Fear Effect

Lara journeys to the jungle for Eidos Montreal’s darker, deadlier, and stealthier SHADOW OF THE TOMB RAIDER.

- Phil Savage

In 2013, we met Crystal Dynamics’ rebooted Lara Croft—a young archaeologist who crash lands on a deadly island off the coast of Japan. Far from the confident adventurer of Tomb Raider games of old, this Lara was scared and unsure of herself—albeit in possession of a quiet, burning determination to survive and rescue her friends.

In the reboot’s follow-up, 2016’s Rise of the Tomb Raider, Lara is more proactive. She travels to Siberia in order to follow up on her father’s research, and in doing so learns of the secretive and sinister Trinity organization that killed him. This year’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider completes her origin story. Lara is now taking the fight to Trinity, and discovering how far she’s willing to go to get revenge.

My initial reaction to playing Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and talking to the new lead development team at Eidos Montreal, was surprise that this latest game is continuing—and concluding— this origin story. Rise finished with Lara ready to take on the mantle of ‘Tomb Raider’. She’d come to terms with her family’s legacy, and even raided a bunch of tombs. What does that leave?

The answer, it seems, is another question: can Lara go too far? “We see her arrive in this game fully capable,” says lead writer Jill Murray, “and now instead of learning new skills and how to survive, she has to realize how much power she has and decide what she’s going to do with it. A hero can also be a threat, so which one is she going to choose to be in the end? She is going to make a lot of mistakes and then have to confront her complicity.”