Breaking news from the better-late-than-never department: After much prodding from various friends and fellow raiders, I have at last added a
Lara Croft/Tomb Raider Timeline. It covers Lara's biography (both versions), the game publication chronology and the great ladies who've voiced and animated Lara over the years. I hope you'll check it out and give me your impressions, suggestions and corrections.
Special thanks to Rivendell/azraelkhan for his wonderful "Evolution of Lara Croft" digital collage and to Jana at
Tombraidergirl.com and
WikiRaider.com, from whom I shamelessly cribbed a few details.
The Evolution of Lara Croft by Rivendell. Click for full-size image.
This is really cool, Stella! I quite enjoyed seeing the "voices-of" the most. I mean, imagine one of those ladies being Lara Croft! It's hard to picture her as anything but her original self. If you haven't seen it before, there's an image on the internet of a world map marked with all the places Lara has visited in her known career. That's also something pretty nifty to look at. Good job with the timeline, Stella!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Hunter! :) And, yes, I've seen the world map on the Wikipedia Tomb Raider entry. It's definitely worth linking to in case other players haven't seen it. I'll add that to the timeline page.
ReplyDeletei showed my mom this and all she thought about was how her boobs changed im like "MOM"!! :D
ReplyDeleteYes Stella, you did it again: each time I visit your blog or website I keep getting amazed. Either there are contests or walkthroughs or downloads, everything shows remarkable capacities of having an objective and sticking to it until the end, per example: when I first saw your walkthroughs I was stunned with the amount of work you had put into them. All detailed and very easy to understand. And now I come here, see this amazing timeline, and I just think "She must be a great person, she works so hard to achieve her goals". And I believe this is a great quality. Congratulations ;D
ReplyDeleteAbout the timeline, it is very good, but those incongruities between Core's and Crystal's biography are really annoying.
Appreciate ALL of your work ;D
Thanks, George. I really appreciate the kind words. I do work hard when I'm in the mood, but sometimes I let things slide for ages. Usually that means I'm working on something else (brickraiders.net, spacecolonyfans.net). I hate not being busy. ;)
ReplyDeleteAs for Lara's Core/Crystal bios, as a sci-fi fan, I imagine that when Lara was 9, her plane crashed in the Himalayas but simultaneously, in a separate timeline, didn't crash. One Lara went on to have the finding-mom-in-Avalon adventure and the Lara in the parallel reality went on to have the Von-Croy-Last-Revelation adventure.
Of course, that kind of makes it *more* complicated, rather than less, but it makes me feel better. ;)
Wow! amazing timeline!! I learned a lot from it!! can't wait for GOL and TR9!! but I gotta buy the xbox ;) (btw this is dramamasks from you tube:))
ReplyDeletethat's pretty cool!
ReplyDeletei wish i had a ps3.
think i might got for a laptop. underworld and guardian of light is on PC, right?
Glad you guys like it. Thanks! cup, yes, there's a PC version of TRU and GOL will be released for PC through Steam. Happy lappy shopping. :D
ReplyDeleteNice work. She got wider but her legs look the same. XD
ReplyDeleteVery cool! I've been wondering how Lara's back story had to be adjusted with all the new developments in the more recent games. I also always wanted to see a map of where she's been and never thought to look it up! The cover flow is also really neat to see. Reminds me that I still need to play all the in-between games :)
ReplyDeleteI'm always torn as to which version of the backstory I prefer. Having grown up with the Core version I have a natural affinity for it but the Crystal one makes more sense for the was Lara behaves in those later games.
ReplyDeleteAnd let's not talk about the films. The games' strength is in how lonely they are, and watching one character run around not talking for 2 hours does not a gripping movie make. Therefore the films had little to do with the games.
It's also starting to become apparent that the games can't (logically) take place in the present day any more or Lara would now be 42. Not to say that 42 year olds can't rock shorts, but I think the character makes most sense in her late 20s/early 30s.
I know it's difficult for franchises which start out in "present day" to stay relevant as the decades move on. James Bond is a good example. He's such a 60s guy and the series has struggled to keep him up to date with changing attitudes and world powers/war threats.
I can't help but feel that Lara is a 90s character, and the games have a lot of affinity with the (quaint when you look back on it) Cool Brittania thing that was going on at the time. We're living in an (even) less innocent world than we were 10 years ago and I'm not sure that Lara hasn't struggled to keep up with that.