Legends and icons never die. Lara Croft is both of these things, and so she lives on in the form of two new games coming over the next few years.
The return of Lara and Tomb Raider at The Game Awards this past week was one of the show’s highlights, especially considering that Amazon Games Studios revealed these multiple games at once: Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis in 2026 and Tomb Raider: Catalyst coming in 2027.
I followed up on the announcements with a presentation from Crystal Dynamics devs the day after The Game Awards, and while they couldn’t reveal too much, it’s clear that this is the start of a new era for the franchise and its heroine that the studio is excited about.
A lasting legacy lives on
Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is coming out sometime next year, and Crystal Dynamics is calling it a “reimagining” of the 1996 PS1 game that started it all. It’s being developed in tandem with another studio, Flying Wild Hog (Throne and Liberty, Lost Ark), and the devs would not use the term “remake” when describing it.
This seems to mean that it won’t be a one-to-one recreation similar to something like the recent Metal Gear Solid Delta: Snake Eater (the game’s website teases “new surprises that honor the spirit of the original”), but a way refresh the first game for a new age of gameplay and visuals. It is, though, a game fully built from the ground up in Unreal Engine 5.
“We want to honor the legacy of the original game by modernizing it with a gameplay experience, with the fidelity that’s now possible in Unreal 5,” game director Will Kerslake said. “Like 30 years of technology has happened since 1996. That’s not an easy thing to do, but ultimately our goal there is you want it to feel like it felt when you played it the first time, but play like a modern game. So, there’s vital things that we have to keep the same: that confident, capable Lara Croft, the globetrotting adventurer, the cool, strategic puzzle-solving within that space. But, we know that we need to completely adjust ‘how does this work’ when you’re interacting with the actual controller through combat and through traversal.”
Kerslake was adamant about recreating the memories and moments of the original for new players, citing the “different gaming realities” of 1996 vs. 2026, allowing Crystal Dynamics to “reimagine the feel, but for a modern play.”
“For us, it’s a love letter by fans, all of us [at Crystal Dynamics], for fans, which is everything that we do, and that’s who we do it for,” Crystal Dynamics studio head Scot Amos said of Legacy of Atlantis. “We knew the [Tomb Raider] 30th anniversary was coming up and we wanted to do something special to both celebrate that moment but still pay honor to all of the core designs, regional DNA, and intent from this amazing title that launched the franchise.”
With the reimagining of a classic, Amos said that there’s some obvious pressure that comes with that, but at this point, it’s old territory for Crystal Dynamics after several remasters in recent years and a whole reboot trilogy a decade ago.
“We’ve experienced some of this [pressure] at Crystal before, certainly, looking back at our history of what we’ve done with Tomb Raider at different times,” Amos said. “Even today, I think we put the most pressure on ourselves because we know as fans what we want. Everything we do is for the fans, so we listen very intently to the audiences and then say ‘how do we take what we’ve learned, what we’re doing ourselves, and how do we push that to that next step’? There is a tremendous pressure to be both respectful but also keeping that iconic core that has made this character enduring for so long.”
For what it’s worth, from what I gathered from the discussion, Legacy of Atlantis is giving me the vibes of what the recent remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 4 were aiming to do, where they stayed true to the original titles in many ways but improved upon them by tweaking gameplay and adding some changes to modernize the experience for current gaming times. This makes sense, considering 2007’s Tomb Raider: Anniversary was more of a direct remake of the original.
As of now, it’s unclear how these modern changes will translate, and it’s too early to say if this game will match the quality of Capcom’s efforts, for example, but it seems as though Legacy of Atlantis is aiming to capture that same sort of essence.
“I’m just getting started”
Tomb Raider: Catalyst, meanwhile, is still a long way off and the devs did not have much detailed info to give away yet, but it’s the latest foray for Croft who Kerslake described as a “top of her game, experienced” adventurer compared to in Legacy of Atlantis, which is placed at the beginning of her career and after the reboot trilogy prequels of the 2010s, although it’s unclear if everything is fully unified just yet.
The devs did confirm that Catalyst is a “brand new adventure” that’s set after the events of 2008’s Tomb Raider: Underworld, continuing on that specific PS3/Xbox 360 generation Legend trilogy nearly 20 years later once it’s out in 2027. And that explains why Lara’s appearance differs between this title and Legacy of Atlantis, the latter of which takes place many years earlier, which means she’s just aged.
One thing we do know for sure about Catalyst is that it’s set in northern India, which Kerslake said is “a land that is rich in ancient history and myths to explore,” and “a region that offers vast and varied landscapes that are begging to be explored.” He added that it will be explained how the setting connects “narratively and story-wise” to the rest of the games, but that discussion is still far in the future for now.
The team on hand was very hush on many major specifics about gameplay or most other details, but Kerslake mentioned that “there are lots of clues” in the teaser trailer for the game, including her new grappling hook item and how Croft says “I’m just getting started,” meaning that Catalyst is probably the first entry in another new trilogy for Lara.
“If you poke at that trailer, there’s a lot of cool stuff that is in the game,” Kerslake teased.
Published: Dec 15, 2025 09:00 am