TOMB RAIDER NEXT GENERATION UPDATE

[ 6 September 2000 ]

While no real official word has fed the growing appetite of gamers across the globe, Tomb Raider Next Generation is finding it's way onto forums across the web, with speculation and rumour painting a very different picture of Lara Croft and her new adventure and direction. This taken from the official Eidos Interactive forums: "Lara's back, this time with a ton of attitude, a longer ponytail, a more detailed body, facial features and aimed at a entirely new age group. These are the very first details of the Sony Play Station 2 version of the game, and you should prepare yourself for Lara as you've never seen her before."

According to Core boss Adrian Smith, Lara "is forced into something. We can't say what yet. Art theft plays a big part, and you should be thinking along the lines of, 'Vampires have walked with us for centuries'. Except it isn't Vampires." FMV of the game show Lara pilfering the Mona Lisa, gassing guards and running through stunning environments. A dungeon is shown with manacles hanging from the ceiling, and a scene shows Lara escaping the truncheon-laden caress of the riot police.

During a recent interview with IGN, Core Design's Adrian Smith said The next-generation versions of the game will feature a much darker, X-Files-esque kind of atmosphere. Each of the new titles will be self-contained but reveal part of a larger puzzle that you'll only piece together by buying all of the new games and playing them through. As technology pushes the frontier of smoother and more fluid movement, we can expect a dramatic change in visual and mechanical architecture. Tomb Raider Next Generation is due for release in 2001. The final instalment from Eidos ending "Lara as we know her" will be this Christmas' release of Tomb Raider Chronicles.