Lara Croft is a character and the main protagonist of the video game franchise Tomb Raider. She is presented as a highly intelligent and athletic English adventurer and archaeologist who ventures into ancient tombs and hazardous ruins around the world. Created by a team at British developer Core Design that included Toby Gard, the character first appeared in the video game Tomb Raider in 1996.
Core Design handled the initial development of the character and the series. Inspired by strong female icons, Gard designed Lara Croft to counter stereotypical female characters. The company modified the character for subsequent titles, which included graphical improvements and gameplay additions. American developer Crystal Dynamics took over the series after the 2003 sequel Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness was received poorly. The new developer rebooted the character along with the video game series by altering her physical proportions and giving her additional ways of interacting with game environments.
Lara Croft has further appeared in video game spin-offs, printed adaptations, a series of animated short films, feature films, and merchandise related to the series. The promotion of the character includes a brand of apparel and accessories, action figures, and model portrayals. She has been licensed for third-party promotion, including television and print advertisements, music-related appearances, and as a spokesmodel.
Critics consider Lara Croft a significant video game character in popular culture. She holds six Guinness World Records, has a strong fan following, and is among the first video game characters to be successfully adapted to film. Lara Croft is also considered a sex symbol, one of the earliest in the industry to achieve widespread attention. The character's influence in the industry has been a point of contention among critics; viewpoints range from a positive agent of change in video games to a negative role model for young girls.
Characteristics Lara Croft is depicted as an athletic woman with brown eyes and dark auburn hair, frequently kept in a plait or ponytail. The character's classic costume is a turquoise leotard, light brown shorts, calf-high boots, and tall white socks. Accessories include fingerless gloves, a backpack, a utility belt with holsters on either side, and two pistols. The video game sequels introduced new outfits designed for different environments, such as underwater and cold weather. In the later games, Croft wears a crop top, camouflage pants and black or light brown shorts. When exploring, she often carries two pistols, but has used other weaponry throughout the series. She is fluent in several languages.
Lara's backstory has changed dramatically over the course of the series. During the first era, beginning in Tomb Raider (1996), game manuals describe the character as the Wimbledon, London-born daughter of Lord Henshingly Croft (Lord Richard Croft in Legend and Survivor timelines). She was raised as a British aristocrat and betrothed to the fictitious Earl of Faringdon. Lara attended the Scottish boarding school Gordonstoun and a Swiss finishing school. At the age of twenty-one, she survived a plane crash, which left her stranded in the Himalayas for two weeks; the experience spurred her to shun her former life and seek other adventures around the world. Croft published books and other written works based on her exploits as a mercenary, big-game hunter, and master thief. These provided her with a replacement source of income after her father disowned her over her change in lifestyle.
During the second era, which began with Tomb Raider: Legend (2006), Lara's story was changed to be the daughter of archaeologist Lord Richard Croft, the Earl of Abingdon, and someone who was quickly identified as a highly talented individual while attending the Abingdon Girls School. The plane crash was changed to when Lara was nine years old, and with her mother, Amelia Croft. While searching for shelter, Lara and her mother took refuge in an ancient Nepalese temple, where Lara witnesses her mother vanish after tampering with an ancient sword. Her father later disappears in search of his wife. This spurs Lara on to seek the reason for her mother's disappearance.
The third era, established in Tomb Raider (2013), deviates from the original plot considerably. When Lara was young she travelled with her parents on many of their archaeological expeditions which helped to shape the woman she was becoming. It was on one of these expeditions that her mother, Amelia Croft, vanished and was presumed dead and when her father Richard presumably took his own life a few years later, she was then left in the care of Conrad Roth. Even though she inherited a vast fortune, giving her the means to attend Cambridge with ease, Lara chose to study at University College London. Though this was a much tougher choice, it helped her become more grounded and level-headed than she might otherwise have been. She also ended up meeting her best friend, Samantha Nishimura, during her time at UCL. It was because of Sam's free spirit and a wild streak that Lara was able to experience much more of London than just the universities and museums that she loved so much. After travelling the world, both Lara and Sam end up on an expedition to the Dragon's Triangle off the Japanese coast in search of the lost civilization of Yamatai. It is on this expedition that Lara is stranded on a remote island full of natural, human and supernatural dangers, which enables her to develop from an untested young woman to a survivor. After experiencing the supernatural powers of the ancient world, she comes to realise her father was right about his theories and her hunger for adventure awakens.
