Tomb Raider is a legendary series in the history of gaming, pioneering a new slant on the platforming and shooter genres that mixed together tropes of both to create a choco-vanilla swirl of brilliance. Lara has passed between a variety of studios and teams over the years, which is why each of her eras feel so distinct. Right now, the hand at the wheel - or perhaps that should be hand at the ice cream machine, is arguably Dallas Dickinson. With 20 years of experience in games, Dickinson is the executive producer at Crystal Dynamics, and currently oversees all development across the entire Tomb Raider franchise. But what, to their mind, makes a Tomb Raider game?
“All Tomb Raider games try to stay true to a few tenets,” he says. “They are all about the pursuit of myth-fuelled mysteries, and generally contain tombs - although we have stretched the definition of the word ‘tombs’ a few times to include other locations where someone might hide and preserve these mysteries.
“In addition to that, all the games contain different expressions of a few gameplay pillars: combat, traversal, puzzles, and story. You can’t have a Tomb Raider game that doesn’t involve some form of each of those pillars, and our best moments usually involve a combination of all the above.”
These pillars are what make the choco-vanilla swirl that is Tomb Raider. It was these pillars that directly inspired Amy Hennig when she put forth the 'traversal genre' during Uncharted’s development, and this foundation also inspired the likes of Assassin’s Creed and Horizon Zero Dawn, amongst many other less successful competitors.
While Dickinson sees this as a big part of Lara’s legacy, he also feels the games were bigger than their gameplay conventions. “Tomb Raider’s legacy in gaming is twofold,” he says. “The aspect that gets talked about the most, and for good reason, is the creation of Lara Croft as one of the first female heroes in video games. She was the pioneer in that space, and the fact that we now live in a time where there are dozens of strong female heroes in games is a testament to Lara breaking through in 1996.”
‘Combat, traversal, puzzles, and story’ - you’ll notice that, even for a game literally called Tomb Raider, the idea of ‘tombs’ is not considered core to the formula. In fact, as Dickinson says, the games “have stretched the definition of the word ‘tombs’ a few times”. This is most noticeable in the Survivor trilogy, the three most recent main entries in the series. In each of them Lara is mostly confined to a single location, and solves more general puzzles throughout the story, with more classic tombs only featured as smaller, optional side activities. What might this change in direction mean for the future of the series?
“The Survivor trilogy did spend a good deal of time in ancient ruins and tombs, but certainly also were very much about telling the story of how Lara became the Tomb Raider,” Dickinson says. “That said, while I don’t have any specific announcements about future games, we know that players absolutely love exploring tombs and they love the search for powerful relics and artefacts.”
Given that details on the next game are currently thin on the ground, it should be no surprise that Dickinson is remaining tight-lipped. However, what we do know is that the next game will attempt to link up the older games with the Survivor trilogy - likely connecting the events of Shadow to Legend or Underworld. How, when the connections between the Original era and the Legend era are already contentious, can Crystal Dynamics hope to do that?
“I don’t know that any developer can please all fans all the time, even on games with more straightforward histories,” Dickinson admits. “Our goal is to honour the various timelines and make as many decisions as we can to unify them. That said, we know that we will have to make a few hard choices about what is fact and what is legend – when we do that, we hope the fans will understand that we are making the choices that best allow us to continue our story going forward.”