Ever closed your eyes after finishing a game and replayed the best bits in your head? That's exactly the test the Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis team used when deciding what to keep in their remake.
The upcoming title takes the setting and story of the 1996 classic and builds something new from it, following the Resident Evil and Final Fantasy 7 approach to remaking a game rather than a near-1:1 recreation like Metal Gear Solid Delta or The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. That direction has drawn some criticism for adding modern AAA mechanics like crafting and skill trees, but the developers believe they've gotten the important parts right.
"Imagine you just finished the first Tomb Raider, then you close your eyes and you imagine a playthrough in your head," Michał Kuk, creative director at Flying Wild Hog, tells Edge. "Your brain remembers the things that generated the most emotions for you." He explains that the moments, locations, vistas and objects that stick in your memory are the things that have to be in the remake almost untouched.
So what does get changed? Jeff Adams, experience director at Crystal Dynamics, says that as the team brings the level of realism up, some things from the original are hard to justify. His go-to example: finding a med pack in a tomb that's been concealed for 10,000 years. It's a fair point in a game where you shoot dinosaurs with guns.
That split approach is the heart of the project: protect the memories that hit hardest, and rethink the smaller details that don't hold up under a more realistic lens. For longtime fans, it means the scenes you remember most should still land the way they did back in 1996, while the world around them gets a modern coat of paint and some extra systems.
Whether that balance satisfies purists is the big question, especially with crafting and skill trees now in the mix. But the team's stated priority is clear: the emotional beats come first.
What do you think? Are you happy to see the most memorable moments preserved, or would you rather the remake shake everything up?
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