Tomb Raider: Crossroads and the rebirth of the ultimate gaming heroine

Square Enix have just released a full gameplay trailer for Tomb Raider: Crossroads, with a release date of 5 March 2013 – 17 years after we first saw the eponymous heroine squeeze into those famous cargo shorts.

The trailer  starts with  Lara Croft escaping from a cave before heading out into the jungle in an attempt to survive. The story looks set to run along the same lines of previous Tomb Raiders – fighting creatures, trusted friends, betrayal, lots of treasure.

Gone is the impeccably British accent of earlier Tomb Raiders. Also gone, is the brave, adventurous Lara of yesteryear. She’s undoubtedly more realistic this time round, whereas in earlier games she was British to a fault– she could leap over canyons and grab onto rocks without so much as a smudge on her face.

In this Tomb Raider reboot, she is dirty, she screams a lot, and she is hesitant about performing her now-famous moves. “I hate tombs,” she says at one point. Really?

This seemingly bizarre character change is forgivable, however, as Square Enix have aimed at recreating the beginning of the Croft story. On their website, they say Tomb Raider delivers an “intense and gritty story into the origins of Lara Croft and her ascent from a frightened young woman to a hardened survivor”.

I’m intrigued as to how they develop Lara’s adventurous streak throughout the game. The gameplay aspects of the trailer look fantastic, and as previous Tomb Raider games have done, Square Enix look like they’ve tried to push graphics cards to their limit. The scenery looks amazing (as we have come to expect from the series), the story looks intriguing, and although Lara herself has changed, it’ll be interesting to see what they do with her.

Check out the trailer below

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• W MHS

   I think she bit him

• http://twitter.com/dave0gray David Gray

  You guys really are missing the point, it’s starting at an earlier stage in the Tomb Raider story! 

• uanime5

  They gave Lara a bow to try to milk the Hunger Games fame. Unfortunately it makes Lara look like an idiot for fighting armed men with a bow, then not picking up their guns once she’s killed them.

• Skaramouche

  They used to speak American in Wimbledon??

• xyhfna

  They should have stuck with the impeccable British accent, the slightly caricature styling and the artistic licence that went with the originals. There is no harm in toning down the somewhat disproportion (or distortion – depending on your point of view) of some aspects of the Lara world – but addressing it in this way is just dishonourable. The original mythology or lore that the original was built on is very much part of what tomb raider what it was. It played to the anime crowd (mainly due to the graphics capabilities of the time), it played to the Indiana Jones fans, it played up the Britishness, it fantasised a period of time now long gone; I’m pretty sure there was no genuine reason to ‘modernise’, and although perhaps a reboot was due, it could have been handled much more sympathetically. Appears to be a last ditch money grab using a once iconic title.