Crystal Dynamics Confirms Development of New Tomb Raider, Built on Unreal Engine 5

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Not that any fan of Lara Croft should be surprised, but Crystal Dynamics has confirmed that a new installment of Tomb Raider is officially in development. The studio behind Tomb Raider (2013) and Rise of the Tomb Raider announced the news during Epic Games' State of Unreal 2022 event today, promising a "high-quality cinematic action-adventure experience" that would be built on Unreal Engine 5.

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I wonder if they got a sweetheart deal on that engine as well.
 
That's cool, I was hoping Crystal Dynamics would make a 3rd game in the current Tomb Raider series. Shadow of the Tomb Raider was, as MadMummy76 put, "mediocre at best." Crystal Dynamics went off to make that Avengers games instead of making a 3rd Tomb Raider, and look where that got everyone. So yeah CD, if you're done f*cking around now, time for you to take a crack at your 3rd TR (in the current series). I'm surprised they are no longer using an engine of their own design. I guess we'll see how well UE5 works out for them.
 
Shadow was the third game. So this would be the fourth.
Tomb Raider 2013 - Promising but a bit rough around the edges, plus QTEs :sick:
Rise of the Tomb Raider 2015 - The best game of the reboot series so far.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2018 - Forgettable
 
I'm surprised they are no longer using an engine of their own design.
Seems like everyone and their cousin is giving up on in-house engines these days. I was totally shocked the CDPR gave up on Red and said they were going with UE5 also. Nothing wrong with that. I know jack about programming it but I've played so many games with it in the last few years that I've come to appreciate it.
 
I've liked all of the new trilogy but for tech reasons and not necessarily the game's themselves.

TR - Hated the QTEs but loved that my SLI rigs rocked it in 1440p and some 4K back in the day when I was still using 2x 970s or less. The game looked amazing in 3D as well.

ROTR-I felt mostly the about it as the 1st one. It was bit a tougher on the hardware and that was my last SLI setup, 2x 1080s. This one looked good in 3D but that was also when 3D really started to fade out, although at that point I was using a 27" 1440P/144Hz G-Sync monitor that really added to it.

SOTR-I agree that the story was so-so but also really limited and I think that hurt it the most. Some parts almost seemed like a rehash of the 1st. You really never felt as traveled as the 1st two. I loved the ray tracing and Atmos. The Atmos jungle sound effects were pretty amazing. This was the game I finally dropped SLI and went with a 2080 Ti and then 3090 for 4K. I was glad when they finally updated to DLSS 2.0 and it really looks amazing on the CRG9 in 32:9.
 
Seems like everyone and their cousin is giving up on in-house engines these days. I was totally shocked the CDPR gave up on Red and said they were going with UE5 also. Nothing wrong with that. I know jack about programming it but I've played so many games with it in the last few years that I've come to appreciate it.
Not really surprising. Things are very complex now, and the most recent trend of getting down to metal only made it more so. If you are trying to ship an optimized product - having someone else take care of the heavy lifting on the engine is a huge help.

Of course, if you choose poorly you could spend more time trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole (ala BioWare and Frostbyte) - engines aren’t usually one size fits all — more like one size fits most.
 
Seems like everyone and their cousin is giving up on in-house engines these days. I was totally shocked the CDPR gave up on Red and said they were going with UE5 also. Nothing wrong with that. I know jack about programming it but I've played so many games with it in the last few years that I've come to appreciate it.
When I last dabbled into game engines UE2.5 was the latest version, and it was already very impressive. Far more capable than any of its competitors, like unity, not to mention cryengine. I don't think anything good ever came out of that outside of crytek.

The only reason to do your own engine in the past 15 years was greed, not having to sign a revenue share deal. But now game engines become such complex software suites that most devs just don't have the capacity to make them. A Game engine nowadays is not just a piece of code, but a huge set of tools and applications. And UE has a ton of plugins available for various artist tools that can directly export assets to be used in engine. That's a huge advantage.
 
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