Character development history
Core Design, a subsidiary of Eidos, created Lara Croft as the lead protagonist of its video game Tomb Raider, which began development in 1994. Lead graphic artist Toby Gard went through about five designs before arriving at the character's final appearance. He initially envisioned a male lead character with a whip and a hat. Core Design co-founder Jeremy Smith characterised Gard's initial design as derivative of Indiana Jones and asked for more originality. Also known as Ten Years of Tomb Raider: A GameTap Retrospective Gard decided that a female character would work better from a design standpoint. He also cited Virtua Fighter as an influence; Gard noticed that while watching people play the game, players selected one of the two available female characters in the game almost every match he saw. cf. Gard expressed a desire to counter stereotypical female characters, which he has characterised as "bimbos" or "dominatrix" types. Smith was sceptical of a female lead at first because few contemporary games featured them. He came to regard a female lead as a great hook and put faith in Gard's idea. Inspired by pop artist Neneh Cherry and comic book character Tank Girl, Gard experimented with different designs, including "sociopathic blonds, muscle women, flat topped hip-hopsters and a Nazi-like militant in a baseball cap". He settled on a tough South American Latina woman with a braid named Laura Cruz.
Tomb Raider co-creator Paul Douglas changed her given name after consulting a baby names book, "Lara had a more interesting derivation than Laura so we chose that. Lara is from the same derivation as Larisa. Which is derived from Larissa in Greece. Which means “citadel”. I thought that would be apt for her personality—enigmatic and guarded." Her surname was changed by scriptwriter Vicky Arnold later in development, "Cruz was changed to Croft quite a bit later in the project by Vicky. That came out of the Derby phonebook. Cruz was Spanish/Portuguese for Cross and it wasn’t too far from Cross to Croft. We must have stuck with the Cruz surname for a while as we got into the rut of referring to her as just Lara. In the first game design doc, dated December 1994, Laura is already changed to Lara but even in the final game design documents there are still places where Cruz hadn't yet changed to Croft." Along with the name change, the character's backstory was altered to incorporate a British origin.
Gard was keen to animate the character realistically, an aspect he felt the industry at the time had disregarded. He sacrificed quick animations in favour of more fluid movement, believing that players would empathise with the character more easily. Lara's dual-wielding of pistols was inspired by the film Hard Boiled and an Æon Flux short. In the first Tomb Raider, Croft's three-dimensional (3D) character model is made of around 230 polygons. The character's braid was removed from the model, but added back for subsequent iterations. Gavin Rummery, programmer on the first two Tomb Raider games, explained: "It had been dropped from the original because it just didn't work properly with all the acrobatic moves—it was more like she had an electric eel attached to her head that had a life of its own. But on TRII I came up with a way to get it working and was really pleased how natural it looked". Although widely reported that, while adjusting the character model, Gard accidentally increased the breasts' dimensions by 150 percent and the rest of the creative team argued to keep the change, Gard has stated that the notion "came out of a silly remark made in an interview". Core Design hired Shelley Blond to voice Croft after the game entered the beta phase of development. Gard left Core Design after completing Tomb Raider, citing a lack of creative freedom and control over marketing decisions related to the ideas he developed (especially Lara Croft). Victor Interactive Software asked Core Design to redesign Lara with a larger head and eyes to appeal to a Japanese audience. Illustrations drawn by Hiromasa Ota and a render of the design were faxed through late into development. Gard did not want to alter Lara's appearance; as a compromise, the design was used only in the Japanese manuals and guide.
Core Design improved and modified the character with each installment. Developers for Tomb Raider II increased the number of polygons in the character's model and added more realistic curves to its design. Other changes included new outfits and manoeuvres. Core Design reportedly planned to implement crawling as a new gameplay option, but the option did not appear until Tomb Raider III. Actress Judith Gibbins took over voice acting responsibilities and stayed on through the third game. For Tomb Raider III, the developers increased the number of polygons in Croft's 3D model to about 300, and introduced more abilities to the gameplay. Core Design wanted to reintroduce the character to players in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and included a flashback scenario with a younger Lara. The developers expanded the character's set of moves threefold to allow more interaction with the environment, like swinging on ropes and kicking open doors. The character model was altered to feature more realistic proportions, and Jonell Elliott replaced Gibbins as the voice of Lara Croft. By the time development for The Last Revelation began, Core Design had worked on the series constantly for four years and the staff felt they had exhausted their creativeness. Feeling the series lacked innovation, Core Design decided to kill the character and depicted Croft trapped by a cave-in during the final scenes of the game.