If you’re a fan of the Tomb Raider franchise, then last week’s presentation of the annual The Game Awards was a particularly momentous occasion, as not one but two Tomb Raider titles were announced, including a remake of the first game, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, as well as a brand-new entry in the action-adventure series, Tomb Raider: Catalyst.
While we won’t see Catalyst until at least 2027, Legacy of Atlantis is sprinting towards a release date next year. Ahead of its release, in a presentation with members of the media, Crystal Dynamics developer Will Kerslake outlined just how Legacy of Atlantis is approaching difficulty, especially considering that the original slate of Tomb Raider games were notoriously non-beginner friendly.
Turns out, the team is really taking a look at how it structures things.
“Part of re-imagining a game right is adjusting that game evolving for modern player tastes,” Kerslake said, as transcribed by GamesRadar. “It is core to the Tomb Raider experience that there are puzzles in combat and traversal and death-defying action.”
Still, it’s not like the traditional Tomb Raider charm won’t be part of Legacy of Atlantis, as Kerslake noted that “you’ll see big rolling balls, and you know, the things that you expect in a Tomb Raider game are going to be there in spades.”
In other words, Lara will still have to contend with spikes, dinos and other dangerous beings, but there will no doubt be auto-saves, plus less frustration overall.
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The Original Tomb Raider Games Were As Brutal As Brutal Gets
For those who’ve played the OG Tomb Raider games and want a bit of frustrating nostalgia, or for those who’ve not played those titles and are unaware, Tomb Raider was genuinely pretty difficult.
Now, some of that may be owed to the fact that, like with Crash Bandicoot and attempting to traverse levels, the polygons sometimes didn’t add up to where you were supposed to be, resulting in some rather brutal death scenes.
Case in point:
Seriously, it’s a big enough topic nowadays that there are entire death compilation videos for a PS1 game.
By the time Anniversary was released, the game did manage to add in save states, so things were less frustrating. Back then, it was considered a big deal.
Flash forward to the modern Tomb Raider trilogy, and while things weren’t nearly as difficult, the franchise did manage to keep some of the more vicious death scenes in place.
These are brutal enough that there is a serious argument to be made that they are darker than what The Last of Us has ever done. There’s probably a good chance that many of those OG scenes get recreated, though based off the developer’s words, they may be a bit more difficult to make happen.
- Released
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2026
- Publisher(s)
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Amazon Games
- Number of Players
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Single-player
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