Following the disappearance of her father, Lord Richard Croft, Lara Croft makes a living as a bike courier. She is arrested after a collision with a police car. Richard's business partner Ana Miller posts her bail and urges Lara to accept her inheritance. Lara believes her father to still be alive, but Ana warns Lara that if she does not claim her inheritance, the family estate, Croft Manor, will be sold off. Lara reluctantly accepts and gains access to a secret chamber in her father's tomb, where she finds a pre-recorded video message from Richard detailing his research into Himiko, the mythical Queen of Yamatai who was said to command the power over life and death. Richard warns Lara to destroy his research, but she ignores his warnings and investigates further.
Not yet having received her inheritance Lara is forced to pawn the jade pendant her father gave her. With the money Lara travels to Hong Kong where she hires Lu Ren, captain of the ship Endurance, to sail into the Devil's Sea and the island of Yamatai. The ship capsizes in a violent storm and Lara washes ashore where she is knocked unconscious. She awakens only to encounter Mathias Vogel, the leader of an expedition to locate Himiko's tomb. The expedition has been funded by a shadowy organization called Trinity, which seeks to harness and weaponize Himiko's power. Mathias takes Lara prisoner, claiming that he killed her father and revealing that he intends to use Richard's research to continue his expedition. He adds Lara and Lu to his slave force. The two of them try to escape, but only Lara succeeds.
After surviving rapids and narrowly avoiding falling over a waterfall with the wreck of a wartime airplane, Lara is forced to kill a Trinity guard after nightfall. She follows a mysterious figure through the jungle and discovers that the figure is her father, who stayed on the island to prevent Trinity from finding Himiko's tomb. After Lara convinces him that she is real and not a figment of his imagination, Richard treats her injuries. Despite his protests, Lara sets off the next morning to steal Mathias' satellite phone. Lara makes contact with Lu, and he, along with the other slaves, stage a distraction that allows Lara to infiltrate the Trinity camp and take the phone. In the ensuing chaos, Lu grabs an assault rifle, provides cover for the escapees, and guns down several Trinity soldiers, while Richard makes his way to Himiko's tomb but is captured by Mathias, who persuades Lara to open the tomb, something she has prepared for since she was a child. At that point, the entrance to the tomb self-destructs and falls away, allowing them to enter the tomb which has not been seen for over two thousand years.
The party navigates a series of booby traps and locates Himiko's sarcophagus. When a Trinity soldier attempts to remove her corpse, he is infected by a highly infectious pathogen that reduces him to an aggressive, necrotic zombie. Lara realizes that Himiko was an asymptomatic carrier of the virus, who chose to entomb herself so that she could not infect others. Mathias concludes that Trinity wants to create a bio-weapon out of her body but he cannot remove Himiko's body and instead settles for cutting off a finger, which he seals in a pouch. In the confusion, Lara and Richard overpower the remaining soldiers, although Mathias escapes and Richard becomes infected. Knowing there is no cure, Richard proposes destroying Himiko's tomb to prevent the disease from spreading across the world. Lara pursues Mathias as Richard sets off a bomb, killing himself and sealing the tomb. Lara confronts and kills Mathias by kicking him off a ledge after a fight. She barely escapes the tomb as it collapses, regrouping with Lu and the slaves; they commandeer a Trinity helicopter to escape Yamatai.
Tomb Raider, known as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider from 2001 to 2008, is a media franchise that originated with an action-adventure video game series created by British video game developer Core Design. The franchise is currently owned by CDE Entertainment; it was formerly owned by Eidos Interactive, then by Square Enix Europe after Square Enix's acquisition of Eidos in 2009 until Embracer Group purchased the intellectual property alongside Eidos in 2022. The franchise focuses on the fictional British archaeologist Lara Croft, who travels around the world searching for lost artefacts and infiltrating dangerous tombs and ruins. Gameplay generally focuses on exploration, solving puzzles, navigating hostile environments filled with traps, and fighting enemies. Additional media has been developed for the franchise in the form of film adaptations, comics and novels.
