Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis Preview: A Familiar Remake Gets Modern Teeth

At this year's Gamescom, a small group of onlookers watched Crystal Dynamics play through part of the Greece level in Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, the newest remake of the 1996 original. No one in the audience was allowed to touch a controller. The playthrough was narrated by Jeff Adams, the studio's experience director, and it ran for less than 30 minutes.

The game's history makes the question of whether it needs to exist a fair one. The 1996 Tomb Raider put its young publisher Eidos Interactive on the map, helped establish the original PlayStation as the leading console, made Lara Croft a global icon, spawned a run of sequels, and was even drawn into Tony Blair's Cool Britannia promotion. It has already been remade once, as 2007's Tomb Raider Anniversary, and was re-released again in 2024 as Tomb Raider I-III Remastered. Metro's preview admits that the suspicion of a pointless exercise is hard to shake.

The ownership has changed too. Crystal Dynamics has looked after Lara since 2003, when Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness went so badly that original developer Core Design was removed from the franchise. Eidos is long gone, and Square Enix has divested itself of the property, so Legacy of Atlantis will be published by Amazon Game Studios. It is due on February 12 next year, after a delay into the spring.

Adams described the aim as preserving what makes these places special while finding new ways to heighten their beauty, so that returning fans feel the first playthrough reignited. In practice, Crystal Dynamics has not gone the route of Square Enix's three-part Final Fantasy 7 remake. It has adapted the original design for modern tastes. Levels are physically larger, and some areas in the demo dwarfed their originals, which had often felt cramped because of the technology of the time.

The demo covered the Damocles Trial in the Ancient Greece environment, reached through the catacombs beneath St Francis' Folly. Lara first meets a swarm of bats, now more numerous, agile and annoying, which forces her to draw her pistol. That moment introduced a crafting system in which gathered resources become a healing balm. The visuals are heavily upgraded, but the gameplay comes from Crystal Dynamics' post-2013 reboot games, so Lara also gets a skill tree.

A leopard follows. Lara cartwheels around it, dual-wielding pistols in the classic manner, and landed shots fill a focus meter. Once it is full she can enter focus mode, where time slows for precision shots. The leopard moves far more realistically than in the original, even hiding in the scenery before ambushing her.

New tools appear as well. A scanner lets Lara analyse objects and works as a hint system: it showed that a locked door needs four keys, three already in place and one still to find. Adams said the hints can be switched off and that the scanner also reveals extra lore. Lara now has a grapple for longer jumps, which the studio later said also allows vertical traversal, and she crafted a potion giving brief damage resistance.

The old puzzles have been rethought rather than left alone. In the room of falling giant swords, Lara shot the blades down from the ceiling so the hilts became footholds, letting her reach a previously inaccessible area. A skill called Deadeye, which steadies her aim, let her hit the farthest swords. Shortly before the second piece of the scion, she picked up a pottery owl relic that unlocks her outfit from Tomb Raider Legend. Crystal Dynamics was coy about it but hinted that relics may offer more than cosmetics.

After the scion piece, Lara returned to the underground Ancient Greek city, again larger and more lavish than the original but faithful to its mood. Metro found the demo promising: familiar, yet far less clunky and richer than the Core Design games. Whether it changes too much can only be judged by playing it when it arrives next spring.