Who is Lara Croft? For more than 25 years, the face of the Tomb Raider franchise transformed seemingly endlessly in both video games and films as a series of creators put their spin on the beloved character. Those transformations turned her into a walking contradiction. She was a rare example of a strong female protagonist in gaming who spent her time not as some damsel in distress but as a hero scouring tombs and shooting dinosaurs—while also being oversexualized simply for existing as a woman. She was a character known by audiences for her singular presence and appearance despite her identity and backstory being in a state of constant flux. While Lara Croft is many things to many people, there is one unifying constant: She’s one of the most recognizable characters in video game history and a pop culture icon. Now, the original Tomb Raider trilogy that introduced the character into the world is back in an all-new remastered package: Tomb Raider I-III Remastered. Despite being some of the earliest examples of 3D puzzle adventure games at a time of great experimentation, these titles hold up today as arresting and entertaining retro romps. Yet to merely play these games in a vacuum in 2024 makes it easy to forget the immediate and lasting impact they had on pop culture and the perception of gaming upon their release in the ‘90s, or the way Lara Croft was almost instantly catapulted from an idea by a small group of developers in the UK to an international superstar.
While the franchise is one of the most recognizable in gaming today, the original Tomb Raider was a risky proposition during its initial development. 3D gaming was in its infancy, with platforming and complex puzzle exploration still a relative rarity. And female protagonists were not a common occurrence in gaming at the time. Even the original voice actor tasked with bringing the character to life was relatively inexperienced in the world of voice acting. Prior to taking on the role of Lara Croft, Shelley Blond’s career had been focused on TV and stage. When it became time to audition for the role of Lara Croft, she had just dipped her toes into the field, and the audition was more for gaining experience than it was about expecting to land the gig. It wasn’t just Blond who was inexperienced with voice acting—so was the team behind the game. “I was 25 or 26 when I did Tomb Raider,” Blond said. “I left drama school at 19, and from then I was doing shows, doing tours, and some very rock-and-roll musicals with the likes of Bill Kenwright. He was my producer in my years in the West End doing things like Only the Lonely and Elvis: The Musical, where I got to sing a few numbers. Through that, I got onto TV [in the UK] as a presenter on Trouble TV and CITV. I did commercials, then I moved into voice acting. “[At the time,] my agent said that she’d been asked to give some names they felt could do a female character for a game and wondered if I’d like to have a go. She heard there probably wouldn’t be much luck in me getting the role because they’d been searching for six to nine months, but that it would be a good chance to experience the audition since I was new to things. I recorded a few lines on cassette, put them in the post, then I was asked to do a conference call with some people in Derby and some in London where we had a chat and they asked me to do the lines again. By the end of the call, they told me I got the job!” Blond said the team wasn’t sure how well Tomb Raider would do, especially because it was a game with a “female protagonist.” “The team was very protective over ensuring ‘their baby’ was introduced into the world exactly as they envisioned it, in a process with little space for deviation from the mold,” she said. “I had no say in the character. “I would at times let my own personality come in and was asked to pull back, to not make it too vulgar or too sexy.
