When Ralph Bell began experimenting with point and line simulations of table tennis, or when Alexei Pakitenov was inspired by jigsaw puzzles to program the elimination of block drops. They should not have imagined that decades later, these simple color blocks would rely on 3D technology to become a vivid image, with female characteristics, and even shape one of the most important female characters in the history of gaming.
And her story needs to start in 1996, when a company called Core Design launched an action-adventure game called Tomb Raider on the Sega Saturn platform, which is based on the perspective of a modern tomb robber, with wall climbing, diving, shooting, puzzle adventure and so on as the core. Show a game that resembles Raiders of the Lost Ark but is completely different from the Raiders of the Lost Ark. As soon as the game came out, it created a sales miracle of 700W units worldwide. Not only that, the protagonist of the game, Laura, also appeared on the cover of the British men's fashion magazine "The Face", attracting the attention of men all over the world and becoming the first "virtual sex symbol" in human history.
But things never went so well, and after Tomb Raider 1 launched and was a huge success, game designer Toby Gard and programmer Paul Douglas chose to leave. The reason for leaving is also very simple, as the first 6 creators of the "Tomb Raider" project, when designing Laura, they hope to give people a sexy, but not high, like a beautiful and excellent woman. The distribution company Edios had the opposite idea, and the company wanted them to render as sexy an image of Laura as possible, making people feel that she was a sexy creature in the virtual world.
With the departure of the two main creators, only four creators remained, and the development of Tomb Raider 2 was required to be launched before Christmas in 1997, so the entire Tomb 2 development cycle was only eight months. It is conceivable that in the following days, the whole team began to work endless overtime, and even each person only rested at the table for an hour before continuing to work. According to normal logic, the quality of the products that came out of this rush will only be poor, but in fact, "Tomb Raider 2" far exceeds Eidos, and even the expectations of players, Tomb Raider 2 sales have once again soared, directly exceeding the previous game, and even rated as the best Tomb Raider.
Just as the so-called iron still needs to be hot, the distributor Eidos continues to drop the holy will "Tomb Raider 3" to be launched before the birthday. Ironically, they continue to use the way Tomb 2 was developed to develop the game, Tomb 3 is still a big seller after the launch, but the good times are not long, all the problems are highlighted after the release of "Tomb Raider 3", the vast majority of professional media believe that this series is difficult to have more innovative measures, if you can not maintain the current momentum, "Tomb Raider" may have an unfavorable situation, which coincides with the development team.
So in 1999, in Tomb Raider 4, Laura was slow to move due to her injuries and was eventually buried in the collapsed Temple of the Sun God. Of course, the production team did this, the company's top management is certainly not happy ah, how can the golden signboard be hidden and play?
This was followed by constant pressure from publisher Edios, who in November 2000 launched their fifth-generation production, Tomb Raider: Chronicles. Although Laura came back from the dead, the quality of the work was thunderous due to being driven to the shelves by the distributors, and as the media and development team expected, the reputation of Tomb Raider 5: Chronicles collapsed.
But all this seems to have turned around with the release of the 2001 Tomb Raider movie, which debuted with a box office success of $48.2 million, pushing the series to the peak once again. With her iconic braids, vest, and hot and sexy hot pants, angelina Jolie, the heroine with a real devilish figure, has allowed many players to see the real-life appearance of Laura' game character and rekindle interest in the Tomb Raider game series.
However, even if Laura's performance on the screen is brilliant, it is difficult to save the fate of this series of IP to decline. In 2003, in order to make "Tomb Raider 6" become the first masterpiece on the ps2 platform, the company rapidly expanded the team, under such an expansion, followed by a serious lack of planned project management by the company, resulting in a direct loss of control of the process, coupled with Eidos as the publisher did not choose to give Tomb 6 too much time, and later in the game is about to go online a month before the production team to port the game to the PC platform, the result can be imagined, this time they are not so lucky, After the game was launched, due to the operation of the PC version or the set of controllers, the reputation of the series finally fell to the bottom, with rough textures and serious bugs, which disappointed the fans who have been supporting the series.
At this time, the publisher Eidos and the company's top management went back to accountability, and the main creator Jeremy definitely did not do it, and directly left with the team. With Jeremy's departure, Eidos handed over the development rights to Tomb Raider to Crystal Dynamics, a california-based game studio. But the series fell silent due to the 2003 Tomb Raider disaster.
It wasn't until 2006 that Crystal Power's Tomb Raider Legends was officially launched, and they proved it to be a successful series reboot with their work. The game quickly topped the UK game sales charts after its launch and lasted for three weeks. As of June 2006, Tomb Raider had sold 2.9 million copies across platforms, and Laura had been included in the Guinness Book of World Records as "the most successful video game actress in history".
But after that, Tomb Raider released only two sequels, Tomb Raider 10th Anniversary Edition, and Tomb Raider Underworld. Although these two works were excellently produced, they were not popular in the North American market, and until the end of 2008, Tomb Raider: Underworld sold 1.5 million copies. This disappointed the publisher Eidos at the time! Directly fired 30 people, including the creative director of Tomb Raider 8. After this incident, the Tomb Raider series fell completely silent!
Until 2013, it took a full five years for the Tomb Raider series to usher in the second reboot. And the new Tomb Raider, the name is also very simple, just called Tomb Raider. The new version of Laura abandons the human design of the action heroine, and players can see a more realistic image of the heroine in the game. In addition, due to the upgrading of the engine, the new works in 2013 will have better pictures than the previous works.
In the 2013 reboot "Tomb Raider 9", the background and origin of Lara were also revised and brought out, using a prequel to return to the origin of the protagonist Laura's adventure. The main story focuses on Laura's first tomb expedition, her first adventure at the age of 21. Such a design can be described as very bold, but in fact, it can also be understood as trying to avoid the failure of the previous Tomb Raider series. But in any case, Crystal Power did succeed, he changed the players who had been impressed by the failure of the Tomb Raider, and also changed the players who had not yet touched the Tomb Raider and wanted to try the series.
Crystal Dynamics launched the other two titles of the series in the time that followed, Rise of the Tomb Raider and the latest One, both focused on gameplay, taking the first less adventurous work of 2013 to a higher level. Connecting with the plot of the previous generation, the image of Laura in these two works is much more mature, and the game no longer deliberately highlights Laura's figure, but uses the showmanship of the game and the real strength of Laura to win the player's favor. It is precisely because of this new series that the reputation of the entire Tomb Raider series has changed.
From 1996 to 2018, Laura's baptism with the development of the game allowed players to witness the growth of Laura as a game character. Lara, who combines independence, courage, perseverance, intelligence, sexiness and charm, will undoubtedly become a role model in many games, completely changing the status of female characters in the game, they are no longer vases, but can be the same adventurers as male characters, but perhaps more than male characters to act as explorers and female characters seem to shine in the dark tomb. Finally, I hope that in the future works, Laura will have a new transformation, which will bring players a different feeling.