’s a good thing to fail early, and it’s a good thing to fail often. Because you know where you’re not going, and that’s the best way to figure out where you do go. Sometimes, when you’re trying to find an answer for something that is a traversal problem, you might get stuck in a loop.
But in the middle of that, what Jeff was saying, you might have cracked something that will solve puzzles, or that would be better for combat, or that would be better for the environments. There are just so many things that come with that mentality of iteration and trying over and over that really got us into a good spot of finding the balance between what was the original and what we wanted to go for.
Arek: I mean, to that point, basically, you played the cog puzzle. That was not a one-off. We had many, many iterations because we knew we wanted to have a cog puzzle because it’s such an iconic thing from the original one, but we had to make it work for our game. We wanted to make it believable, to make it playable, and to make it fun.
So that’s one of the puzzles that took a long time from the initiation to where we are now, and it’s the same for the rest of the game. We’re just trying to be respectful, but it needs to be fun.
Jeff: The partnership between us (Crystal Dynamics) and the Flying Wild Hog team is very organic. It makes that type of process very easy because we have similar values as developers. We come to a very common understanding of what good friction is, and that usually is a spirited debate, a good passing back and forth of ideas, and eventually aligning on a direction and executing it. You see what that results in in what you played.
Capturing the Spirit of a Classic
MM: When crafting the world again for Legacy of Atlantis, what were the key things you wanted to nail?
Arek: From the visual point of view, for me, it was always important to maintain the colour palette that we had in the original because it was very unique. So, when you squint your eyes, it should take you back to where we were in 1996.
From the level perspective and the level art perspective, we wanted to expand on what the original was because it’s such a great source. But with the technology that we have now, it should be more immersive. You should feel like you’re losing yourself in this world. And that’s what we’re trying to aim for with our game.
Raul: A couple of things that I think are top of mind. Dual pistols were very much at the forefront of the things that we absolutely need to get right. Dual pistols and the T-Rex.
Arek: I mean, we cannot talk about them more, but we always try. The original game had many iconic moments, and that’s where we started the whole process of making this game. We identify those iconic moments, we try to bring them back, and then add some more from our source.
Jeff: Yeah, as a package, though, one of the things that we’ve really enjoyed, now that we’ve actually started publicly showing stuff, is actually seeing reaction videos from folks in the community that, if they’re long-time fans, they actually see what’s happening, they feel seen. They’re like, yes (laughs). And so we can’t get that wrong, but I don’t want that to be as if we’re only making a game for fans.
This also needs to be palatable to folks who may have never played a Tomb Raider game before. We want it to be welcoming, because it’s a great time to kind of come under the Tomb Raider tent, because we have a lot of places we want to go and want to take them with us.
MM: Do you have a favourite moment or memory from the original or other Tomb Raider games?
Arek: I do (sighs).
Jeff: You sound so sad (laughs).
Arek: When I first played Tomb Raider, I played it with my cousin. So we were doing it as if someone died in-game, the other one takes the turn, because that’s the way we used to play.
We were playing the Abomination, I died on it, and we agreed that we would finish it the next day. Well, he did it, and then he finished the rest of the game overnight. For 29 years, I did not know that there was something behind Abomination (laughs).
Jeff: Well, I think you have the upper hand now (laughs). For me, I just really used to enjoy just doing the acrobatics and doing the handstand walk. There’s no reason to do the handstand walk over on that little edge, but it’s just so cool to do it. You just enjoy doing it.
So it was actually really cool to see it kind of come back in a more modern presentation. But that was always my fun; it was just Lara being this dynamic character.
Raul: I was a Greek mythology nerd kid, so Greece always has a special place in my heart. There weren’t a lot of games back then that had just mythology represented at that level. So, like, going into, like, a Poseidon-themed room or, like, a Hephaestus-themed room was always something that, when I played in the original, stuck with me for a while.
MM: Will Legacy of Atlantis be a straightforward remake, or will there be new content/additional stories?
Jeff: Reimagining is actually a really important word for us because there is a remake. You can play the remastered version of Tomb Raider and get the original mechanics with some control improvements, but you get the original experience represented to you.
