Reboot Lara is 21 years old

Following yesterday’s announcement that Crystal Dynamics is rebooting the Lara Croft Tomb Raider franchise, further details have emerged from the pages of Game Informer magazine.

The new Lara is 21 in the game and will only exist within the game – there will be no “real” Lara model associated with the game. This time around there will also be performance capturing.

The all new Tomb Raider promises to be much more violent, too. Lara’s always had a penchant for nasty deaths – we’re thinking of falling onto spikes – but the reboot sounds particularly grim. One death sees a deranged man stabbing Lara in the chest until she dies, then closes her eyes. Another features a boulder falling and trapping her legs, followed by another which crushes her head.

The next game will also be the first time Lara will be able to explore a truly open world environment.

“I think that the major difference between this game and the old is the concept of smoke and mirrors,” said Darrell Gallagher, the studio head at Crystal Dynamics. “There was an illusion of freedom because of streaming and loading that would pop you out in a different location, but this is absolutely real. You can literally go any direction that you see and carve your own way to the finish line instead of being guided.”

The open-world island will feature a series of base camps. Here Lara will be able to combine items to create something new and upgrade Lara’s abilities using a skill tree. Base camps will also be used to fast travel, much like the camps in Red Dead Redemption.

There’s still no word on platforms or a release date.

Via NeoGAF

So far the new Tomb Raider sounds like it will be a radically different experience to the games which have come before it. Whether or not this will translate into sales success remains to be seen.