Returning to their Croft
The next entry in the Tomb Raider series is on the way, and it’ll be built in Epic’s engine. Crystal Dynamics confirms that it’s working on the next Tomb Raider in Unreal Engine 5.
The news arrived during today’s State of Unreal presentation, where Epic launched UE5 to the public. The engine is now available to use, alongside some extra tools like the Lyra Starter Game and a city sample from The Matrix Awakens Unreal demo from late last year.
Crystal Dynamics is incredibly excited about the future of Unreal and how it will help us take our storytelling to the next level. That's why we're proud to announce that our next #tombraider game is being built on Unreal Engine 5! pic.twitter.com/UFMiWzJAZc
— Tomb Raider (@tombraider) April 5, 2022
Legacy of the Tomb Raider
No details were announced yet on where this journey will go or how it links in to previous Tomb Raider games. Crystal Dynamics helmed the first two reboot games, starting with 2013’s Tomb Raider and then Rise of the Tomb Raider. Eidos-Montréal, meanwhile, took up 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Things have been quiet for Lara since then, as Crystal Dynamics went to work on Marvel’s Avengers and Eidos-Montréal went to Guardians of the Galaxy. Now, it looks like CD is back on the Tomb Raider franchise, and I’m interested to see where they take the character from here.
It’ll be some added work, as Crystal Dynamics is also collaborating on the Perfect Dark reboot with The Initiative. That’s another project we’ve yet to see much of, outside of the initial announcement. It’s unclear when we’ll see either Joanna Dark or Lara Croft back on the screen again.
With all that, I’m happy to see Tomb Raider games back in development. I was a fan of reboot trilogy, and would definitely like to see where Crystal Dynamics could go. The Matrix demo was pretty impressive too, and Tomb Raider games have usually been good showpieces for tech and visuals.
The new Tomb Raider is also now one of several projects in development on Unreal, including the next Witcher game from CD Projekt Red. Today, Epic confirmed over 85 studios are working on UE5, including those two and The Coalition. Seems like Unreal is off to a running start with the new engine.