In a recently uploaded video, fans can take a visual spin around Tomb Raider 3’s newly remade Croft Manor quad bike course in gloriously modern detail. This year marks 25 years since the Tomb Raider franchise first hit gaming consoles. While Lara Croft has visited many exotic and mystical locations throughout that time, one of the most beloved settings has always been Croft Manor and the fun training opportunities that it provides.
The most recent games in the Tomb Raider series concluded in 2018 with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. In this final installment of the rebooted Survivor trilogy timeline, players were taken to the muggy and sweat soaked jungles of Peru in a quest to stop a Mayan apocalypse. While the game was met with generally favorable reviews on its release, some of its most cherished aspects were found in a flashback scene, that saw Lara as a young girl exploring her family home of Croft Manor. This portion of the gameplay evoked many nostalgic memories of exploring some of the earlier titles in Tomb Raider’s history, including zipping through the manor’s palatial grounds in Tomb Raider 3 on the back of a quad bike.
Now, one talented Tomb Raider fan has remade this iconic Tomb Raider 3 quad bike section using Unreal Engine 4, rendering it with beautiful and immersive modern-day graphics. The video, created by Nicobass and shared on YouTube, shows Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft as she uses her quad bike to speed brazenly over numerous ramps and jumps before finishing off in an underground cave area within the manor’s grounds. Unlike many did in 1998, however, Nicobass does not use the quad bike to explore inside Croft Manor itself or to run down Lara’s long-suffering butler, Winston.
This is not the only aspect of the Tomb Raider games that Nicobass has remade. For over five years now, Nicobass has been working on a remake of one of Lara’s most famous adventures, Tomb Raider 2. Nicobass has created and shared several videos of the project, called Tomb Raider: The Dagger of Xion, that have been created using UE4. They've also released a demo of the game’s opening chapter at The Great Wall of China.
Like the quad biking video, these demos are a brilliant tribute to the much-loved Tomb Raider franchise. Many of Lara’s fans still remain hopeful that another game in the series will not be too far away. Crystal Dynamics has previously stated that any subsequent games within the Tomb Raider series will unite the game’s original timeline with that of the Survivor timeline. However, at the same time the game’s director, Will Kerslake, asked that fans be patient while waiting for another game to be released, implying that a new title is still some way off. Thankfully, skilled programmers like Nicobass are easily filling the Tomb Raider shaped void in many fans lives with their incredible remakes and homages.
Source: Nicobass/YouTube, Nicobass/TombRaider-dox