You can play Anniversary, which is a great kind of revision of the original game. We just wanted to make sure that we felt that we had the creative freedom to be able to just preserve the important and recognisable things. And that might be, depending on who you’re talking to, a different thing. But there are, clearly, very tentpole moments that have to be there for it to even look like the original.
But then we wanted to also say, how can we push it further? How can we do that? And I’m really looking forward to talking with you in the future about how all of that pans out once we get closer to release.
Tag Team Tomb Raiding
MM: What made Flying Wild Hog the perfect choice to bring Tomb Raider back to life?
Jeff: Lots of money (laughs).
Raul: If I can jump in real quick, Flying Wild Hog is working with Crystal on this, but we don’t consider Flying Wild Hog to be incorporated. We very much consider it as one whole team. It doesn’t matter if you’re in which studio you’re from. I think we’ve found out pretty quickly that we all looked at video game making the same way. We looked at our love for Lara and for Tomb Raider the same way. So, it felt very natural when that, when the collaboration started, it felt very natural.
Jeff: I mean, joking aside, when we were talking about potentially working with Flying Wild Hog, I sat down, and I’m like, okay, I’m going to just go play Shadow Warrior, so you can see what’s there. I’ll play it for a little bit, and I’ll do an evaluation. I played the whole thing. I couldn’t put it down. Like, this is great. And then I’m like, okay, well, I guess I’ll go try Trek to Yomi. And I played that, and I’m like, okay, I can’t put that down. And I’m also seeing a lot of shared values in what they’re doing and what they’re putting emphasis on compared to what we do.
And then I played Evil West, and I’m like, okay, now we’re doing this, and now I can’t put this game down, and now the bosses are awesome, and it’s fun. And I’m like, it’s a natural fit, and it’s just been a really rewarding experience. They bring a fresh perspective to it, and we bring a lot of experience with it, and you see the results of that on stage.
We didn’t want this to feel like Studio A is doing this and Studio B is doing something else. Like, we’re one team, Team Atlantis, and we’re just making a game together. Yeah. And if we could all live in Poland or if everyone could move to Brazil, like, that would be cool.
MM: How was it coming up with the combat and traversal for the title?
Raul: Oh, it was super fun. It was one of the most fun parts of the job. I think it’s figuring out things that you’ve done in the past that you like, versus things that were done by another team that you also like, and trying to solve the puzzle of how to merge the best parts of both of them.
I’ll speak a little bit about an example that we’ve been talking about a lot is how acrobatics influence combat. Because if you think about it, one of the early challenges that we had is acrobatics are part of the core prime Lara, like she needed to be able to do all the handstands, all the pirouettes, everything.
But when you think about it from a combat perspective, that kind of slows you down, makes you vulnerable, doesn’t really give you a good opportunity to, like, you know, blend the two. And we didn’t want traversal to be separated from combat. We wanted all of the gameplay to flow naturally from one into the other.
So that’s when we started looking at Focus as one of our potential solves for that, which is basically if there was a way for Lara to slow down time, we could play one of her cool flips animations to really celebrate that we give you the upper hand in combat, and then just lets you really live that power fantasy of like delivering through I’m just going to rain down enemies with the bullets of the dual pistols.
So that’s just one example of a lot of conversations and problems and iterations and failing and then trying again, that felt very fun to do as part of this project, because we had such a vast group of people that worked both on the Survivor Trilogy, but we also have some people that worked on the original games for 20 years here. So there were a lot of good conversations that happened from that.
And then, with the infusion of like new blood of people who never did a Tomb Raider before, but it’s the first time they’ve been fans for so long, it really makes that conversation and those ideas and the iteration flow in a much nicer way.
MM: I know you can’t speak on it too much, but with Catalyst coming soon, will players want to play Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis first for any hints or teasers?
Jeff: As I said before, I think if you are intrigued by the franchise, this is a great time to come in, pick up Legacy of Atlantis, and experience this reimagining of her core adventure.
And in terms of like upcoming Catalyst news, we are really, really excited to share more of that, but we’re just not there quite yet.
Raul: But if you’re a Tomb Raider fan, it’s always good to pick up a Tomb Raider game.
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