Tomb Raider: Legend details
Lara returns with relatively normal-sized breasts, but tiniest t-shirt ever. Oh and a new game.
Ah, Lara - how we've missed her athletic exploring and ancient artefact-appropriating antics. But now Eidos has found time in its busy schedule of being taken over by SCi to reveal a few more details about her next adventure.
Tomb Raider: Legend is the latest in a series of games which can be individually summarised as Good, Nearly As Good, Too Hard, Quite Good, Dull and Rubbish. It's being developed by Crystal Dynamics, the people behind Legacy of Kain, and will be their first TR title.
"In setting the stage for the Tomb Raider franchise moving forward, we took ourselves back to Lara's origins, asked ourselves the hard questions and challenged ourselves to think differently," said Eidos bigwig Chip Blundell.
"Who is Lara Croft? What makes her tick? How is she relevant today? Only by answering these questions could we ensure that gamers get the experience they deserve." Let's just hope they also remembered to ask "Why was the last game so shonky?"
To make sure things go right this time, Crystal Dynamics set up "the biggest and most diverse development team in Tomb Raider history" and even got Toby Gard - Lara's Dad - on board as lead character designer.
"Even before the first title launched Lara Croft had to fight her way into the Tomb Raider franchise, since at the time most game characters were muscle-bound blokes," said Gard.
"The Lara Croft character is resilient and totally unstoppable. In Tomb Raider: Legend, we explore these core personality traits and reveal the Lara Croft gamers have been waiting to see." We know what you're thinking, now stop it.
Crystal is promising intricately animated expressions, moves and abilities, with a character model that features a natural structure and detailed facial features. All of this "makes her part of a living environment", apparently. You can find renders of Lara here.
For gameplay they've gone back to Lara's roots - exploration, puzzle-solving and general adventuring. And she's got a healthy selection of guns and gadgets to play with, including frag grenades, binoculars, communications equipment and a magnetic grappler - all designed to "allow gamers to experience tomb raiding as never before."
Tomb Raider: Legend will appear on PS2, PC and Xbox. No release date yet, but Eidos is promising to reveal more details on the game's official website from April 12.