Lara Croft is back, sort of: The official TR account dropped a major memory bomb-a clip from Tomb Raider III Remastered of Tony performing the infamous earthquake attack scaring screens ever so since 1998. The post was meant to hype up the remaster, but within minutes, the conversation had derailed into a full-scale discussion on the franchise direction, stolen renders, and whether Classic Lara has really come back.
So, about the clip itself: pure PS1 chaos. Lara just runs around and shoots her dual-wielding pistols (so iconic!), but Tony? The guy just casually summons The Earthquake preferring to do so as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Pillars start crumbling, the screen shakes, and suddenly, all of us are reborn as those 12-year-old kids who barely struggled with those darn tank controls. Now, with the remastered visuals, the whole shaking experience really pops, and, honestly? Quite the vibe. However, gamers weren’t just here to gush about this scene; no, they were going straight to war in the comments.
Well, some players like Boreal Von Klein had some more interesting observations given the newly polished visuals: for one, Tony had the Infada artifact stuck right onto his chest. Cool! And yet, things went downhill from there. Several users accused the Tomb Raider account of stealing renders from fans without giving proper credit, with one demanding an apology. Grok (you know, that chaotic AI bot) sided with the account, claiming that it was indeed official franchise content, but somehow, the damage had already been done as the players were now side-eyeing the whole situation.
Then came the Classic Lara stans. Corey Mckee straight-out said: “You love to market original Lara when it’s convenient… but refuse to give us Classic Lara in new games.” Oof. Others like jackofallgames are saying, “If you want Classic Lara, you gotta pay for the remaster.” If the remasters don’t do well, they won’t give her a new game. Fair enough, but trying to explain that to the gamer folk who are still bitter about modern Lara’s personality change is something else.
Speaking of these remasters, post-launch support is nothing but a massive half-truth, or at least that’s what players think. Baseqq775560 and many others were absolutely knocking Aspyr Media, claiming these guys really went there, rushing through the Tomb Raider 1-3 remasters so they can quickly get down with 4-6. They took the moolah and dipped, nearly spit on him from one user to another. Demand for Patch 5 kept flooding the replies, with some… rather interesting verbiage. (“Patch 5 bitch,” said henley, without an ounce of chill). Heck, Dario108 was already joking that the new CEO may just retire the entire IP. Yikes.
Hope remains for some kind of salvation for some few. Bakrfgv3 begged for more Fortnite collabs (why not), while others just want some confirmation that Joel-wait-wrong game-that Lara isn’t going to be shelved. The tension between nostalgia and modern reboots is real, and this tweet somehow became ground zero for it.
What does this leave water down? Remasters nailed some parts, but the rest of the crowd was very conflicted. Some want new games starring Classic Lara once again; some are begging for big patches for the new games; a few are still mad about stolen art. But one thing is for sure: The earthquake is sure really shaking things up in this franchise currently. And whatever happens next, pretty much, patch or new game or lame apology tweet, would be seen by these players with pistols in hand.
