Lara’s skirmishes with these hired hands undermined Tomb Raider 2’s credibility as an action game. While Tomb Raider 2 didn’t reduce the number of animals Lara had to fight, it introduced a human faction called the Fiamma Nera - a seemingly endless succession of thugs out to stop Lara’s quest to find the Dagger of Xian. Lara only dealt with about half a dozen human enemies in her first outing. The first game featured plenty of shooting action, but most of it involved wildlife: wolves, bats, bears and even a T. Specifically, the action now hinged on gunplay against other human characters. In amping things up, however, Tomb Raider 2 shifted the fundamental balance of the play toward being far more combat-driven. Things wouldn’t improve until 2006’s Tomb Raider: Legend, headed up by Crystal Dynamics (whose 1999 smash Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver had been one of many Tomb Raider-inspired works that utterly humbled Lara's concurrent sequel) rather than Core Design.Ĭombat overpowered exploration and shifted the trajectory of the franchiseīoth of these elements - exploration and combat - existed in the original game, of course. 1998’s Tomb Raider entry, Tomb Raider 3, felt hopelessly crusty next to the likes of Metal Gear Solid and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. A second wave of 3D console action-adventure games hit in 1998, building on the principles established by Tomb Raider in a way that Core's punishing schedule made impossible for the series itself. The original Tomb Raider set a high standard for design and technology, yet four years later, the fifth game in the series was excoriated as a creaky relic. This lack of investment combined with the effects of rapid iteration meant that the series fell from grace hard, and in short order. That sort of churn and austerity had taken a toll on simple 8-bit franchises like Mega Man, so it certainly did no favors for something as complex as Tomb Raider. 2000’s Tomb Raider: Chronicles had a staff only twice as large as the plucky team that put together the original game, despite the series having become a cash cow. Despite the enormous profits the company raked in from the games and its ancillary licensing (U2 toured with images of Lara splashed on their video screens, and Angelina Jolie portrayed her in two big-budget movies), Eidos set a rigorous annual schedule for the games while maintaining a minimal team. But then the company did the same thing the following year. After all, Lara’s debut title caught fire in an unexpected way, and Eidos wanted to strike again while the iron was hot. You can understand the rationale behind the first sequel’s quick turnaround time. Tomb Raider 2 launched almost exactly one year after the original, and therein Lara would encounter her first great nemesis: creative churn. In an era during which girls had to settle for the likes or Barbie or Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen as video game role models, Lara gave them someone far flintier to look up to. Some people liked her decidedly exaggerated figure, but the simple existence of a fearless, no-nonsense woman set her apart from the rugged men and rubbery cartoon animals who dominated games in the ’90s. Gamers took notice, too, and Lara soon became far more popular than the games she starred in. Lara began life as a generic male Indiana Jones type, but Core switched around its hero’s gender midway through development - in part to downplay Indy comparisons, and in part because lead designer Toby Gard wanted some sex appeal in his game. Lara eschewed high tea and cocktail parties in favor of getting her hands dirty (and sometimes bloody) seeking legendary relics in the ruins of lost civilizations. Key to the game’s appeal was its protagonist, Lara Croft, a tough, gun-toting archaeologist who had little interest in the upper-crust British life into which she had been born. While thematically inspired by Raiders of the Lost Ark and mechanically built on Jordan Mechner's deliberate 2D platformer Prince of Persia, Tomb Raider managed to combine both action and puzzle-platforming in a fresh, exciting and very three-dimensional fashion. The studio had managed to eke out a few moderate 16-bit successes like Chuck Rock and BC Racers, but nothing it had produced prior to 1996 hinted at the innovative, genre-defining work that would be Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider gave developer Core Design its big break.
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