Line #40 Trivia/TombRaider


1	* BabyNameTrendStarter:
2	** In English-speaking countries, the name Laura spiked in the late 1970s/early 1980s, died down, but popped up again briefly as "Lara" around the beginning of the 2000s in a resurgence attributed to the Tomb Raider franchise. Oddly, it doesn't seem that many gamers directly named their daughters after the character, but that the game's popularity simply caused the name's visibility to increase enough that non-gamers became more aware of it.
3	** Outside of English-speaking countries, both relatively obscure Laura got its resurgence, and previously unseen Lara started to pop up since the turn of the millennium. While in the case of Laura the influence is debatable, the fact that a previously unrecorded Lara started showing up definitely qualifies.
4	* ExecutiveMeddling: Hoo boy. [[Creator/EidosInteractive Eidos]] saw the franchise as a money making machine and they demanded a new Tomb Raider game be pushed out every year, quality be damned. This line of thinking eventually bit them in the ass when ''Angel of Darkness'' tanked in sales and reviews... for which [[NeverMyFault they've put entire blame on Core Design]]. Then they've restarted the entire cycle ''again'' with Crystal Dynamics, until they were bought up by Creator/SquareEnix - who had ''their'' share of meddling into the dev cycle.
5	* FranchiseZombie:
6	** ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderChronicles Chronicles]]'' was thrown together on publisher demand for a quick buck.
7	** And then after that, there was ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderTheAngelOfDarkness The Angel of Darkness]]'', which was almost a FranchiseKiller.
8	* InsistentTerminology: While being fully correct, use of the term "second reboot" toward ''VideoGame/TombRaider2013'' is one of the easiest way to spot fans of original Core Design continuity.
9	* MoneyDearBoy:
10	** Jeremy Heath-Smith, the chief executive of Core Design, was very open about what motivates him to keep assembling new teams for yet another ''Tomb Raider'' game. On the other hand, he was always making sure [[AFatherToHisMen all the team members get fat and even slices of the money made by the studio]] for the harrowing work to push yet another game in 8 months. He is still fondly remembered by all the members of the staff.
11	-->For me, it was really important that they did something with that money - bought a house, or invested it (...) I was always the advocate of "Let’s make as much hay as we can while the sun shines. And while that’s not, from a creative perspective, the best approach, it certainly is one approach when the sun is out."
12	** Creator/EidosInteractive had a far more cynical approach to the series, treating it as a goose laying golden eggs and demanding a new game to be delivered on a yearly basis, quality or even finished state of the product be damned. Such an approach, along with an ever-increasing reliance of profits generated by new Tomb Raider games, eventually bit them in the ass, being one of the reasons why the company ended trapped in a debt death spiral.
13	** Creator/SquareEnix had a rather... peculiar approach to the franchise. Despite selling record number of game units for all three of the games developed under their ownership, along with [[VideoGame/LaraCroftAndTheGuardianOfLight two]] {{Gaiden Game}}s, they constantly cited "poor profits" and "lack of sales". Up to the point their initial reboot in form of ''VideoGame/TombRaider2013'' only got extended into a trilogy after the game broke the record of sales - and was ''still'' cited as an underperformer by Square executives. Ultimately, the ''Tomb Raider'' brand was sold to Embracer Group[[note]]Along with rights to ''Franchise/DeusExUniverse'', ''VideoGame/{{Thief}}'' and ''VideoGame/LegacyOfKain'' and related studios[[/note]] - for over ''three times the money'' Square spent to buy Creator/EidosInteractive (ownership of which they retained). Ironically, when Square Enix made the original purchase, they were predominately interested in Eidos' ''shipping and storage capacity'' for European markets, and not the library of games, further adding to their instrumental treatment of the franchise.
14	* OneHitWonder: Anyone even remotely related with developing games within the franchise seems to share this fate:
15	** Core Design never managed to create any game even remotely as big as ''Tomb Raider''. Their biggest success prior was ''VideoGame/ChuckRock''.
16	** Toby Gard never managed to recreate his ''Tomb Raider'' success (however, his ''Here They Lie'' for PSVR is quite popular and praised). Paul Douglas never even ''made'' another game and nobody knows what happened with him since the late 90s - he just vanished without a trace. The remaining members of the original six also never managed to deliver anything else of any importance or popularity.
17	** Ever since picking up the ''Tomb Raider'' franchise, Crystal Dynamics seems to be stuck with it, [[CripplingOverspecialization not making any other titles at all for the past decade]]. And the record sales of ''VideoGame/TombRaider2013'' make it highly unlikely they will ever manage to outdo them.
18	* RuleThirtyFourCreatorReactions: The creators of ''Tomb Raider'' are fully aware of how popular Lara Croft is among the community, probably due to the infamous [[UrbanLegendOfZelda nude code legend.]] Video game magazines joke about this, like one ad for ''VideoGame/TombRaiderIII'' that said, "Sorry, still no nude code".
