Lara Croft - Development History

Development History

Core Design, a subsidiary of Eidos, created Lara Croft as the lead protagonist of its video game Tomb Raider, which began development in 1993. Lead graphic artist Toby Gard went through about five designs before arriving at the character's final appearance. He initially envisioned a male lead character with a whip and a hat. Core Design co-founder Jeremy Smith characterized the design as derivative of Indiana Jones, and asked for more originality. Gard decided that a female character would work better from a design standpoint. He also claimed a desire to counter stereotypical female characters, which he has characterized as "bimbos" or "dominatrix" types. Smith was sceptical of a female lead at first because few contemporary games featured them. He came to regard a female lead as a great hook and put faith in Gard's idea. Inspired by pop artist Neneh Cherry and comic book character Tank Girl, Gard experimented with different designs, including a muscular woman and a Nazi-like militant. He settled on a tough South American woman with a braid named Laura Cruz. Eidos management preferred a more "UK friendly" name, and selected Lara Croft from similar-sounding British names found in an English telephone directory. Along with the name change, the character's backstory was altered to incorporate a British origin.

Gard was keen to animate the character realistically, an aspect he felt the industry at the time had disregarded. He sacrificed quick animations in favour of more fluid movement, believing that players would empathize with the character more easily. In the first Tomb Raider, Croft's three-dimensional (3D) character model is made of around 230 polygons. The graphical limits at the time required the removal of the character's braid from the model; it was added to the model for subsequent iterations. While adjusting the character model, Gard accidentally increased the breasts' dimensions by 150 percent. After seeing the increase, the rest of the creative team argued to keep the change. Core Design hired Shelley Blond to voice Croft after the game entered the beta phase of development. Gard left Core Design after completing Tomb Raider, citing a lack of creative freedom and control over marketing decisions related to the ideas he developed (especially Lara Croft).

Core Design improved and modified the character with each instalment. Developers for Tomb Raider II increased the number of polygons in the character's model and added more realistic curves to its design. Other changes included new outfits and manoeuvres. Core Design reportedly planned to implement crawling as a new gameplay option, but the option did not appear until Tomb Raider III. Actress Judith Gibbins took over voice acting responsibilities and stayed on through the third game. For Tomb Raider III, the developers increased the number of polygons in Croft's 3D model to about 300, and introduced more abilities to the gameplay. Core Design wanted to reintroduce the character to players in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and included a flashback scenario with a younger Lara. The developers expanded the character's set of moves threefold to allow more interaction with the environment, like swinging on ropes and kicking open doors. The character model was altered to feature more realistic proportions, and Jonell Elliott replaced Gibbins as the voice of Lara Croft. By the time development for The Last Revelation began, Core Design had worked on the series constantly for four years and the staff felt they had exhausted their creativeness. Feeling the series lacked innovation, Core Design decided to kill the character and depicted Croft trapped by a cave-in during the final scenes of the game.

The next title, Tomb Raider Chronicles, depicted the late Lara Croft via her friends' flashbacks. The game introduced stealth attacks, which would carry over to the next game, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. While the original development team worked on Chronicles, Core Design assigned a new team to develop Angel of Darkness for the PlayStation 2. Anticipating innovative changes from next generation consoles, Adrian Smith—co-founder of Core Design—wanted to reinvent the character to keep pace with the updated technology. Core Design conducted market research, including fan polls, to aid in Angel of Darkness's development. The development team felt it could not alter the character and instead opted to place her in a situation different from previous games. The PlayStation 2 hardware allowed for more manoeuvres and a more detailed character model; the number of polygons in Croft's model increased to 4,400. The team sought to add more melee manoeuvres to better match Lara Croft's portrayal as an expert fighter in her backstory. Movement control was switched from the directional pad to the analog control stick to provide more precision. After the original team finished Chronicles, it joined the development of Angel of Darkness. Excess content, missed production deadlines, and Eidos's desire to time the game's launch to coincide with the release of the 2003 Tomb Raider film resulted in a poorly designed game; Croft was brought back to life without explanation and the character controls lacked precision.