THE FEATURE
FORMAT PS2 / RELEASED 2003 / PUB EIDOS INTERACTIVE DEV CORE DESIGN / GET IT NOW EBAY, FROM £2.99
Murti Schofield and Richard Morton talk to Vic Pheasey about Lara Croft’s darkest tale, Kurtis Trent, and her path to PS2
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Lara Croft’s grittiest adventure to date: Tomb Raider: The Angel Of Darkness. Wrongly accused of her mentor’s brutal murder in Paris, the sixth series entry sees Lara set out to clear her name and continue Von Croy’s work, retrieving the five Obscura paintings.
Each painting hides a piece of the Sanglyph, an artefact that holds the power to revive the last remaining Cubiculum Nephili, known as ‘The Sleeper.’ For alchemist Pieter van Eckhardt and the Cabal, rebreeding the entire race remains the goal. But before Lara could stop yet another evil mastermind, her journey from developer’s page to console was every bit as demanding.
OUT OF THE TOMBS
Crofty’s apparent death at the end of the fourth game couldn’t silence the constant demand for more, and Core was pushed for ways to revive her – fifth game Tomb Raider Chronicles was built around tales being told of Lara’s exploits at her memorial service. Writer Murti Schofield was recruited to help begin a new era: “There were some excellent storytellers on staff, but everybody was exhausted. I was asked to come up with a game concept and story that could span across three games […] The pressure was on to create something new and visionary, with the addition of a spin-off character.”
As Schofield began to craft ideas weaving in legends of the Knights Templar, Nephilim, and alchemic mysteries, lead game designer Richard Morton also felt the challenge when overhauling both Lara and her environments. “The hardware played a major hurdle; we were working on prototype PS2 hardware for most of the development. We’d built quite a large to make them look as real and detailed as possible, [but] it was just too big.”
“[Another] main level we cut was the scrapyard. Even with very basic wrecked cars it was still too detailed.” Understandably unsure after two decades, Morton reveals “I’m sure the scrapyard was to be part of Paris; Lara had to go there in search of a character that could help her possibly enter the sewers.” The average occupational hazard, right Lara?
Sadly, some carefully planned narrative threads also got the chop. “The story was chunk of the environ
