Few gaming moments are genuinely transformative, but for me, the appearance of Tomb Raider was precisely that. The late 1990s were a time when games had a penchant for world-building and interactivity, promising moments of adventure and danger (especially as CD-ROM technology allowed developers to become more sophisticated in their art and design abilities). One game stuck out to me on a Blockbuster shelf one day: a title called Tomb Raider. Nothing about the box itself, besides maybe the name and cover art, was formidable at first glance. It didn’t need to be. Little and a cover image promised the magic of video game world-building with an added bonus of the first super-iconic female lead in the industry.
The instant I booted up the game and the eerie, evocative theme song began to play, I was in. The game world was so big, and there was always something going on. It was filled with hundreds of tombs—death traps by design. And by playing the game I was entering into all of that. I was activating those traps. I was solving those puzzles. And that was where the game got its title: I was the tomb raider. It was this incredible vicarious thrill that I don’t think any game before had ever quite shown in the same, uh, light.
The introduction of Lara Croft struck the world as a bolt of electricity. She was the hero the video game world needed, not just because she was a woman in a world of male heroes, but because she was smart, ambitious, and courageous—all qualities that Core Design was looking for in their lead character. On the eve of Tomb Raider’s release in 1996, none of us could have imagined that we were witnessing the birth of what would become one of the most iconic and beloved franchises in video game history.
Lara had a personality as striking as her appearance; she was a character who could not be overlooked. She was portrayed as courageous and almost reckless, as someone who would use every And where else did this character, who was an action spur for the game player, exhibit such (often impromptu) courage? In a game, a character always has to be doing something. A player needs things to do. To put it more succinctly, perhaps we can give a fond nod to Gertrude Stein’s famous the-a-rose-is-a-rose-is-a-rose-from “Sacred Emily.” In games, a player has to be busy. The player isn’t always looking. The player needs to interact and do things “as if” they were in the game world/detail here and be here now.
Choose action and make choices. Be this character.
Creating Lara Croft wasn’t easy. When Toby Gard, the lead designer, first came up with the concept for the protagonist, he had imagined the character to be a man. Around that time, many video game leads were of the male persuasion, as that was (and still is in some games) the default identity, which is also what marketing teams tend to believe sells a video game. Gard soon had an epiphany, and his idea for ‘Lara Cruz’ was born started at 09:00 in the morning until we finished around 22:00 at night. There are many, many iterations that are going through constant development.
The first time I met Lara Croft, I was in awe of her. She embodied all the characteristics that I wanted from a hero: She was courageous, smart, and steadfast when confronted with hazardous situations. In the original Tomb Raider, in which she made her debut in 1996, guiding Croft through various dangerous environments was a thrilling, empowering experience, and importantly also a lot of fun.
The gameplay of Tomb Raider was quite simply a tour de force. This was a game of firsts. It was an action game, but it was also an exploration game and a puzzle game. We had never seen a game combine all those elements in this kind of way. It put players in control of the smart, agile, and compelling character of Lara Croft and let them loose in lovingly crafted levels full of detail and intrigue. And for a puzzle game, it had some really good puzzles.
Tomb Raider was truly a pioneer in its use of 3D graphics within gaming environments. This is what separates it from the games of the 2D era. You can argue, as this video does, that the world of Tomb Raider is something like a revelation when it comes to the depth of space held within this first game in the 3D era. Compelling you to not just see but to also look around in direction within Tomb Raider’s immersive environments gives you a feeling of being somewhere. And in the game, ‘somewhere’ is where Tomb Raider really stands out. This isn’t a big surprise when you consider the fact that the humans behind the character of Lara Croft are very British, and that this game was released in 1996.
Another high point of Tomb Raider is its conundrums. They’re not all just “pull this switch” or “light this brazier.” Some of them are really, really cool—on the level of the best stuff you’ve seen in games like Myst and Pandora Directive. Some critics say the puzzles are too hard. Personally, I always felt a real sense of satisfaction after spending ten to fifteen minutes trying to twist my brain around a problem and watching what happened when I let the mechanism in question do its thing. And there are a lot of moments in this game when it’s just you and the puzzle; you’re not dealing with enemies, and so you have the chance to let the ambient noise and the great soundtrack sort of fall away and leave you alone with your thoughts.
