Tomb Raider 4’s Ending Hints Lara Died as Core Design Burned Out
Long-time fans have long suspected something darker behind Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation: by the time Core Design reached its fourth entry, the original team was already burning out on the series. That fatigue is reflected in the game’s ending, which strongly suggests Lara Croft has died—at least for the moment.
Now, nearly three decades later, members of that original Core Design team are looking back at the choice to remove Lara, and the behind-the-scenes story is messier than you’d expect. While the details vary from person to person, one point consistently comes through: the developers were tired of making yet another Tomb Raider.
Tomb Raider Devs Walk Us Through the Decision to Kill Off Lara Croft
The discussion comes from an upcoming book titled The Making of Tomb Raider: 1997-2000. Ahead of its release, Radio Times has shared excerpts from interviews with developers, including their recollections of how the “Lara dies” moment came to be.
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Designer and writer Andy Sandham says the team was simply done with Lara. “We were sick of Lara and wanted to kill her,” he explains. Sandham adds that he wrote the plan up and delivered the first story outline document to producers Adrian Smith and Jez Jeremy Heath-Smith, assuming they’d stop reading before reaching the conclusion. He also believes they may have missed the end of the pitch as a result. Sandham recalls that Jez later shouted at the team after seeing the FMV, suggesting the decision landed less smoothly than intended.
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Designer Richard Morton remembers the ending differently, focusing on the team’s struggle with structure. In his account, Lara’s death happened because they “didn’t know how to end the game.” Morton also claims the death was always meant to be temporary, with Lara set to return in a PlayStation 2 title. Other team members’ memories align with that idea, which helps explain why the game never shows Lara’s death on-screen in a definitive way.
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Despite the competing explanations, many participants connect the decision to exhaustion. Programmer Tom Scutt suggests that, at least partly, the team’s logic was: if they kill her, they won’t have to make another one. He describes the mood as shared disbelief at the idea of continuing—“Right, I cannot imagine doing this again”—and says that sentiment made it easier to get behind removing Lara from the story.
It’s also easier to understand the frustration when you look at the production pace. Core Design pushed out Tomb Raider entries with little downtime: a new game was in development every year from 1996 through 2003. In other words, even after Lara was written out, the studio didn’t really get to breathe—work immediately continued on Tomb Raider: Chronicles and the problematic Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
