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"We were sick of Lara Croft and wanted to kill her" - Tomb Raider book reveals dark chapter from 1999
Jeez, tell us what you really think.
Inna Vjuzhanina / Pen and Sword
- Daryl Baxter
Published: Tuesday, 30 June 2026 at 10:00 am
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You may have missed it during all the GTA 6 pre-order mayhem, but pre-orders are also open for The Making of Tomb Raider: 1997-2000, the follow-up book to 2021’s The Making of Tomb Raider.
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Again written by Daryl Baxter, this oral history covers the period when a mostly-new team took on Tomb Raider after initially working on an expansion pack to Tomb Raider 2.
The book features detailed insights into how Tomb Raider 3, 4, Chronicles, and other games came to be during 1997-2000, along with some of the developers revealing scrapped ideas that have never been spoken about before.
You can order your copy of the book now from Pen and Sword, Waterstones or Amazon. But if you'd like a little taster in the meantime, Radio Times Gaming has secured an exclusive excerpt for you to pore over.
We pick up the story in 1999, and it gets juicy fast as the developers talk about their controversial decision to kill off Lara Croft in Tomb Raider 4 - this was eventually retconned, of course, with Lara being shown to survive in later games, but it was certainly a radical move at the time. Keep on reading to see for yourself.
Beautiful cover, right? Inna Vjuzhanina / Pen and Sword
Tomb Raider 4 was wrapping up development in August 1999, with its debut at E3 in June going down well that year. Even David Bowie was caught on camera admitting to playing the series and looking forward to this fourth entry. But there were still a few things left to finish - a Dreamcast port, and that ending.
Richard Morton: I made the suggestion of killing Lara originally. I shared it with Andy and the team then went and spoke to Jez [Heath-Smith, co-founder of Core Design]. He hated the idea at first, but then, after seeing a draft and future plan for Tomb Raider on PS2, he gave the go-ahead.
Susie Hamilton: I don’t think anybody believed that we would actually kill Lara Croft off, so this wasn’t really used as a way to generate more publicity.
Andy Sandham: We were sick of Lara and wanted to kill her, although we kept it ambiguous enough so that Jez didn’t kill us. I remember this was decided at the story meeting with the team, although Rich thinks it was just him and me.
I do remember that after this, I wrote it up and gave the initial story outline doc to Adrian and Jez, fairly certain that they would get bored and not read the end bit (where Lara dies). I’m guessing this is what happened. I do remember Jez shouting at us about it at some point later on. Probably when he’d seen the FMV.
Richard: Lara’s death came about because we didn’t know how to end the game. Then, Andy and I were just sitting down, chatting. I think Tom was there, too, maybe Phil. And I just said, ‘Well, why don’t we kill her?’ And everyone’s like, ‘Okay.’ I was like, ‘Well, we don’t really kill her, but we kind of kill her until the PlayStation 2 version.’
Standard day at the office for Lara Croft. Core Design
Richard: We asked the rest of the team what they thought. And then the main guys went up, and we asked Jeremy if we could speak to him. And then I just told him what we were planning on doing. And he blew a gasket and said, ‘No, you can’t kill her.’ I’m like, ‘No, no, no, it’s only until the PlayStation 2 game. And then we’re going to show how she survived the pyramid, and she didn’t die.’
Richard: I think what happened is we discussed it with Jeremy really early on. And I think by the time he played the game to the end, I think he forgot because we didn’t tell anybody. I’m pretty sure the press didn’t know until it was released. But I think both versions of that story are true, to be honest.
I honestly think because we definitely told Jeremy earlier on. But I think he probably just forgot that we’d done that until he actually played it. Like, ‘My God, she’s dead.’ Again, it would be terrifying, but I’m sure Andy would remember that initial meeting. But it was definitely me, Andy, Tom, Gibby, and probably Phil and Pete Duncan in that meeting where we discussed our idea.
Tom Scutt: It was probably a mixture of things. So I think it would be, it was a great dramatic end for the game, obviously. You couldn’t get more dramatic than Lara being killed. I suspect there was an element of all of us thinking, ‘Oh, my God, if we kill her off, we don’t have to make another one,’ because we were all done by the end of TR4. We enjoyed doing it. It was really good. We got a lot of it, but we were all like, ‘Right, I cannot imagine doing this again.’ So I think we were all quite keen to take her out, essentially.
