A Few Thoughts on a Tomb Radier Timeline

Now I've been on a bit of a Tomb Raider jag lately - I got the 20th anniversary book which introduced me to a bunch of new stuff.. I also bought and read Lara Croft and the Blade of Gwynnever


There seems to be three different "series" or in the games
So the Classic series is the Games from Tomb Raider 1996 to Angel of Darkness (2003) that is the games by Core design.

The Legend series all the Games from Tomb Raider Legend and includes the new games that have been branded as Lara Croft.

The Survivor series are 2013 reboot and associated tie ins.

So I naturally wanted to see how it all fit together and I found these videos

Most videos tend to consider the Legend series a continuation of the Classic series without explaining why Lara's father's name changes from Lord Henshingly Croft to Lord Richard Croft, such as this one:

 

Others consider the Survivor series as prequels to the original games

 

Perhaps the most detailed is this video which includes the Tomb Raider novels:

 

 

Tomb Raider: A Line through Time and the addenda

I found these really interesting and I can see his reasoning for three different game continuities (Classic, Legend and Survivor) .  I have issues with the addendum which just states that each new thing is a new timeline so in a one minute video he creates several timelines - Movie, Top Cow, Journeys, Re/Visioned animated and a cameo on Totally Spies.

Looking just at the Angelina Jolie movies - The 4th Snake offers that the movie Lara's Date of birth is 17/4/1972  and then just states that he doesn't have a source for that "fact" but just runs with it.  Why use this?  Given that the Legend games use designs (Croft Manor) and history (Richard not Henshingly Croft) based on the movies and there is a large gap in his timeline with no adventures from 1996 until 2007 it would make sense to incorporate the 2001 and 2003 movies into that timeline.

The Top Cow Tomb Raider series is just mentioned as being on a sliding timescale but issues 32-34 adapt the Angel of Darkness game suggesting that they should be considered part of the Classic timeline.

Personally I like the idea that it's all a single timeline with the new games as prequels.  I also toyed with the idea that the Lara seen in the new games is the daughter of the original Lara.

My next post will be a Tomb Raider Timeline including a number of things that I haven't seen in other timelines.  I will be building on the information in the above videos and 20 years of Tomb Raider as well as Crossovers and Crossovers Expanded.