The prospect of capturing what made the original Tomb Raider special in a modern form is a difficult one, which is why Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is more than just a ‘remake’ in the traditional sense. At Summer Game Fest, we spoke to Experience Director Jeff Adams and Game Director Raul Siqueira of Crystal Dynamics, alongside Art Director Arek Tomaszewski of Flying Wild Hog. Here’s what they had to say about why the studio is avoiding that particular term, how the new entry is reimagining the classic action-adventure game for the modern day, and the exact nature of its disclosed AI use.
The official Steam description for Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis dubs it “a stunning reimagining of Lara Croft’s debut adventure […] with jaw-dropping visuals, modern gameplay, and new surprises that honor the spirit of the original.” The distinction between terms for ‘an old game recreated anew’ has always been somewhat muddy, but Tomaszewski tells us he considers the ‘remake’ branding to convey primarily a graphical upgrade, while keeping the level design and overall size more or less the same as in its original form.
“What we’ve done is we’ve taken the unique points of the original game, then the story and the moments that people remember and keep in their memories, and we just reimagined them.” He explains more specifically: “We make them bigger, we make them different. We expand on the lore, we expand on the whole environment, storytelling – it’s a much, much deeper experience than the original one, while maintaining the key points and the key places and the key memories that people have.”
“There’s a lot that went into the creative process of making this game,” Siqueira adds, “from figuring out traversal systems to how combat’s going to play. So we like the word ‘reimagining,’ purely because it really emphasizes how much we are rebuilding from the ground up, and how much of every other Tomb Raider game that we looked at for inspiration kind of takes place in this.”
Adams points to one example of this, courtesy of those classic cog-style clockwork puzzles found on walls in the 1996 incarnation. “We started coming into it saying, ‘How are we going to get this to feel like a more authentic environment, one that really feels like you could actually go out into the world and discover it?'” He says this required a combination of narrative context to explain why the system exists, and also the presentation of them in the world.
“You get this beautiful complex where water drives this intricate machinery, so you get that expression – it’s faithful, but it’s this new presentation format that feels fresh,” Adams continues. “It’s never a case of ‘Hey, let’s just change that because we feel like it, guys, let’s just go in and do it differently.’ It’s always about what is best for the story and for what players are expecting.” Siqueira chimes in: “We didn’t want to make environments bigger just for the sake of being bigger – we want a place to have fun exploring, and finding every little nook and cranny.”
The team is also bringing across influences from its ‘Survivor trilogy’ (beginning with 2013’s Tomb Raider and continuing into sequels Rise and Shadow). Adams mentions that modern Lara has “a lot more human depth – we love previous incarnations of Lara, but there was a relatability to Lara in that phase. So we made sure that when we came back to re-present Lara in her ‘classic phase’ that we still preserved some of that humanity.”
With that said, there’s much more of an inherent confidence to this incarnation of Lara. “You see it in the trailer,” Adams notes, “We want that bravado, we want that sense of when she walks into a room, all eyes are on her, and she controls it. We have that Lara in Legacy of Atlantis, where she carries that depth. Alix [Wilton Reagan] pulls it off masterfully.”
One of the new additions in Legacy of Atlantis that has made its way across from the more recent Survivor trilogy is crafting. During Tom’s time with the demo, he was finding the likes of potatoes and mushrooms, so naturally had to ask. Siqueira confirms, “There is a crafting system – we’re not quite ready to talk about it.” He notes the healing mechanics in the demo and comments, “Crafting is tied to that, and some other surprises that we’ll be talking about very soon.” Stay tuned for more details on exactly what that looks like, then.
Lastly, it would be remiss to not touch on the controversy that has sprung up around the AI disclaimer on the Legacy of Atlantis store page. The answer we get appears to have become the developer’s stock go-to response on the matter: “We see AI as a tool that can help our team get to the right answers faster. So in early level development, we might have an idea for an in-game object, but we’re not sure whether we want to take the time to build it.
“We can use a generative-AI tool to visualize it in the world, and if it works, we’ll then move it to our traditional pipeline. From there, our team will concept it and build it, making sure that all the finished content in the final game is human-crafted. We just want to make it as easy as possible for the team to be able to make high-quality experiences, because our fans deserve the best.” That’s the final word for now, and while I’d personally wonder why more traditional placeholder assets couldn’t achieve a similar result, you can make your own judgment on how you feel.
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is set to release on Friday February 12, 2027. You can wishlist it now to stay up to date with it in the meantime.
Additional reporting by Tom Hopkins for PixelArena.io at Summer Game Fest.