Tomb Raider’s gameplay was largely centered around its combat, something in which it excelled. The art of gunplay was epitomized by Lara, her duel, in this case, with the most powerful weapon in the game. These pistols were not given infinite ammunition; on the contrary, the power and conservation of ammunition were very essential. They were powerful, easy to aim and use. They were very rapid-fire also, considering the fairly wide window that the enemy needed to be knocked down. A very big aspect of the enemies in the game was that they were extraordinary in the variety found from one situation to another.
In Tomb Raider, my top moment was when I came face-to-face with a T-Rex in the Lost Valley. I was simply astonished that such a huge, dangerous beast could exist in a video game. Going a few rounds with it (as if fighting a T-Rex could ever be a match you could understand) was tantamount to sheer awe and terror that eventuated in a delighted nervousness. ”Could I really get past this shaft of teeth without becoming a Lara-pancake?” is a question one would invariably ask. The T-Rex was so well done it made you, the player, feel like you were having a life-or-death moment in the game.
The Tomb Raider video game did not just come out and then pass into oblivion. It was a monstrous success, and that success rippled out widely and for a very long time. It was the mega-hit that spawned an entire series: three games for the original PlayStation; two Game Boy Advance titles; a version for the ill-fated Sega Saturn console; a couple of games for the PlayStation 2. And the PlayStation 3, as well as the 4, got its share in 2006, making the hiatus not much of a hiatus at all.
The powerful, independent figures of many female video game characters are influenced by Lara Croft. Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn, Samus Aran from Metroid, and Ellie from The Last of Us are a few of the characters who grew from Lara’s legacy. Yet, in the video game world, Lara Croft herself is seen as an icon not just as a woman, but also as someone whom both men and women can look to in moments of intensity. Both in her original and later incarnations, Croft packs some serious heat in a skillful and dual-pistol- or rifle-wielding manner — not just in a bikini, as she unfortunately yet memorably wore in Nixdorf’s ice levels.
Tomb Raider’s accomplishments are shared, in no small part, with the action-adventure genre—that includes not just the games themselves but the very software tools used to make the games (especially the engine that runs them). Action-adventure games are now more popular than ever—the top ten games on Ps4 right now include three action-adventure games (Spider-Man, God of War, and Red Dead Redemption 2)—and many people consider action-adventure to be one step better than straight-up action games in terms of narrative storytelling (thanks in part to AVC).
The cultural impact of Tomb Raider stretched far beyond the realm of video games. The character of Lara Croft herself became nothing short of a pop culture juggernaut, appearing not just in video games, but also in comic books, merchandise of all sorts, and even in live-action Hollywood films. The 2001 movie adaptation that featured Angelina Jolie in the title role no doubt brought the character and everything she stood for—a sort of Indiana-Jones-meets-James-Bond mix of smarts and action, not to mention sex appeal—to an even wider audience than the games had reached up to that point.
Not just fans and players have a lasting relationship with Tomb Raider; it has had a powerful impact on designers and developers of games that have come after it, too. Not a few of the people who make games today were once ardent admirers of Lara Croft and spent many hours not only playing her games but also investigating the ways in which they delivered their intense atmospheres and advanced buzz-worthy narratives. As a result, a lot of the character, no pun intended, of today’s big-name and big-team video games, playable on consoles, in particular, would appear to descend directly from the Croftian line.
Looking back at my own history with Tomb Raider, it’s obvious that the game made a deep impression on me. As a person and a player, I felt a real connection with Lara Croft, the main character in the game. Her bravery and determination in the face of danger and the unknown were quite inspiring. Even in the low-resolution world of the original release, the compelling gameplay inside that rich and evocative world was pretty much magical. I’ve heard other fans describe similar feelings, too.
As time passed, the Tomb Raider series produced many follow-ups. Each one attempted to recapture the enchantment of the first game while also pushing against the gaming medium’s limits. However, straying too far from the path of the original led to a reboot snafu. The series seemed lost, and the developers at Crystal Dynamics who took over from Core Design didn’t seem to have a clear idea about how to bring the game back to its former glory. But then, in 2013, they launched their own version of Tomb Raider.
The reboot filled me with both enthusiasm and anxiety—it’s not easy to reboot a character who wields as much girl power as Lara Croft. Like many players who solved puzzles beside her, I sat at the edge of my seat, wondering if the experience was going to be a new wave to ride or supply a few more towering crumbles. I was wondering: is it possible to reboot and remake something that is already near-perfect and give it a fresh new path forward?
