Tomb Raider creators explained why they killed the heroine

Former Core Design employees stated in an interview for the release of "The Making of Tomb Raider: 1997-2000" that the decision to "kill" Lara Croft in The Last Revelation was due to team fatigue and burnout.

Former Core Design employees explained why they decided to "kill" Lara Croft in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation. They shared the details in an interview timed with the release of the book "The Making of Tomb Raider: 1997–2000."

Writer and designer Andy Sandham admitted: "We were tired of Lara and wanted to kill her." He wrote a script with such an ending, hoping that the producers would not read it to the last pages. The idea still made it into the game.

Designer Richard Morton said that the team struggled to come up with a suitable ending for a long time. However, the heroine's death was initially conceived as temporary – the developers planned to bring Lara back in the next installment for PS2. In The Last Revelation, her death was never directly shown, leaving room for a continuation.

Programmer Tom Scutt added that after several years of almost continuous work on the series, many developers faced burnout. Some hoped that the end of Lara's story would allow them to stop working on new Tomb Raider installments.