Why the Survivor Trilogy Never Fully Felt Like Lara Croft to Me — And Why I’m Hopeful About the Unified Timeline

I’ve been a Tomb Raider fan for most of my life. I started playing the games when I was very young, and Lara Croft was one of the first fictional characters I ever truly admired. Growing up, I often felt a bit different from other kids. A lot of people in the LGBTQ+ community talk about having a female icon they look up to when they’re young someone who represents confidence, strength, beauty, and independence. For me, that was Lara Croft. She wasn’t just a video game character to me. She was confident, intelligent, adventurous, and unapologetically bold. She was strong and feminine at the same time, and that combination made a huge impression on me. In a weird way, she became the kind of icon that many gay kids gravitate toward. A powerful woman who embodies confidence and individuality. I didn’t want to be Lara Croft in a literal sense, but she represented a kind of strength and self-assurance that I really admired. Because of that connection, Tomb Raider has always meant a lot more to me than just another game franchise. And that’s why my feelings about the Survivor trilogy have always been complicated. First, I want to acknowledge that those games clearly did some things well. From a gameplay perspective they can be very fun, and the idea of exploring Lara’s early years isn’t inherently a bad one. Showing how she grows into the legendary adventurer we know could have been a great narrative direction. But for me, the issue was never that Lara was younger or more vulnerable. The problem was that it often felt like the classic version of Lara Croft had to be dismissed in order for the reboot to exist. A lot of the messaging around the Survivor trilogy seemed to frame the original Lara the confident, globe-trotting adventurer with the shorts and blue top as something outdated or unrealistic. Instead of treating that version of the character as the natural endpoint of Lara’s growth, it sometimes felt like the developers were trying to distance themselves from her entirely. For longtime fans, that felt strange. The classic Lara Croft is the reason the franchise became iconic in the first place. She represented confidence, intelligence, independence, and adventure. She was a character who walked into ancient tombs and dangerous situations without hesitation. That personality and presence are what made Tomb Raider stand out.

Another aspect that always felt odd to me was the way Lara’s design was sometimes discussed in terms of “realism.” Her body was redesigned to be noticeably less curvy and less traditionally feminine, and this was often framed as making her more believable or grounded. But that reasoning never really made sense to me. Strength and femininity are not opposites. There are countless women in the real world who are strong, athletic, adventurous, and also feminine, curvy, or traditionally attractive. Being powerful does not require removing femininity. So the idea that Lara had to become less feminine in order to be taken seriously always felt like a very narrow interpretation of what a strong woman can look like. To be clear, the problem wasn’t that Lara was redesigned. Characters evolve over time, and that’s completely normal. The issue was the feeling that the classic version of Lara the one many of us grew up loving was being treated as something that needed to be corrected rather than something worth celebrating. And that’s why the recent talk about unifying the Tomb Raider timeline actually makes me hopeful. For the first time in a long time, it feels like the developers are acknowledging the full legacy of the character instead of trying to replace one version with another. The idea that the Survivor-era Lara could eventually grow into the confident, experienced adventurer from the classic games actually feels like the direction the story should have been heading all along. Lara Croft doesn’t need to be reinvented by rejecting her past. She’s a character with one of the richest histories in gaming, and that history deserves to be respected. If the new direction truly manages to bridge the gap between classic Lara and modern Lara showing how she evolves into the icon many of us grew up with then that might finally bring the franchise back to what made it special in the first place. And as someone who has loved Tomb Raider for most of my life, that’s something I’m genuinely excited to see.