19	* ScrewedByTheLawyers: The ''Tomb Raider'' [[ComicBook/TombRaider comics series]] was a LongRunner, published by [=TopCow=] for 8 years in total, able to outlive Core Design and apparently the game series itself. When it was announced the franchise would be passed to Crystal Dynamics, obvious problems with licensing started. The original deal for comics was made when Core was still the sole holder of the rights - and now they are held by Eidos and leased to Crystal Dynamics, [=TopCow=]'s license wasn't even revoked - it was as if it never existed in the first place. Since the company wanted to continue their work and Crystal Dynamics' only requirement was ContinuityReboot to fit the new Lara, all remaining plot threads were wrapped up by the final, 50th issue and... that's how the series ended. Lawyers of both companies proceed to exchange letters for next two years, after which everyone simply lost interest. To salt the wound, years later Crystal Dynamics hired not [=TopCow=], but Creator/DarkHorseComics to provide {{Interquel}} mini-series for ''second'' reboot.
20	* SexSells: The conclusion of Eidos execs when deciding how to sell a game about a strong, independent and intelligent female protagonist. The quality of advertising for the first three games really suffered due to this and soon after the first game's release, Toby Gard and Paul Douglas ''quit'' out of pure disgust caused by the raunchy ads.[[note]]There was an incident where Gard went to the marketing team to show them a posters he made of Lara in order to get them to see her as a badass adventurer instead of an sex icon, but they brushed him off and one of the marketing members went "Who are you? Why are you trying to tell us what to do? You're a developer." This was the final straw that made Gard quit.[[/note]] On the other hand, this sex-backed imagery '''really''' bolstered sales, turning Miss Croft into an icon.
21	* TrollingCreator:
22	** A promo video from the '90s concluded with one of the developers, seated at his workstation, responding to a burning fan question: What does Lara look like without her clothes on? He turned to his computer, which had Lara's in-game model open in a modeling program, and after a drawn-out moment of anticipation, he.... turned the texturing off, reducing her to a wireframe.
23	** ''VideoGame/TombRaiderII'' has exactly the same cheat codes as the first game... except Lara needs to hold a lit flare. No flare? ''She will explode'' upon finishing either of the codes.
24	* TroubledProduction: The entire run under the Core banner was one huge problem, from the very start of the series, partially due to the way Core was (not) structured internally. Crystal Dynamics also had its own moments of this.
25	** ''VideoGame/TombRaiderI'' was made by a team of ''six'', while giving them free reign with whatever they wanted to pursue. After the game became a smash hit, due to CreativeDifferences with marketing department of then fledgling Eidos Interactive, Toby Gard, the main creator behind the game, and Paul Douglas, lead programmer, decided to quit, realizing they had no control over the character they created nor the loud, sex-appeal driven marketing.
26	** ''VideoGame/TombRaiderII'' had a new, slightly restructured team, but it was still a relatively small project run by the [[IncrediblyLamePun core]] members of original team, most notably Heather Gibson, the level designer of the first game. After it was made, the team disassembled ''itself'', with most of the people involved leaving and being done and through with ''Tomb Raider'' and with no ideas where to drive the series without taking a break to develop a new engine and think about new stories, thus...
27	** From ''VideoGame/TombRaiderIII'' to ''VideoGame/TombRaiderChronicles'' a completely new team was working on the franchise, with just minor parts of the previous team being involved. The increasingly toxic environment and lack of any cooperation with Eidos eventually led to the infamous decision to simply kill Lara off... which Eidos management decided to overrule when it was already too late to just cancel ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderTheLastRevelation The Last Revelation]]''.
28	** Due to the amount of work needed, Core Design finally had enough time to move to Platform/PlayStation2 (which was planned as early as the release of the third game) and develop a new engine for it. Because the company had no real structure to speak of and Jeremy Heath-Smith, the main executive of Core Design, was constantly tied by different project at Eidos, the first year of work created ''nothing''. While there were 40 people involved in the project, nobody was in charge and nobody knew what were the goals - nobody even ''set them''. And out of those 40 people, none were involved in making of any of the previous games in any other way than secondary programming. Suddenly the full creative freedom went against the company. It wasn't helped that there were a lot of people hired from the outside, thus undermining the fraternity which allowed them to manage all the previous projects without any supervisors. By the time damage control started to be implemented, it was already mid-2002. Eidos, which needed Tomb Raider revenue to maintain solvency, set two absolutely unrealistic dates, then changed plans completely and released the unfinished game just to close revenue report in April 2003. ''VideoGame/TombRaiderTheAngelOfDarkness'' suffered greatly due to all of this.
