Not that any fan of Lara Croft should be surprised, but Crystal Dynamics has confirmed that a new installment of Tomb Raider is officially in development. The studio behind Tomb Raider (2013) and Rise of the Tomb Raider announced the news during Epic Games’ State of Unreal 2022 event today, promising a “high-quality cinematic action-adventure experience” that would be built on Unreal Engine 5. No gameplay details or images were shared, but previous rumors have suggested that the game will blend the timeline of Core’s original titles with that of the reboot trilogy, the story of which seemingly concluded with 2018’s Shadow of the Tomb Raider.
Next Tomb Raider built on Unreal Engine 5 (Tomb Raider)
Crystal Dynamics is proud to be a part of the launch of Unreal Engine 5. This new engine translates into next-level storytelling and gameplay experiences. And that’s why we are thrilled to announce today that we have just started development of our next Tomb Raider game powered by Unreal Engine 5.
Our goal is to push the envelope of fidelity and to deliver the high-quality, cinematic action-adventure experience that fans deserve from both Crystal Dynamics and the Tomb Raider franchise. We can’t wait to take this journey together. Thank you and congratulations again to the Epic Games team.
Tomb Raider 2013 - Promising but a bit rough around the edges, plus QTEs :sick:
Rise of the Tomb Raider 2015 - The best game of the reboot series so far.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2018 - Forgettable
TR - Hated the QTEs but loved that my SLI rigs rocked it in 1440p and some 4K back in the day when I was still using 2x 970s or less. The game looked amazing in 3D as well.
ROTR-I felt mostly the about it as the 1st one. It was bit a tougher on the hardware and that was my last SLI setup, 2x 1080s. This one looked good in 3D but that was also when 3D really started to fade out, although at that point I was using a 27" 1440P/144Hz G-Sync monitor that really added to it.
SOTR-I agree that the story was so-so but also really limited and I think that hurt it the most. Some parts almost seemed like a rehash of the 1st. You really never felt as traveled as the 1st two. I loved the ray tracing and Atmos. The Atmos jungle sound effects were pretty amazing. This was the game I finally dropped SLI and went with a 2080 Ti and then 3090 for 4K. I was glad when they finally updated to DLSS 2.0 and it really looks amazing on the CRG9 in 32:9.
Of course, if you choose poorly you could spend more time trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole (ala BioWare and Frostbyte) - engines aren’t usually one size fits all — more like one size fits most.
The only reason to do your own engine in the past 15 years was greed, not having to sign a revenue share deal. But now game engines become such complex software suites that most devs just don't have the capacity to make them. A Game engine nowadays is not just a piece of code, but a huge set of tools and applications. And UE has a ton of plugins available for various artist tools that can directly export assets to be used in engine. That's a huge advantage.