Thirty Years of Lara Croft

Few people are better positioned to reflect on three decades of Lara Croft than Meagan Marie. A longtime member of the Tomb Raider team at Crystal Dynamics, author of 20 Years of Tomb Raider, and a fan who has cosplayed the character more than a dozen times, she has spent her career at the intersection of Lara’s past and her future. With Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis on the horizon, the anniversary is a chance to look at how one adventurer has been carried forward across thirty years.

It began in 1996 with Core Design, a small studio in Derby, England. A tiny team of six primary developers, with additional art and audio support, built the original Tomb Raider and, in the process, created one of gaming’s most enduring icons. “They changed the face of the industry, and they changed the face of what we expect from our protagonists,” Marie says. “They are responsible for creating the franchise that we all love thirty years later.”

Lara was the vision of designer Toby Gard, conceived as a heroine defined by intelligence and athleticism, and her impact reached far beyond the screen almost immediately. By the late nineties she was appearing in magazines dressed by Alexander McQueen and Gucci, effectively the first virtual model. “Lara Croft has always been a curious and complex figure,” Marie says. “She’s an academic who values reason yet is willing to accept the seemingly impossible. She’s effortlessly cool and witty but will geek out when unearthing history. Lara contains multitudes.” That combination, created by Core Design, is the foundation that everything since has been built on.

For nearly two decades, Crystal Dynamics has carried that legacy forward. Taking over the franchise, the studio faced a defining challenge: how to move Lara into each new era without losing what made her Lara. “There’s that foundation of what makes Lara, Lara,” Marie says. “It’s the passion for uncovering the unknown, the sense of wonder and discovery, her physical prowess, even her quippiness. That foundation of who Lara is has always been there. It’s about pushing and pulling the different levers in the different situations and the different stages of her life.”

That stewardship took shape first across the Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld trilogy, which modernized Lara’s movement and storytelling while protecting her core. Then, in 2013, Crystal Dynamics did something bolder: it rebooted the character entirely with the Survivor trilogy. For Marie, that reinvention is personal. She wrote the cover story that first revealed it to the world. “I was working at Game Informer magazine and I wrote the cover story on the Survivor Series. I was the first journalist in the world to be introduced to it,” she says. “I just saw the vision and I fell in love with it.”

What won her over was watching Lara become the hero players already knew. “You get to see her doubt herself, push through her own fear to find true bravery,” Marie says. “You can see the building blocks falling into place.” The reboot also brought in a whole new audience. “We now have fans that tell us they grew up playing the reboot games as children, that the 2013 game was their first introduction to the franchise,” she says. “It’s a huge honor to add to that legacy.”

Now Crystal Dynamics returns to where it all began. Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis is the studio’s reimagining of the 1996 original, developed in collaboration with Flying Wild Hog, built to represent every version of the iconic Lara Croft at once. “It’s a culmination of everybody’s passion and thirty years of history,” Marie says, “a chance for longtime fans to relive the story and for newer players to finally see where the legend began.”

Thirty years on, Marie sees a character with as much ahead of her as behind. “Lara Croft has inspired millions of people around the world, including myself, since she debuted in 1996,” she says. “She has a bright future ahead of her, just as bright as her legacy. We are just getting started.”

Lara Croft’s greatest adventure begins February 12, 2027. Pre-orders are live now on the XBOX Store, so secure your edition before launch.

Want to go deeper? Watch our ongoing series of mini-documentaries on the making of Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis on our official YouTube channel: youtube.com/@PlayTombRaider.