Crystal Dynamics recently announced that a new Tomb Raider game, tentatively titled Tomb Raider Next, is in development, and we now have a first look at the latest incarnation of the popular franchise's iconic action heroine, Lara Croft.
A website was launched on February 14 (Lara's birthday) to promote a remastered collection of the first three games, and the following image is believed (nothing has been made official yet) to spotlight Croft's "Unified" look for the new game.
The previous trilogy of games introduced a younger take on Lara, who donned a variety of costumes more suited to the grittier environments, but, as you can see, this latest take on the character brings her more in line with the original games by bringing back the classic pale blue tank top, brown shorts and dual-handguns combo.
Croft showed up in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 last year as a store bundle operator, and fans wondered of Activision's design would inform the character's look for her next adventure. While not identical, they are quite similar (see below).
Crystal Dynamics has confirmed that a new game is on the way, with Amazon Games set to publish, but details are still few and far between. All we know for certain is that the title will "unify the timelines of Lara’s Survivor era and the Core Design-developed games (1996’s Tomb Raider through 2003’s Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness)." The game is aso being developed using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 5.
While we await official updates, Lara Croft fans can revisit the character's earliest adventures in the recently released collection Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered, which is now available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
Other Tomb Raider-related projects on the way include an animated series for Netflix, which will see Hayley Atwell provide the voice of Lara in a story set after the Survivor era; and a live-action series at Amazon which is being written by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny).
What do you make of Ms. Croft's new look? Drop us a comment down below.
"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."