29	** Core's big comeback was suppose to be The 10th Anniversary Game project, utilizing the new free running engine they were developing in the meantime. Due to corporate in fights, licensing issues and legal battles, Core was eventually stripped of their own material, concept arts and scripts, which was all passed to Crystal Dynamics to work on, even though Crystal Dynamics wasn't originally interested in the project.
30	** In Crystal Dynamics first go, there were two different teams working on the games. One was responsible for ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderLegend Legend]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderUnderworld Underworld]]'', while the other was tasked to quickly churn out ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderAnniversary Anniversary]]'' as fast as possible. There was close to no interaction between the teams and it eventually led to the postpone of Underworld to rewrite the story and redesign large chunk of the game to make it all a coherent continuity - Natla wasn't even planned to appear in the game, while she ended up as the BigBad of it.
31	* UrbanLegendOfZelda: One of the most notorious. Straight from the first game, fans spread a rumor that there was a code that could make Lara naked. Uh, no. [[RuleThirtyFour As much as fans might depict her]], not in the actual game.
32	** Although it started out as a rumor, it's been defictionalized with several patches. These patches go from the very first game, to the 1st reboot and even the 2nd reboot. Yeah...
33	* WhatCouldHaveBeen:
34	** Before things started to formalize with legal assistance, in the early days of the franchise, there was a project for a comics series by [[FrancoBelgianComics Glénat]], green-lighted by Eidos. Dark Eons managed to only release a single issue before it was quickly cancelled and removed from the market, as other branches of Eidos finalized their deal with [=TopCow=]. The single issue has a considerably different tone, themes and atmosphere.
35	** Lara was originally supposed to die for real at the end of ''The Last Revelation'' - Core Design wanted to kill her off as they were [[CreatorBacklash fed up with having to make a new game every year]]. [[ExecutiveMeddling Eidos Interactive had other ideas]].
36	** ''The Angel of Darkness'' was supposed to be the first game in a trilogy. [[spoiler:Karel]] was supposed to survive and be in Turkey, trying to bring back his fellow Nephilim. Kurtis's fate apparently depended on how much the fans liked him (i.e. he would come back if he was really liked, or he would not if he was really disliked). Of course, since ''The Angel of Darkness'' [[ExecutiveMeddling failed miserably]], the trilogy idea was scrapped and ideas attached to it along with it - [[OrphanedSeries and the original continuity was never continued]].
37	*** Also in the same game, the watch Lara can find in Francine's apartment was supposed to play a bigger role or at least have a sub plot of its own.
38	*** The planned trilogy was going to reveal that the Nephilim and Atlantean races were connected, and Natla was possibly going to be brought BackFromTheDead, thus connecting it to the very start of the series.
39	*** Jean-Yves was planned to be killed in the beginning of the game instead of Werner, and Werner instead was going to play a much larger role in the game.
40	** Creator/CoreDesign were in the process of making their own remake of the original game (which was looking to be far more faithful than ''Anniversary'') before Eidos dropped them. An alpha build of the game eventually leaked online and was further tweaked by the fans to make it playable, only adding fuel to the "what if" pondering that started right after ''Anniversary'' premiered.
41	** At one point developer Creator/TravellersTales pitched a Franchise/{{LEGO}}-themed game based of the franchise to Creator/EidosInteractive but due to a copyright dispute with Creator/LucasArts (complicated stuff), as well as the franchise not lucrative enough to warrant a LEGO game, the idea was scrapped.
42	** Before Creator/SquareEnix took over and went for a complete reboot, Crystal Dynamics was working on ''Tomb Raider: Ascension'', which was going to be a completely different genre and experience than any previous game. It was intended as a SurvivalHorror game set in open world, with Lara travelling around on horseback and fighting for her survival against hordes of supernatural beings summoned by ''something'' in that area. The game also had very detailed physics for bows... and flamethrowers. Many elements from Ascension were later retooled to be used in ''VideoGame/TombRaider2013'', which might explain why certain elements of the 2nd reboot feel a bit disjointed from the rest (like the concepts of finding shelter and food).
43	** A port for the Platform/{{Gizmondo}} was cancelled after the handheld's disastrous launch.
44	* WordOfSaintPaul: Andy Sandham, who was the level designer for ''VideoGame/TombRaiderIII'' and then the lead writer for ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderTheLastRevelation The Last Revelation]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderChronicles Chronicles]]'', is probably the best source of trivia about Core's run of the series and providing explanations for numerous elements that ended up in or removed from the franchise. He wasn't involved in any way with making the original game aside watching Toby Gard play-testing it. He also quit the company before the development of ''[[VideoGame/TombRaiderTheAngelOfDarkness The Angel of Darkness]]'' really went sour. He became the unofficial spokesperson for Core Design after the company was dissolved and is highly respected for this both among fans and former colleagues.

Context Trivia / TombRaider