"When we looked at it, we were like, that can't possibly work.
"Because they'd got a PS2 dev kit the concept was effectively 'Lara visits every major city in the world that's built in GTA style,'" recalls Sandham, who left Core in 2001 just after the Chronicles team merged with the initial Angel of Darkness team. The Angel of Darkness was a complete disaster, however, and not just because of problems with developing on the PS2. The Tomb Raider money machine survived all of this more or less completely intact, albeit with reduced profits as sales declined, but the studio making it was shaken to the core.īy the time Chronicles came out, another new team had spent a year working on a sixth Tomb Raider-this one finally making the leap to the PlayStation 2.
Tomb Raider III was deemed too sprawling and too hard by an increasingly fickle press Tomb Raider IV: The Last Revelation's focus on Egypt was too small of a step in the right direction and Tomb Raider V: Chronicles was labelled a shallow, uninspired cash-in. Each of those games was criticized for a host of problems that were unavoidable in such tight turnarounds. They went off and did Project Eden, which was unsuccessful, while the new team got roped into doing three Tomb Raiders in as many years. The gods that be at Eidos decreed that there would be another Tomb Raider on the PS1, however, and it'd be out that year-made by another team at Core.īlindsided, the primary team members of Tomb Raider II lost their passion for the series. "We were a bit burned out." They felt that they'd done all they could with the existing engine, and their plan was to have Tomb Raider take a few years off from the spotlight while they worked on a PlayStation 2 sequel. "By Tomb Raider II we basically thought that's it.