Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider arrived in 1996 as one of the first games to make three-dimensional space itself the puzzle — the challenge was reading an environment and working out how to move through it, at a point when most action games were still fundamentally about aiming. It also put a woman at the centre of a blockbuster action franchise for the first time.
About Tomb Raider
Tomb Raider arrived in 1996 as one of the first games to make three-dimensional space itself the puzzle — the challenge was reading an environment and working out how to move through it, at a point when most action games were still fundamentally about aiming. It also put a woman at the centre of a blockbuster action franchise for the first time. The series has been rebooted twice, most substantially in 2013, and the changes between eras make it an unusually clear record of how the games industry's attitudes to its own protagonists have shifted.
Designer Toby Gard left Core Design shortly after the first game over disagreements about the character's marketing direction.
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Key eras
| Era | Years | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Core Design | 1996–2003 | The original six games; annual releases and declining quality. |
| Crystal Dynamics | 2006–2012 | Legend and Anniversary rebuild the series. |
| Survivor reboot | 2013– | A younger, more vulnerable protagonist and a redesigned character. |