Mike Schmitt: I don’t remember hearing serious talk of Lara’s death after The Last Revelation – maybe just discussions? I do know that Core was pretty burned out on cranking out new games in less than 12 months every year and adding new features, etc – that was quite an accomplishment.
Lara Croft doing her thing in Tomb Raider 4. Core Design
Tom: But the thing is, if you look at almost any kind of modern film or TV series, having the cliffhanger of the main character appearing to be dead is not an uncommon thing to do, really. So it didn’t take much between, I mean, I don’t think we ever planned to show her being decapitated or anything.
I don’t think it was ever meant to be an explicit ending. There would always be an escape route. But I suppose the downbeat thing of finishing a game and essentially feeling like you finished the game, but you lost, is potentially more worrying.
Pete Barnard: I’m pretty sure Dave Reading was doing the last FMV where it was all collapsing. At that point, it was a feeling of, you had to just get it done. But it was always slightly comedic to me, seeing Von Croy run away with a walking stick. But then again, what would you do if things were collapsing around you? It was just a mad rush to finish the FMVs by then.
Pete Connelly: Sony gave us the thumbs up after a long stint finalising the build at the office. This would’ve been around October 1999. I was a wreck! But it was an amazing feeling knowing it was finally complete and ready for release, but, at the same time, we were handed The Times level and that HAD to be delivered quickly.
[The Times level was something for The Times newspaper, which was mostly designed by using sections from the fly-by titles.]
Andrea Cordella: I think it was an opportunity and a partnership with the newspaper. I don’t know much on the business side, exactly, what the deal was, but basically, there was an opportunity to do this, and it would be a beneficial thing. And so I think that if I remember well, it uses a lot of the assets and environments that were made for the fly-by, plus other bits.
That’s pretty much what I remember about it. It was like, ‘Let’s get it done, guys. I know that you think you’re done, but there’s one more thing.’ But I remember that we tried to do it in a way that wasn’t too taxing, even like the state that we were all in at the end of the production.
Andy: I can remember sitting in the room on the weekend, being quite pissed off doing it. Obviously, you’re getting paid to do it, so it’s not like you can go, ‘I’m not doing it.’ But I can remember designing some of it, although I’m sure I just pasted things together from the fly-by scenes.
Looking back, many on the team see Tomb Raider 4 as a highlight, with great levels, great textures, and great gameplay decisions that set it apart from Tomb Raider 3.
Richard: I really enjoyed all of the levels for TR4. I still think my favourite is the Desert Railroad, though, to be honest. Just because it’s different than the rest of the levels.
Alex: Yes, I did enjoy working on the port. Again, when you’re that close to something, it’s difficult to remain objective, but it really was an excellent game. Epic scale and hugely atmospheric – I think it’s the best of the ‘classic’ Tomb Raider games, although nothing had the impact that the original did.
Richard: We did toy with the idea, I’m not sure if it was for 4 or 5, actually, of having an even weirder save crystal system. Not crystals, but GPS markers. And I’m sure a game has used it since. But the idea was that you had GPS markers, and you could drop a GPS marker, and it would save the game. But it’s a physical object in the world, and if an enemy sees it, he can destroy it. So you had to hide them.
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Jerr O Carroll: Egypt was fun to work on. The wealth of imagery and locations that we could draw from lent the game to really cool levels and scenarios.
Martin Gibbins: Tomb Raider 4 took about eleven months – not long enough, because we wanted more storytelling. Obviously, the FMV guys had too much to do, as it took too long to do them. So we used the in-game cutscenes, which were great. All I remember really about TR4 was doing more late nights, obviously, and splitting the walls into five so that they could fix my bugbear, which they never did.
Richard: If we’d been given two years to do TR4, we could have put everything in that we wanted to get in. But it had to be one game per year for as long as it could be. As long as it was still making decent money. They had to keep pumping a game out. But if that wasn’t the case, I’m pretty sure we would have gotten hand-to-hand and stealth in there.
And I love the idea of Lara shooting a couple of baddies in front, and then one guy runs up from behind and starts to choke her. And then, if the player does the right button combo, she grabs him and throws him over her shoulder, and then punches him in the face or something. Just little cool moves like that, but it didn’t happen.
The Making of Tomb Raider: 1997-2000 will launch on 30 October 2026. You can pre-order your copy from Pen and Sword, Waterstones or Amazon.
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Authors
Daryl BaxterContributor
Daryl is a writer and author of three books so far - The Making of Tomb Raider, 50 Years of Boss Fights, and a follow-up to The Making of Tomb Raider, coming later this year.
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