While remakes of old games often have many of their aspects changed, creative director on Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, Michał Kuk, has said that the teams at Flying Wild Hog and Crystal Dynamics have decided to leave the most emotional moments of the title “almost untouched.” Speaking to Edge Magazine (via GamesRadar), Kuk said that this includes things like vistas, locations, and even moments.
“Imagine you just finished the first Tomb Raider, then you close your eyes, and you imagine a playthrough in your head. Your brain remembers the things that generated the most emotions for you. These moments, locations, vistas, objects that stick in your memory, these are the things that have to be in the [remake] almost untouched.”
On the subject of what has been changed from the original Tomb Raider in the upcoming Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, Crystal Dynamics’ experience director Jeff Adams has pointed out that the massive jump in visual fidelity in modern games has led to the team making many alterations. “As we bring the level of realism up, there are some things from the original we struggle to justify.”
This seems to largely revolve around unrealistic things, with Adams referring to things like “finding a med pack in a tomb that’s been concealed for 10,000 years” as one such example.
These statements by Kuk and Adams call back to what Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog have previously said about Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis being a “love letter” to fans of the classic franchise.
“Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is a love letter by fans, all of us, for fans,” said studio head Scott Amos. “Looking at the opportunity we had with this, we knew the 30th anniversary was coming up and wanted to do something special to both celebrate that moment, but still pay an honor to all of Core Design’s original DNA and intent from this amazing title that launched the franchise. That is literally the debut title that’s set up for what we’re doing now, 30 years later, as part of Tomb Raider.”
“So being able to have the entire game built from scratch in Unreal 5 is why we call this a reimagining. We’ve taken all of those things that were critical from that first game, and then said, what can we do to push it through a modern-day gamer’s lens and say, this is how we can take areas that might have been a background image in the old game, now completely realized in full 3D.”
Game director Will Kerslake even joined in on the discussion, noting that rather than being a faithful remake, Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis will be more of a reimagining. This means that the development team wants to honor the original Tomb Raider’s legacy while also including modern gameplay elements that might appeal to current-day audiences.
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is being developed for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch 2, and is slated for release on February 12th. For more details, check out the most recent developer diary.