The 2013 reboot featured a new and improved Lara Croft. She was younger, less experienced, and more relatable compared to her previous depictions. The narrative presented a situation: Lara was shipwrecked on an island; we were to believe that the details of this island weren’t important, only that it was dangerous. The story was a linear tale of what happened and who she was after the shipwreck. The game spotlighted one moment in her life, affording us an up-close look at how (we suppose) a woman becomes an iconic adventurer. Though the game was mostly keyboard-controlled (a few moves required the mouse), I played it like a third-person shooter/action game, with me calling the shots.
The modern take on the classic Tomb Raider didn’t change the fundamentals of its gameplay too much: It was still a heady cocktail of exploration, puzzle-solving, and combat in towering adventure settings. However, it did abandon the older control scheme that made the PlayStation-era entries infamous for their platforming and replaced it with a much more fluid and intuitive play style. The rich detail of the game’s environments rewards discovery and makes exploration exciting, even when it’s infuriating. And the “Peruvian Jungle” happens to be one of those levels.
The reboot’s marquee feature is an intensification of Lara Croft’s character as an avatar for the player’s intelligence and resourcefulness in a world that’s gone off the deep end. She’s got to find stuff to use as ordnance and make stuff with that. She’s got to be really observant of unique paysages. In playing the game, the player gets all the intensity, different from many other games, of the vicarious experience of a well-respected woman, really dedicated, giving her all to be a very serious help to herself and her friends on some big imperative missions.
Tomb Raider not only got a makeover; it also became more cinematic. With an already killer voice cast—Lara Croft even returned as the voice of Camilla Luddington—the characters took to screens fully realized. Then, in the first few hours of the game, each player happened upon this scene. They pushed against the limits of the PlayStation 3, and Lara Croft was fully reborn in an experience that made players dive right into the game and never look back.
The 2013 reboot was so successful that it engendered the production of not just one, but two sequels, Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. These games, which keep refining the gameplay and narrative aspects, are so good because of what they do. There is no longer any doubt that they are anything but beneficial for publisher and developer Square Enix, which is by no means obliged to continue Lara’s adventure and can go in any direction it pleases. It must, however, be noted that the new path, which offers us the action and puzzle-solving in increasingly in-the-edge-of-your-compeling seat environments, also takes things in a rather innovative direction as far as the character of the title is concerned, and she serves as a very positive role model for female empowerment.
When I played the renewed Tomb Raider series, I was taken aback by their combination of innovation and respect for past games. They seemed to strike just the right chord between exploratory, physics-based platforming and intense, satisfying combat. Like the 2013 game, this new sequel takes place in a stunning series of set pieces that whisk you from one crumbling, hostile environment to the next. There’s no longer a one-note reliance on mazes and clobbering bats; the levels pulse with a variety of their topographic and meteorological wonders.
When considering the series’ protagonist, Lara Croft, as the narrative has unfolded over the years and across multiple games, it’s difficult to think of her as merely a character in a complex work of global and transmedia fiction. At this point, with the series pushing past the 23-year mark and with millions upon millions of units sold worldwide, she has become arguably (or inarguably) as potent a symbol and an internationally recognized emblem of human fortitude as Dora the Explorer or Amelia Earhart.
Tomb Raider has had a profound impact on the gaming world. The franchise is so recognized and beloved that when one warmly speaks of “action-adventure,” the mind immediately conjures up images of the one and only Lara Croft.
There you have it: the secret is out, long ago, in fact. By the time we get to next year, 2017, it will have been 20 years since Croft and her original Tomb Raider were first introduced (Dyer, 2013, p. 8). And the video game is still here (in 2013), still selling, and its many iterations have sent millions upon millions of the “action figure” Lara Crofts out into the gaming world to be played by players with myriad consoles.
Tomb Raider symbolizes a voyage of discovery for me, in both a virtual and a personal sense. The seemingly endless amount of adventure and exploration that was required in the game, along with the clear, meaningful premise of Lara Croft going after a historical artifact and then extricating herself from the dangerous situations that she sometimes put herself in, offered me a seemingly wonderful amount of agency and problem-solving within a game world. I took these playerisms and dragged my little pixelated self forward in the world of Tomb Raider until I had finished what to me was one of the most profound series of video game experiences of my adolescent life.
The Tomb Raider series is still evolving, just as it has since the very first game hit the shelves in 1996. And I can’t wait to see where it takes my beloved virtual vixen next.
No one who was around for the original games, or even the recent ones, can pretend that Lara Croft didn’t change the way action-hero women were portrayed in video games. And her next move is sure to be just as remarkable as all her past ones have been.
