When Tomb Raider was rebooted by Crystal Dynamics back in 2013 it was a fresh reintroduction to entirely new yet familiar Lara Croft. Taking a chance Crystal Dynamics sought to reinvigorate one of the most well-known names in video games, and they delivered. Following off the first game Rise of the Tomb Raider arrived in 2015 equally as successful if not a bit more popular than the first game. Crystal Dynamics stating that it would be a story about Lara becoming the Tomb Raider fans knew she was. Cut to E3 2018 with Crystal Dynamics stating, again, that Lara would be becoming the Tomb Raider one more time in Shadow of the Tomb Raider. If slightly confused, it’s because the same statement has been used for all three games, it’s strange that Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix are being a bit tepid in how they discuss this next chapter, because from the look and sound of things Shadow of the Tomb Raider is going to some astounding places.

From what has been seen, Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the darkest chapter yet, and Lara doesn’t need to become the Tomb Raider she needs to figure out that being the Tomb Raider isn’t and end all be all, and the world doesn’t revolve around a singular person.

The story of Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one of ego, about the single mindedness that can take hold of a person and blind them to any other reality than their own. From the outset Lara immediately jump starts the apocalypse due to sheer negligence sidelining any since of reason. Lara will have to learn that she can’t fix everything and that we need to reach out to others for help for this exact reason. Finding herself in an environment unlike any of the previous games, Lara will have to learn from everything and everyone. This will be the first Tomb Raider to feature a major hub world where Lara will trade, upgrade equipment and other things.

[embed width="696" height="392"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB53HC5UP8o

When working on Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Crystal Dynamics made sure to bring on a historian to combine many different cultures into a unique culture to Shadow of the Tomb Raider. If players say something is historically inaccurate, Crystal Dynamics will say, ‘that’s right, because we made it up and blended these cultures together.’ This is the biggest world yet for a Tomb Raider game with more things to do, see and tombs to explore than any other game. If players want to get fully immersed in the experience they can turn on a full immersion mode so HUDs disappear, people speak their native language and there is a real since of survival to the jungle.

Everything seen thus far from Shadow of the Tomb raider looks to be continuing the excellent story of this new Lara Croft and she will be facing demons not from the outside but from within. Shadow of the Tomb raider will be available on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One September 14, 2018.