A new Tomb Raider has been announced that will run on Unreal Engine 5, but what else do we know about it? Fans are wondering if it’ll continue the story started in the 2013 reboot or if it’ll be another reboot and start a new continuity. We’ll look at the possibilities below.
Will the new Tomb Raider be a sequel or a reboot?
The new Tomb Raider could be a sequel to Shadow of the Tomb Raider, or it could reboot the series once again. Shadow of the Tomb Raider concluded the reboot trilogy pretty definitively. Even if we control the same Lara Croft the new game will likely start a new arc.
Crystal Dynamics might take one interesting approach: the new game could be a sequel to Shadow of the Tomb Raider and a reboot of the 1996 original. At the conclusion of Shadow, Lara has gained the experience and confidence we saw in the original incarnation of Lara Croft, and she ends the game at Croft Manor, which is where the tutorial level of the 1996 classic starts.
However, since Shadow of the Tomb Raider sold slower and moved fewer copies than previous games, we might see a departure from the linear experience that the series has given us. While it ended up being very successful, Square Enix blamed the slow uptake on a lack of originality compared to other titles at the time.
We know Days Gone director Jeff Ross will be directing the new Tomb Raider, so the series might be moving to an open-world format. However, given the string of recent flops from Square Enix, Crystal Dynamics might be instructed to stick with a proven formula instead of possibly alienating the franchise’s fanbase.
Development has just started on the game, so we likely won’t get more solid details for quite a while. However, we’ll keep updating this article as we find out more.