The gameplay of Tomb Raider is primarily based around an action-adventure framework, with Lara navigating environments and solving mechanical and environmental puzzles, in addition to fighting enemies and avoiding traps. These puzzles, primarily set within ancient tombs and temples, can extend across multiple rooms and areas within a level. Lara can swim through water, a rarity in games at the time that has continued through the series.[20][68][78][79] According to original software engineer and later studio manager Gavin Rummery, the original set-up of interlinking rooms was inspired by Egyptian multi-roomed tombs, particularly the tomb of Tutankhamun.[68] The feel of the gameplay was intended to evoke that of the 1989 video game Prince of Persia.[80] In the original games, Lara utilised a "bulldozer" steering set-up, with two buttons pushing her forward and back and two buttons steering her left and right, and in combat Lara automatically locked onto enemies when they came within range. The camera automatically adjusts depending on Lara's action, but defaults to a third-person perspective in most instances. This basic formula remained unchanged through the first series of games. Angel of Darkness added stealth elements.[78][79][81][82]
The gameplay underwent another major change for the 2013 reboot. Gameplay altered from progression through linear levels to navigating an open world, with hunting for supplies and upgrading equipment and weapons becoming a key part of gameplay, yet tombs were mostly optional and platforming was less present in comparison to combat. The combat was redesigned to be similar to the Uncharted series: the previous reticle-based lock-on mechanics were replaced by a free-roaming aim.[87] Rise of the Tomb Raider built on the 2013 reboot's foundation, adding dynamic weather systems, reintroducing swimming, and increasing the prevalence of non-optional tombs with more platforming elements.[88]
After the critical backlash of The Angel of Darkness, Eidos decided to take production of the Tomb Raider series out of Core Design's hands and give it to another subsidiary studio. Production of the next game was given to Crystal Dynamics in 2003, a studio that had made its name with the Legacy of Kain series.[79][95][96] Eidos CEO Ian Livingstone stated that while the critical failure of The Angel of Darkness was a major reason for taking the series away from Core Design, the decision was motivated by their inordinate struggles with developing for the PlayStation 2, and by how many members of the Core team had complained that they were "burnt out" on Tomb Raider. He added that "for a UK company, moving the development of its prized asset from Derby to California was a big decision to make but, as it turned out, absolutely the right one to make".[91] One of the main priorities for both Eidos and Crystal Dynamics was to regain the fanbase's trust in the brand, along with helping the series reclaim the status and selling power it had before The Angel of Darkness' release.[97] Their main goal was to put Lara back inside tombs, with their physics-based engine enabling more intricate puzzles.[83] Legend was well received, and was the first game in a rebooted trilogy.[98][99] After Legend was finished, the team decided to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the series by remaking the original game, rebuilding the environments and redesigning the story to fit in with the events and gameplay of Legend.[67][68] Alongside the development of Anniversary, an entry for seventh-generation hardware was in development, although it used established gaming architecture from Legend and this caused problems for the development team.[100] This released as Tomb Raider: Underworld in 2008.
During this period, a second development team was working on a second reboot of the series and character, which put emphasis on a darker and grittier interpretation of the character.[58][105] Another priority was presenting Lara as a more human character, putting her in vulnerable situations, and showing how she begins her journey to becoming a "tomb raider" through both narrative and gameplay.[106] The reboot, simply entitled Tomb Raider, was met with critical acclaim at launch in 2013, and became the start of the "Survivor Trilogy".[107][108] A sequel, eventually revealed as Rise of the Tomb Raider, was in development a few months after the reboot's release.[33][109] In response to criticisms about a lack of classic tombs, more optional and story-based tombs were incorporated into the game.[110] It continued the team's new portrayal of Lara, showing more sides to her character and her growing obsession with discovering the truth.[62] In 2018, Shadow of the Tomb Raider was released to coincide with a new film starring Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft, simply titled Tomb Raider, taking heavy inspiration from the 2013 game of the same name.[111][112] Shadow was developed by Eidos-Montréal as Crystal Dynamics completed Marvel's Avengers, though Crystal would provide secondary support. The game concluded Lara's origin story. A "Definitive Edition", featuring all 7 DLCs for Shadow was released in November 2019.[113]
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