Is there life left in the “Tomb Raider” franchise?
If the game series continues, the next “Tomb Raider” may no longer center on Lara Croft, but her adult daughter. It would examine the relationship between mother and daughter, and feature their adventures tomb raiding together. At least that would be the next game if Camilla Luddington, who has voiced Croft for the last three games, has her way. And “Shadow of Tomb Raider” performance director Darryl Purdy likes the idea, too.
“I would love to jump ahead and see Lara with a daughter tomb raiding together,” Luddington told Variety in the lead-up to E3. “I want to know what her relationship would be with her daughter, see her having that experience.”
The revelation came at the end of the interview with Luddington and Purdy.
“I think the daughter should be the main character,” she said, noting that she wouldn’t be interested in seeing a game where the daughter is simply another prize for Croft to swoop in and save. “It would be super complicated. I think you would find out more about her relationships. Who is the father? Does Lara still have a relationship with him?”
Popular on Variety
Purdy said he’s had a conversation with Luddington about her idea several times.
“The thing my mother used to say is that you can’t understand what it’s like unless you have kids,” he said. “I find myself thinking it would be a very interested thing for her to explore.”
“Shadow of the Tomb Raider,” due out this fall, is the third in a trilogy born out of the 2013 reboot of the series and its hero. Luddington voiced Croft throughout the games and she said she’s come to know the rejiggered character on a deep level.
The first game in the reboot trilogy had Luddington voicing Croft fresh out of college, naive and eager about the world. She’s ready to explore, but then becomes shipwrecked. In that experience on the island, she is essentially torn down and rebuilt.
“In that first game, she is trying to survive her environment and is trying to save the family she has made,” Luddington said. “In the second game, Lara becomes the hunter. She is after Trinity and she wants to discover the relationship they have with her father.”
In “Shadow of the Tomb Raider,” Croft has tunnel vision and has ended up in a dark place in her journey.
“I think only in the third game could I describe her as being a villain in her own world,” she said. “The lines are more blurred. In previous games, she is willing to endanger herself. In this one she endangers others.”
Purdy agreed.
“In ‘Shadow of the Tomb Raider,’ she is at her most human,” he said. “We kind of put Lara in a situation where she has to be stripped down to the core to something very raw to have that breakthrough to find who she wants to be.”
Luddington said portraying Croft in the span of these games gives her the ability to reflect back on the journey they’ve been on together.
When asked if she’d want to portray Croft again after this trilogy wraps, Luddington pauses.
“That’s a hard question,” she said. “There is a part of me that, with the way the trilogy ends, can imagine sitting back and being so proud, and I could feel my work is done with her.”
