Summary
Concept art and development footage from a cancelled remake of Tomb Raider: Anniversary that was being developed by Virtuos Shanghai has been shared online.
AsTomb Raider fans who have spent years waiting for news on the next big game from Crystal Dynamicsare more than aware of, it’s been a long time since Lara Croft had a proper new game of her own.We’ve had two remastered collections featuring six of Lara’s classic adventures in the past two years, but there hasn’t been anything more substantial than that.
While that still remains the case right now, it seems that there were some plans to bring Lara back in a way that’s slightly bigger than the remasters that we’ve had. According to a recent leak,Crystal Dynamics was previously working with Virtuos Shanghai on a remake of Tomb Raider: Anniversarythat was cancelled.
We Almost Got A Remake Of Tomb Raider: Anniversary
At Least We Can See What It Would Have Looked Like
The project, which was apparently in development from 2019, was a collaboration between Crystal Dynamics and Virtuos while the series was still being published by Square Enix.Over on Twitter, Tomb Raider account infinityTRaider shared imagesthat were recently leaked from an early build of the remake, giving us an idea of what it might have looked like.
As you can see from the link above, the images show various unfinished renders, including one of a remade version of Anniversary’s Lara Croft, who looks both younger and more detailed than in the original game.The leak comes from Archive.org user ropir20606, who shared a drop of the renders and gave some context for the project.
According to them,the remake initially started as a simple port of Anniversary that was then shifted to a bigger upgradeusing the Rise of the Tomb Raider engine. The project was apparently cancelled a few months after the first playable in 2019 due to complications with the engine merging as well as “other reasons”.
InfinityTRaider notes that remake might not be the right term for the project, as it actually seems like a Deluxe Remaster of sorts.
Images of Lara’s model have seemingly leaked in the past before being quickly deleted, as they can’t be found anywhere outside of the Archive post. Tomb Raider fansite CoreDesign has reportedly confirmed the leak to be legitimate, which makes the whole thing a little heartbreaking considering how long we’ve gone without more Tomb Raider.
