New Lara Croft Needs to Be Relatable, Likeable

The rebooted Tomb Raider video game that will be launched in 2013 will have to create a more relatable Lara Croft in order to eliminate the distance that previous installments in the series have put between her and gamers.

Darrell Gallagher, the man who leads Crystal Dynamics, has told MCV that, “She was obviously fully-formed; she was a confident, wisecracking adventurer and it was something that people weren’t necessarily connected to 15 years in. So we wanted to strip it down, give her a personality, make her feel more human, grounded and believable.”

The developer says that previous incarnations of the character were hard to relate to because she was too posh and was just too confident for players to find any connection with.

Gallagher added, “You look at some of the actresses that are popular at this point, someone like a Keira Knightley, she’s just a very likeable English girl and that’s the kind of person that you’d imagine Lara to be like. We really wanted to make her a little bit closer to somebody you could know.”

Lara Croft will start the new Tomb Raider as a girl and the game will watch her as she struggles with loss and a lot of other emotions as she confronts danger for the first time in her life.

The character will explore a mysterious island and the things that she faces will force her to toughen up and become a capable adventurer.

Gallagher has suggested that the inspiration for the reboot was drawn from other series re-imaginings like Batman Begins and Casino Royale.

Crystal Dynamics has generated controversy during E3 2012 by showing a scene which suggested that Lara Croft was the target of sexual abuse.

The new Tomb Raider will be launched on the PC, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.