Lara Croft is a fictional character and the protagonist of Eidos Interactive's (now Square Enix Europe) Tomb Raider video game series. Created by Toby Gard during his employment at Core Design, the character has also appeared in comic books, novels, a series of animated short films, and feature films. Lara Croft has been licensed for third-party promotion, including television and print advertisements, music-related appearances, and as a spokesmodel. Promotion of the character includes a brand of apparel and accessories, action figures, and model portrayals. Lara Croft is presented as a beautiful, intelligent, athletic, and somewhat reckless English archaeologist-adventurer who ventures into ancient, hazardous tombs and ruins.
Lara is depicted as an athletic woman of English descent, who has brown eyes and frequently keeps her long brown hair in a plait or ponytail.
The character's classic costume is a turquoise sleeveless Bodysuit, light brown shorts, calf-high boots, long white socks, fingerless gloves, a backpack, a utility belt with holsters on either side and two pistols, an outfit appearing in nearly every Tomb Raider game to date. In the later games, she wears a crop top. Variations on this theme, such as camouflage pants and black or light-brown shirts, have appeared in some games and she has worn a wet suit for a watery environment or trousers and a jacket for a colder area.
Lara Croft first appeared in the 1996 video game Tomb Raider, introduced in the manual as Lord Henshingly Croft's disinherited daughter, who has survived a Himalayan plane crash. The game follows Lara's search for the "Atlantean Scion" artefact, and her encounter with an ancient ruler of Atlantis.[1] Tomb Raider II, released in 1997, centres around Lara's search for the Dagger of Xian, an artefact loosely based on Chinese mythology. During her search, Lara faces a cult obsessed with using the artefact's power to their own ends. In Tomb Raider III Lara seeks ancient meteorite fragments which convey strange powers and became associated with various cultures' myths.
In 1998 and 1999, three expansion packs were released that expanded the gameplay of the three video games. Tomb Raider: Unfinished Business (Tomb Raider Gold in North America), depicted Lara escaping the Great Pyramid and returning to Egypt. Tomb Raider II: The Golden Mask featured Lara searching for an artefact with the power of resurrection. In The Lost Artefact, Lara searches for the Hand of Rathmore, a fifth meteorite piece.
Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, released in 1999, depicted Lara accompanying archaeologist Werner Von Croy to Cambodia and developing her interest in ancient civilisations. Lara searches for artefacts associated with the god Horus so that she can defeat Set, who has possessed Von Croy.[2] That game contains an extra level, known as the "Times Exclusive Level", which has The Times of London hiring Lara to explore some passages under Tutankhamun's tomb.
In Tomb Raider Chronicles, released in 2000, most of the game focuses on previously untold earlier adventures featuring Lara finding the Philosopher's Stone, the Spear of Destiny, helping in an exorcism and breaking into a building to steal an artefact. Von Croy searches for Lara, but her fate is left unresolved.
In 2000 Lara first appeared on Tomb Raider on the handheld Game Boy Color game console. The story is unrelated to the original Tomb Raider and follows Lara's search for the Nightmare Stone. Tomb Raider: Curse of the Sword (2001) sees Lara facing off against a cult which plans to use her body to revive a witch.
In the 2003 game, Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, Lara appears alive and well, but the segment explaining her survival was cut from the final game. (Mike Resnik's novelization Tomb Raider: The Amulet of Power depicts Lara being rescued from beneath a collapsed pyramid.) While revolving around artefacts connected to the Nephilim and Lara's search for these after she is accused of murdering Von Croy, the game also introduced Kurtis Trent, the first playable character (other than Lara) in the series.
Tomb Raider: Legend (2006) like previous games does not use the backstory provided in the original game's instruction manual, and even contradicts it.
Several flashback sequences depict a nine-year-old Lara (voiced by Charlotte Asprey) surviving a plane crash in Nepal with her mother, Amelia Croft. Amelia disappears after reprising the Arthurian legend by pulling a sword from a stone; the entire game deals with Lara's search for an Arthurian artefact. Surviving a journey to Kathmandu, she contacts her father (now named Richard, not Henshingly, Croft) and grows up in the care of her archaeologist father. At 18, Lara inherits the Croft estates along with the title "Countess of Abbingdon."[3]
Tomb Raider: Anniversary, a 2007 remake of the first game in the series, changes the original story for consistency with Lara's backstory in Legend. Anniversary implies that Lara had searched for the Atlantean Scion, which her father believed to hold clues about Amelia's disappearance.
For Tomb Raider: Underworld (2008), Lara's movements were based on those of Olympic gymnast and stuntwoman Heidi Moneymaker recorded through motion capture techniques. Lara is searching for Thor's hammer, Mjöllnir, and acquires Thor's gauntlets, belt and hammer whilst attempting to enter Helheim in search of answers concerning her mother's disapperance.[4]
In 2009, two downloadable levels were added on Xbox Live for Underworld. In the first of these, Beneath the Ashes, Lara explores dungeons beneath her manor, and she discovers the "Eitr Stone", which can control thralls. The second level, Lara's Shadow, features Lara's doppelgänger as the playable character.
