It's "not about graphical quality," but "how she becomes this person" we've known all these years. Gamers "never really had an attachment" to her before now.
"We've had a lot of people asking about the fact that it's been re imagined or it's been sort of recreated so many times," admitted Crystal Dynamics' Karl Stewart. The studio took over the franchise and helped bring it back by revisiting the core gameplay formula.
Now though that isn't enough for the developer who want to explain who Lara Croft is, and how she came to be a world renown raider of tombs.
"It's never been told how Lara became Lara. We thought in doing so, that there was a great opportunity to re imagine the franchise to a broader audience, and bring a different character to the audience," he explained.
Lara was a huge pop icon in the 90's. "But people never really, one, understand who she was. They never really had an attachment to her," says Stewart. "How can we have people go, 'I feel for Lara Croft. I want to play her'? We've never done that before."
"There was a point in time when Lara was mainstream, broad audience. It was on the tip of everybody's tongue." Crystal wants her to return to glory.
"It's not about graphical quality. Everybody can make explosions look beautiful on a screen, and everybody can make the worlds. We want to be able to take a character -- she's iconic," added Stewart. Pretty visuals with low substance hurt Lara before.
"For us as a studio, we've looked at where we've been, and we felt, well, now is a chance as a studio to put out a definition of our character and help evolve it, make it culturally relevant for today." They're still exploring how best to leverage this new found energy.
"Lara came off the stage 10 years ago guns-a-blazing. Now we want to show you how she becomes this person, so that when we move the rest of the franchise, you understand the difference in the ground rules," he explained.
Are you excited to be exploring Lara Croft's origins, videogamer? Tomb Raider releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC late next year. It won't be QTE heavy like some feared.
