Tomb Raider Lara Croft, the aristocratic young daughter of the Earl of Abbington, Richard Croft, was on her way home when her chartered plane crashed deep in the Himalayan mountains, killing her mother and everyone else on board. Being the only survivor, Lara had to learn quickly how to depend on her wits to stay alive in horrendous conditions. Ten days later she walked into Katmandu a changed young lady, her experiences, which she never discussed with anyone again, having had a profound effect on her. During that solo trek she learned to love her own company and from that time on she never again felt more alive than when she was travelling alone in search of ancient artefacts and lost civilisations. It was while reading one of her journal reports on her archeological discoveries that Lara first came to Natla's attention, the owner of Natla's Technologies. Financed by Natla's Technologies, Lara was soon on her way to the mountains of Peru in search of Qualopec's tomb and the mythical Scion of Atlantis.

Screenshots Caves City of Vilcabamba The Lost Valley Tomb of Qualopec St Francis Folly The Colosseum Palace Midas The Cistern Tomb of Tihocan City of Khamoon Obelisk of Khamoon Sanctuary of the Scion   Natla's Mines Atlantis The Great Pyramid	Walkthroughs Caves City of Vilcabamba The Lost Valley Tomb of Qualopec St Francis Folly The Colosseum Palace Midas The Cistern Tomb of Tihocan City of Khamoon Obelisk of Khamoon Sanctuary of the Scion   Natla's Mines Atlantis The Great Pyramid
Gold Levels Return to Egypt Temple of the Cat Atlantean Stronghold The Hive	Return to Egypt Temple of the Cat Atlantean Stronghold The Hive

Interview with Phil Campbell (level designer - the Gold levels)

George Mac: Hi Phil I was wondering if you could shed some light on the winking Sphinx in Return to the City of Khamoon. It's intrigued a few of us for a while. Perhaps now could be a good time to share the story?

Phil Campbell: Ah man, I can't remember that far back! I'm sure we had just learned to do animated/ swapping textures, and that whole level was a riff on the original anyway. Any opportunity I could find to do something to the original model, I did it!

My goal was to have Lara return to the original (with subtle and not-so-subtle changes), recognize it of course, and then open a journey to an entirely new part...

A lot of the stuff we did in all three of the 'Golds' played on little references and things we thought that freaks like us would spot - Lost Artifact was full of stuff like that (the Battle of Britain flyover, the buried Stephensons rocket, the U-Boat, the Citreon 2CV, Nessie, the Planet of the Apes stuff, the whole Lara = Joan of Arc in the French Zoo)...

The 2nd level of Golden Mask (the really Russian part) was based on my back garden. I was stuck for inspiration to start building that level, so I just looked out of my studio window and started massing it up like the shape of my house and garden - that's the reason for the shape of the very first bit of that level. Lara comes up out of a well that actually exists here. Then, once I'd laid out that shape, ideas started coming for a kind of 'infiltration' mission and I just built on from there.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but Shadow of the Cat was vaguely based on Alice in Wonderland - I used the structure of the Alice story to kind of set up the shape of that adventure, without it being obvious at all, it just gave me some 'story waypoints' to get inspiration from - so like the meeting with the Cheshire Cat, and especially the Tea party (which is kinda recognizable as one of the rooms where you go and do the challenges based on the different gods). Sometimes, visualizing a story shape for yourself internally helps to structure something entirely new. just one of the tricks I use.

I just finished a bunch of stories for Spore Galactic Adventures - many of those were riffs on well-known stories (especially the one based on John Carpenter's Thing), but lots were kinda pre-vized by me as classic stories (Maltese Falcon, Midsummers Nights dream, Name of the Rose) and were less like pastiches and more like just finding a good story structure - of course, a lot of the Spore stuff has been heavily edited as it has been built and a bunch of my stories haven't emerged yet...

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