It has been almost 4 years cine the launch of the last Lara Croft adventure, Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, and so, naturally, the anticipation is well underway for what comes next. Stewards of the franchise in recent years, Crystal Dynamix have been working on the ill-received Marvel’s Avengers, and most recently a collaboration with Xbox’s The Initiative on an upcoming Perfect Dark game, while Eidos Montreal who were responsible for Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, are fresh from having released Guardians Of The Galaxy. Both however have new homes with the Embracer Group after they were sold off by Square-Enix earlier this year. All of this has left the Tomb Raider IP in limbo, but now, thanks to Colin Moriarty and his Sacred Symbols podcast, we might have an indication of what Lara’s future endeavours may entail.
According to Moriarty, there’s a script that is being used to cast the necessary actors for the game, which was shared by Moriarty and the show’s team as they did their own best take on the script. According to the casting notes for the game, and specifically Lara, the project is looking to cast an “authentic British” actress in their mid-30s “in the prototype of Emily Blunt or Rosamund Pike”, and the role will involve “romantic scenes with another female character”.
The script outlines the following,
“Lara Croft is now at the top of her game… gone are the days of the young, inexperienced women dealing with matters of legacy and familial reckoning.”
“Lara has let go of her childhood and fully embraced the life of an adventurer… her legendary career has been lauded and printed in tabloids, tall tales of adventure that have inspired a new generation of tomb raiders to seek their fortunes in the world.”
“With this new phase of her life, Lara fully accepts her place among the ruins. For many years Lara plunged the depths of forgotten places, played cat and mouse with many nefarious opponents, and worked to uncover, preserve, and protect the lost secrets of the world, less they fall into the wrong hands.”
“As the years have passed, Lara has become lonely at the top… the beginning of this next chapter presents Lara with a quintessentially adult problem: facing something too big to handle alone.”
It’s this final line that gives us the greatest indication of the potential collaborative nature of Lara’s next expedition. She has had company in latest titles, such as Jonah, but the framing of these notes suggests that those accompanying her may be there for far more than just moral support. We’ll know in time.
