The 30th anniversary of Tomb Raider has shaped up
to be an exciting time. It was announced that two new games were coming – Tomb
Raider: Legacy of Atlantis and Tomb Raider: Catalyst and that they
would be set in a unified timeline.
To explain the Tomb Raider game franchise has had two
reboots, creating three continuities – the six games of the original
continuity, the Legend, Anniversary and Underworld timeline and the more recent
prequel Survivor trilogy – all with slightly different timelines and continuity
– Lara is there but her year of birth changes, her parents and their causes of
death change, her motivation changes. (and that’s just the main games, the
spinoff games, the comics, the animation, tv series and movies bring their own
histories – check out the The Tomb Raider Trinity - A Line Through Time by
the 4th Snake and his follow ups)
So naturally this created some excitement and trepidation as
to what was and wasn’t canon. Was the Netflix series Tomb Raider: The Legend
of Lara Croft set in the Survivor timeline or the reboot timeline? Or did
it no longer exist? Presumably the new comic series Tomb Raider: Sacred
Artefacts (2026) and the current G.I. Joe Tomb Raider miniseries are
in but what about the Top Cow comics or the Survivor series comics from Dark
Horse?
The back cover blurb tells us that “nothing comes close to
this tome in terms of comprehensively compiling her adventures so far.”
20th Years of Tomb Raider: Digging up the Past, Defining the Future by Megan Marie (2016) (Prima Games) was a fantastic resource that covered the Tomb Raider franchise from a real world historical perspective, telling us much of the behind the scenes about all parts of the franchise – the games, movies, animation, books, comics, fans, models, voice actresses, and more. It’s a book I go back to time and time again for reference (also the bottom right corner of the book serves a flip book with Lara shooting and jumping around).
So expectations were high – and the idea of a comprehensive timeline
of all of Lara’s adventures from the in world perspective of the games/books/movies/comics/etc
was a great way to expand on 20 Years with a decade of new material that
didn’t just retread the same ground.
Having done my own attempts at a general combined timeline
here on the blog Tomb Raider Timeline Updated, I as curious to see how the developers would handle a similar
task. Now I didn’t expect them to
include everything (I mean only a complete obsessive would do that), but many
of the comics and novels were intended to slot in between the games. There was
a great deal of material that could be considered – and considering that I don’t
play the games, the expanded franchise that’s where I live.
That’s a lot of introduction to the review but sometimes it’s
important to lay out your expectations.
Where do I start?
There were a lot of pictures and some fantastic stuff I hadn’t
seen before renders, concept art from all the games. I don’t think there is a single full page of
text in the entire book and it was a very quick read – my wife was surprised at
how quickly I read the book.
The book focuses exclusively on the games – giving precedence
to the twelve mainline games (Tomb Raider (2013), Rise, Shadow, Tomb Raider
(1996)/Anniversary, Tomb Raider II, Tomb Raider III, The Last Revelation, Chronicles,
Angel of Darkness, Legend, Underworld) but only placing them in their
chronological placement for the main game so the Tomb Raider Chronicles flashback
adventures are not placed in their chronological place – so Father Dunstan’s
adventure with young Lara is after the Last Revelation and not before 2013 Tomb
Raider. The other tales predating Lara’s “death” are not assigned a place in
the chronology.
The spinoff games like Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light,
Temple of Osiris, Go, Relic Run, Tomb Raider (Gameboy), Curse of the Sword and
the Prophecy are all relegated to tall tales – canon events that have been exaggerated
and characters who appear in those games can appear in the unified timeline. But we have no idea where they may take place
in the timeline.
It seems like the people behind Tomb Raider made a similar
decision to Disney when they took over Star Wars and ignored the expanded universe
material, so this book does not feature any of the books, comics, movies,
animations. As I said, I am a fan of the expanded universe material, so I was a
little disappointed by that decision, but I understand it.
The book decided to focus on the games and try to tell us
that it was the definitive chronology.
There are several videos on Youtube that explain the errors made in the
descriptions. Look I get it, mistakes happen you misremember some detail but
these should be minimal. At least one
review suggested that the text may have been AI generated. I can’t speak to that.
The structure of the book is weird to me it opens with myths
and mysteries talking about the mythology and artefacts in the Tomb Raider
series why not place that within the entries for each game. Even stranger the first myth covered comes
from Tomb Raider II.
We then go into a series of bits about Lara where we are
told her date of birth 14 February but not the year (the 1968 birthyear from
the original game would have Lara at 58 years old – pushing 60 when Catalyst
comes out) but the information is fairly shallow. Also the book does not try to
reconcile the differences between the continuities.
To me that should be your primary goal - had they given me the job I would have
structured the book differently make it an in-universe dossier complied by a
character who ties into Catalyst. Have them studying Lara – reportedly the game
has Lara working with a team of adventurers against mercenaries – have someone trying
to sort fact from fiction so you can explore the deaths of Lara’s parents and
try to reconcile them, there could be a list of artefacts retrieved by Lara and
trying to sort out what happened to them.
I’m thinking of something like Lara Croft Tomb Raider Technical Manual by Michael Jan Freidman (2001, Pocket Books) published to tie into the first Angelina Jolie movie. The book itself is written by Bryce Turing, Lara’s tec whiz in that movie talking about various gadgets and devices seen in the film and is told in a series of transcripts and instant messages. Something like that would have been ideal here and would have allowed for more nuance and variations, as well as giving us a sneak peak into Catalyst hyping up that game.
So what was my verdict? I’m a completionist so I’m glad to
have this book and the lovely pictures. I
think they really missed the opportunity to tell us about the Unified timeline
and how it works and to give us an in-universe work that expands and enhances the
20 Years of Tomb Raider. Chronicles
of Tomb Raider is not going to replace the older book as my go to Tomb
Raider reference
Remember how I said that the 20th Year
book was a flipbook, there is a picture of Lara at the bottom on The Chronicles
of Tomb Raider – the same picture on all the pages – flip though the book and Lara
doesn’t move.
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