Lara ”became an icon” of sorts and lost her ”relatability.” They remade her so she ”wasn’t perfect” as gamers want ”a complex hero.” Ground is ‘fertile’ again.
The new Tomb Raider explores Lara Croft as an inexperienced young woman. ”I think Lara’s a beloved character and Crystal has really enjoyed their time they’ve been able to spend with her,” said brand director Karl Stewart of Crystal Dynamic.
”We felt she was losing some relevance in the gaming world, that she was a little too hard and removed. We wanted to make her more approachable and relatable.” Tomb Raider arguably ‘lost’ a lot of her following to Naughty Dog’s Uncharted which was fresh.
”I think she became an icon,” he added. ”When you do, you remove yourself from relatability. We wanted to bring her to a place where she didn’t have all those skills, she wasn’t perfect. The modern gamer can relate to that, they want a complex hero.”
The original Lara Croft that developer Crystal inherited was proving too difficult to write stories for, revealed Stewart. A reboot for the series opens up her future again.
”I think Lara had done all the growing she could. We’d taken her to a great place, to somewhere she had some closure. There weren’t really many more stories we could have told. So we feel like with this new place we have fertile ground and there’s a lot of places we can go.” Crystal made a superb top-down co-op digital spin off called ‘Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light’, and before that they released Tomb Raider: Underworld.
Tomb Raider releases on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC in late 2012. Are you looking forward to their rebooted Lara Croft? Maybe you’ve already switched to another icon?
