That drove a wedge between the developers and their distributor.
“That’s just not the character in the games.
She’s not that kind of girl.”
EIDOS; Everett Collection; Graham Bartholomew/Warner Bros.
We were actually backfilling a story for her.
But we hadn’t really thought of anything beyond that.
I was like, ‘How the f should I know?'"
MOBY GAMES
Tomb Raider II (1997)
As Croft’s profile ballooned, so did Core’s workload.
Croft’s international appeal broadened even further.
But the marketing guys totally brushed him off," Rummery recalls.
Matthew Fearn - PA Images/PA ImageS/Getty Images
They didn’t want any input from us whatsoever.
They got ahold of it and they considered it theirs."
But according to Rummery, “The games never went down that route.
Moby Games
We wereconstantlyasked about the [nonexistent] nude cheat.
We even riffed on it at the end ofTomb Raider II.”
“She just seemed to appear at the right time,” he says.
MOBY GAMES
“Games were a bit more in the public eye.
It was a perfect storm.”
Suddenly you had this character that people saw as a woman.
Lucozzade/YOUTUBE
Theyrecognizedher as a woman.
It wasn’t some sort of fat Italian plumber jumping around this magic land.
She was something people who weren’t into video games could relate to.
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She was real, like a movie star."
Players navigate their memories as a teenage Croft on the cusp of becoming a worldly traveler.
“She lived quite an alternative lifestyle, and she didn’t hold back her words.
MOBY GAMES
She spoke her mind, and she had a notorious reputation.
I wanted that mythology of Angelina Jolie to fuse with Lara Croft.”
“There hadn’t been enough organization,” he said.
Everett Collection
“Everyone was keeping their head down.
No one wanted to take responsibility, so it had no leadership.
Rummery added that Eidos cut large portions of the ambitious project at the last minute.
MOBY GAMES
“Half the things that were supposed to be going on weren’t there anymore,” he said.
“It ended up being very disjointed and not very polished at all.”
She’d rise again when Crystal Dynamics took control of the franchise from Core.
Moby Games
“It was before the 2013 reboot, so we weren’t looking at modern survival-action yet.
Croft’s next-gen system debut would go on tosell about 3 million units worldwide.
It was great escapism, but we’ve seen a lot of characters like this, living in fantasies.
EIDOS
We wanted to explore that kind of growing with the character.
Alicia Vikander takes Croft in new directions (2018)
Square Enix
Square Enix
Graham Bortholomew/Warner Bros Images
