THE
FUTURE OF TOMB RAIDER
Core Design boss Adrian
Heath-Smith has sensationally revealed
details on the future direction
of British aristocrat Lara Croft
and the Tomb Raider series: "The
story in The Angel of Darkness has
been really important for us, it's
been argued that there's maybe too
much story in this game. The reason
is that we decided we'd do more
than one game from the get go, rather
then one new game and then go 'guess
what guys, you've got to do another
one'."
The bigger picture
- "We thought we would try to knit
the story together, as the other
way has always been a nightmare.
From the start we assumed we were
doing more than one new game, so
we went away and wrote the story.
The source of the inspiration has
been over all a theme that we wanted
to run across the three games. It's
just explained, almost scratched
upon the surface of the first one,
the second is based much more around
the big thing and the third is the
natural ending of it, how Lara resolves
it, how she fits into it. The overall
theme is the Nephilim, said to be
the descendants of angels and mortals.
They're mentioned in the Enochian
Gospels. This was the original big
theme we came up with, as it had
a lot of potential and sure inspired
the terrific new characters you
meet in The Angel of Darkness. We
looked at things like X-Files and
we thought that was a great example.
Because there's the big 'Are there
or aren't there?' story line and
each episode stands alone but they
tell you a little more about the
bigger story."
The Nephilim
- "The overall goal for us was let's
use the Nephilim theme and run it
across all three games. For us it
was great because the second game
is going to be a belter, it's very
Tomb Raider. It's set in the Nephilim
realm under Turkey, Cappadocia.
It's all temples and tombs and lost
cities, which is all very Tomb Raider-esque;
full of fantasy grounded in reality.
There are no aliens with big tentacle
arms but it has some strange looking
humans. In The Angel of Darkness
we had to introduce the Nephilim
and put Lara into a situation that
was different to what we've done
in the past. She's always been squeaky
clean, she's gone and found artefacts
and gone out and saved the world.
We couldn't change Lara's character,
absolutely not. We couldn't turn
her into a mass murderer. We couldn't
have her going around slaying small
children. The end of the Last Revelation
was the last game for us. Lara was
missing. That was a clean start,
something really important."
Continuity
- "There's a whole time period between
the temple collapsing and the beginning
of this game that isn't covered
in The Angel of Darkness but may
be in the second. We call the period
internally 'Lara of Arabia.' We
have the whole time period mapped
out, what actually happened to her,
where she's been. There's also another
time period of when she came back
to London. She had a near death
experience when she survived the
temple. Causing her to hang up her
guns. We seriously looked at making
her an alcoholic, having Croft Manor
burnt down. We wanted her life in
a mess and she returns facing one
catastrophe after another, she comes
back and Croft Manor is burning
to the floor. Then she hits the
bottle, of course. Lots of things
to change the situation, to really
get her down. But we thought that
was a little bit extreme. We also
had reservations about what the
movie people were doing, in so far
as we burn Croft Manor down it would
stick out a bit and make it difficult
for them. That's as much as we've
ever tied-in to the movies."
Wanted: Lara Croft
- "So the idea we came up with was
let's get her accused of murder
in Paris. Everything that has worked
for her in the past because she's
famous and well known, all these
doors have been open for her. Suddenly
they're all shut, because everybody
does know her and everyone is trying
to catch her. Lara comes in and
has this argument with Von Croy,
at the end of the day she's got
blood on her hands, she jumps out
of the window and the game starts."