Crystal Dynamics’creative director Noah Hughes has stressed the importance of making Lara Croft more “real” without “being gratuitous” for the upcoming Tomb Raider brand reboot.

“We felt that it was very important to make her real, and forge her into the heroine that she’ll become,” he tells SPOnG, when asked if there’s a danger of pushing it all a bit too far. “Both of those really required her to go through an intense ordeal, to transition from the young and naive archaeologist and become the Tomb Raider. You have to assume that there’s some trials and tribulations over the course of that.

“So, we started with that, and ultimately the boundary was what delivers on those needs, of making her feel a human and forging her into a hero without being gratuitous. So that’s where the line is: come at it from the goal space and stop at gratuitous.”

The game is due out for PS3 and Xbox sometime next year.

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