Although it’s looking less and less likely that we see anything of note at the rapidly approaching Tomb Raider anniversary, we know a new Lara Croft game is coming. Beyond that, we know next to nothing of the title’s plot, game design, launch window… we don’t even know the title’s title.

What we do know is that it’s a marriage between the original games - original meaning every game up to the reboot, rather than just pre-Chronicles - and the reboot itself. Obviously, not every game will get a look in. Angel of Darkness has had its moment. But trying to fuse so many games together will be a struggle, and will need a deft touch. I've suggested that Rise should be the blueprint moving forward, but clearly it needs to take from the pre-reboot games too.

Related: It’s Time To Admit Lara’s Pickaxe Is Better Than Her Twin Pistols

It’s hard to truly link up the events of each game. Even between, say, Tomb Raider 2 and Tomb Raider: Legend - the two best games in the series - there isn’t all that much continuity. The games have flowed into each other before, but they still exist as standalone experiences, and it's not even one story. The first four games were linked, then things got a little messy. Angel of Darkness rebooted the series next, but unsuccessfully, and so this gothic version of Lara went nowhere. Legend came along three years later and offered a softer reboot, earning a sequel, Anniversary. Except this sequel was really a prequel, and wasn't an entirely new game as much as it was a revamped version of the very first Tomb Raider. The Legend-Anniversary-Underworld trilogy was then rounded off by, you guessed it, Underworld, which is an actual sequel to Legend. Then the whole thing got rebooted again, leading us to the current trilogy.

Tomb Raider Legend3

The problem is Lara is significantly less experienced in the reboot, since it's supposed to be an origin story. It could conceivably be a prequel to the other games, but then which other games do you even mean? It's not going to be Angel of Darkness, as interesting as that might be. The obvious answer would be the original games, but Lara's personality in each era is markedly different. Lara earned the world's attention as a bombshell, kicking names and taking ass until she's all out of bubblegum. She was Indiana Jones with a Tank Girl edge, a James Bond cool with a Pamela Anderson body. She was a crucial figure in adding diversity to the gaming protagonist pool, and by pool I of course mean swamp of straight white male ooze. Lara took charge in the '90s, but by modern video game standards, the 1996 version would be a dated figure for our 2018 Lara to grow into. Anniversary already tried to tweak Lara's first outing, and Underworld underwhelmed, which is how we got the current reboot in the first place. The answer is simple then - the game the recent trilogy needs to link up with is Tomb Raider: Legend.

It's not just because of a process of elimination that Legend is the natural choice. Even before the question of the reboot meeting up with the classic games was raised, Legend has always felt like the best mix of what Tomb Raider was about, and my personal favourite both in terms of its status as a game and its depiction of Lara. It perfectly understands the globetrotting themes at the heart of the series, which is something the reboot's adoption of the 2010s; obsession with open worlds rules out. It also has a great range of linear levels, like Peru's tunnelling cave and motorbike chase, as well as a selection of more open spaces to explore like Bolivia or the lab in Kazakhstan. The opening scene of the Tokyo mission is still an all-time great in terms of level intros too. Who cares how she was hiding her holsters? Let's kill some bad guys in a cocktail dress!

Tomb Raider Legend 2

This is what the next game needs to take from Legend. Not the cocktail dress - although a greater range of outfits beyond mud and feathers would be appreciated - but the tone and variety of the earlier games that are missing in the reboot trilogy. Rise of the Tomb Raider can hang with the best of them, having the most varied, easy to navigate, and contained map, but it still feels like it overstays its welcome and could be freshened up by giving Lara new concentrated levels to explore. We could also stand to see some introspection on what it means to be a Tomb Raider, especially with the current version of Lara being much softer and motherly than any previous iteration of the character.

A rejected ending for Shadow of the Tomb Raider reveals some interesting clues too. The ending actually shipped with the game, and was wiped by the day one patch, but some players were able to get around the patch to see its secrets. This conclusion plays out much like the 'real' ending, but includes a letter for Lara from Jacqueline Natla - the main villain of the Legend era, appearing as the central antagonist in both Anniversary and Underworld. This is not the true ending, and therefore regardless of what happens next, the developers have no reason to acknowledge this as canon, but it shows that even back during Shadow's development, a link-up with Legend was on the table.

Rise Of The Tomb Raider Screenshot Of Lara Croft With Axes On Mountain

It's probably for the best that this ending is not 'real', however. That would have constrained whatever version of Lara comes next to Natla specifically, rather than the themes and ideas of Legend, or possibly even taking on some Legend adventures Anniversary-style, revisiting old ground in a new way. Natla may yet be at the centre of the sequel, and that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but at least now it would be a conscious choice over a half-baked attempt to honour an ending that wasn't quite sure what it was teasing.

Next: I Hope The Next Tomb Raider Isn't About Raiding Tombs