What The New 'Tomb Raider' Needs To Bring Us

Believe it or not, the people behind Fortnite are also responsible for allowing the best-looking video games in the world to become a reality. Unreal Engine 5, the latest iteration of their magnificent engine is finally out, and its release came with the announcement of the long-teased new game in the Tomb Raider series. So far they've shown us words, then words neatly placed on a logo:

Even though the logo evokes classic Tomb Raider games, that's not much of a reveal – and that's ok. Why? Because the new Tomb Raider will look just absurdly great. Hell, below we leave a screenshot from Dagger Of Xian, a project that a fan did by himself on the previous iteration of Unreal Engine.

What we want from the series is for it to avoid going stale as the old games did. And for that, we need evolution that goes beyond the visual level. The good news is that the new series is in a great place for just that. The “new Lara” origin trilogy has concluded with 2018's Shadow Of The Tomb Raider, so now is a great time to do something scary. We could go for yet another origin story, sure, since the publisher believes the 8.5 million units sold of the first game in the reboot trilogy counts as “underperforming”, but there's a much cooler option (whether they care about the game or just the money). A better idea would involve a time skip of 4 years where players catch up to a now-professional tomb raiding Lara that's more similar to the classic Lara. This would merge the fan bases of both generations a la Spider-Man No Way Home, and give us an adventure that's both old and new. Whatever route that they pick, let's just hope they don't try to kill off Lara and revive them through dumb magic – as it wouldn't be the first time.

Top Image: Square Enix