Lara Croft is the protagonist of one of themost hardcore action-adventure gaming franchisesin the industry,Tomb Raider. With the countless ‘main’ games, and a significant number of spin-offs and subseries, the franchise keeps growing by the minute. Naturally, with this number, comes an almost daunting gameplay and storyline that holds a lot to be covered by the players.
However, since the game ultimately revolves around the rich, strong, smart, and occasionally enigmatic archeologist main character, Lara Croft, there are certain missions and certain interactions that hold more relevance in the overall big picture of the story. These typically contribute to Lara’s character development or are showcased to highlight her strength—quite reasonable given the complexity of her character and the depth of her backstory to be explored.
Winston, Lara’s significantly older and strangely sprightly butler who keeps following her around the manor, being pesky, is one of the most prominent features of theolderTomb Raidergames. The guy is completely harmless and the most he does is carry around a metal tray with him to protect himself from when Lara attains a gun in the manor and starts shooting him—been there, done that. Having said that, there’s an odd, almost creepy energy surrounding him and, frankly, he does not give off very “ally” vibes. So, regardless of Lara’s history with him, most players simply choose to lock him in the massive freezer outside the manor.
While this entry in itself may just be considered a filler one—for laughs and giggles—it holds a unique significance as one of the earliest ‘combat mechanics’ players encounter in Lara’s journey.
Tomb Raider I-III (Original Timeline) and Tomb Raider: Anniversary (Legend Timeline)
Tomb Raider: Anniversary
Tomb Raider: Anniversary retraces Lara Croft’s original genre-defining adventure globe-trotting 3rd person action-adventure in pursuit of the legendary Scion artifact. Using an enhanced ‘Tomb Raider: Legend’ game engine, the graphics, technology and physics bring Lara’s adventure and pursuit of a mystical artifact known only as the Scion right up to today’s technology standards and offers gamers a completely new gameplay experience.Re-imagined, Anniversary delivers a dynamic fluidly and fast Lara Croft, massive environments of stunning visuals, intense combat and game pacing, and an enhanced and clarified original story.Epic Exploration - The lost city of Atlantis and ancient Egyptian pyramids are ripe for discovery: explore every hidden dark crevice and impossible heights; enter into strange, undiscovered lands and solve their deepest, darkest mysteries; open doors to new realms, uncover great rewards and unearth secrets to Lara’s past.Acrobatic Gunplay - Deftly leap around charging enemies while you unleash a hail of bullets from your trademark dual pistols.
The T. rex running at Lara at full speed inTomb Raider: Anniversaryis probably one of themost intense and scariest momentsinallthe Tomb Raider games. Because it’s the first major hostile entity in most of the games it appears in—particularly Anniversary—it essentially sets the tone and pace for the rest of the game in terms of fighting and combat. Defeating it also represents Lara’s fighting prowess and ability to tackle much bigger and worse creatures and bosses in the near future.
There is a historical implication with defeating the T. rex as well, considering how dinosaurs are an extinct species. The terror of the beast can literally be felt through the screen and is even demonstrated through quick-time events and adrenaline mode.
Tomb Raider: Legend (Legend Timeline)
Tomb Raider: Legend
Follow Lara Croft down a path of discovery as she travels the globe to remote, exotic locales in search of one of history’s greatest artifacts that unleashes unwelcome figures from Lara’s mysterious past. With guns blazing, Lara must use her athletic ability and intellectual wits to explore vast, treacherous tombs, riddled with challenging puzzles and deadly traps. Experience an adrenaline-fueled adventure in Tomb Raider: Legend!Travel the globe as Lara Croft, the critically-acclaimed dual-pistol wielding heroine, of the classic Tomb Raider series. Discover tombs and explore living breathing, lost ancient realms which hold clues to the secrets of Lara’s past.Physics, water, and fire systems bring perilous environments of Lara’s world alive, creating new deadly challenges and obstacles. Intuitive and fluid control system allows for seamless handling of any obstacle and interaction with dynamic surfaces.Utilize an arsenal of new weapons, communication devices, a grappling hook, and other tools, to achieve your goals. Explore ancient tombs, treacherous jungles, snowy mountain ranges, and more!
One of the best aspects of theTomb Raidergames is the fascinating way they take certain parables from history, reconceptualize them in their own unique way, and trace them to Lara somehow. This ends in some seriously interesting history lessons that are way more interesting than reading them in books. Locating pieces of the great King Arthur’s iconic sword Excalibur inLegendis one such history lesson that no one will sleep on anytime soon.
After learning of her mother’s history with the Excalibur and realizing that she may still be alive somewhere, Lara sets out to locate fragments of said sword around the world in the hope that reassembling them would give her more information. The fragments of the sword give its holders strange otherworldly powers, and understandably, Lara goes through a lot of trouble to get them in her hands. Shefights off the Japanese Yakuza, has to travel to Ghana and Siberia, and even unexpectedly discovers King Arthur’s tomb and comes face to face with a serpent monster guarding said tomb.
In the new Survival timeline, Lara has continued problems with the secret hostile organization known as Trinity. They are the main antagonist organization of the 2015 and 2018 installments and are alluded to in the 2013 one. They are a group of power-hungry fanatics who seekpowerful ancient artifactsas a source of their unyielding strength—not caring what the consequences of acquiring these artifacts would be.
Running with this concept inShadow of the Tomb Raider, the organization acquires a godly Mayan Dagger that holds cataclysmic powers divine enough to trigger a chain of events that would result in the annihilation of the world—The Cleansing. Trinity wants to use the apocalyptic event to remake the world on its own terms and exercise forced control over its people. Lara, with the assistance of an ancient Goddess, puts a stop to their plans by killing most of the High Council members of the organization, which in turn, completely decimates it.
It’s no secret that Lara isn’t a normal human.She’s fearless beyond belief, has a knack for jumping into trouble before thinking, and definitely holds a dark side to her “good Samaritan” persona. She also has no qualms about diving headfirst into a one-on-one battle with ancient gods that she seemingly has no power over. And that’s exactly what she does when she comes across the Egyptian god of chaos, Set, inThe Last Revelation.
After accidentally setting the tyrant god free from his powerful curse, and letting him out into the world, Lara’s sole goal is to rectify what she did wrong. However, to do that, she has to find, liberate, and work together with another ancient Egyptian God, Horus. Unfortunately, things don’t go her way, and she’s forced to improvise taking on Set alone. She eventually figures it out and somehow manages to seal Set forever, but cannot escape the Tomb in time and is lost in its destruction.
A lot of the theme of this franchise revolves aroundLara somehow not being able to fully processher father’s death and constantly chasing ghosts of the past to get a glimpse of his genius. She’s incessantly plagued by it and is even more disoriented over the fact that the world thinks of Lord Craft as a mad historian with no sense of reality. She vows to prove everyone wrong, even if it means exposing and publicizing a kind of information to the world that would cause it more harm than good—like finding an artifact that would give its owner divine Immortality.
That, however, changes inRise of the Tomb Raider, when Lara finds out that, in order to prove the existence of the Divine Source and the possibility of immortality, she is going to have to put a lot of people’s lives at risk. Realizing that the cost of truth heavily outweighs its results, she decides to destroy the Divine Source and put an end to her obsessive tendencies forever, even if it means keeping the world in the dark about her father forever.
