Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis Remakes Lara With Scanned Real Clothes

Crystal Dynamics and Flying Wild Hog have explained how they rebuilt Lara Croft for Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, and every decision traces back to her 1996 debut. In a new PlayStation Blog feature, developers from both studios walk through the hair, skin, cloth and story choices behind her new look.

The original Lara is still the blueprint

Brendon Bengston of Crystal Dynamics says the first game was held back by strict limits on polygons and textures, so many ideas for a more realistic Lara simply could not be built at the time. With modern hardware, the team set itself one question: how far can realism go while the character still matches that original design?

The PlayStation 2 era games Legend, Anniversary and Underworld gave her smoother models and richer animation, and the Survivor trilogy pushed detail further, yet each version still answered to the 1996 silhouette. Aleksandra Skiba, Senior Character Concept Artist at Flying Wild Hog, describes the job as a balancing act: Lara has to feel believable and stay instantly recognizable, and the goal is to use today’s tools “to make them better.”

Hair, skin and faces in Unreal

Hair is the clearest jump. In the early games it was made of large solid shapes, while Legacy of Atlantis uses hair cards, thin overlapping strips of translucent texture that let artists shape individual strands and control how her bangs, ponytail and braid move.

Her skin relies on subsurface scattering, which lets light sink slightly below the surface so it reads as living skin instead of plastic, along with flow maps. Custom blend shapes add specific lines on her forehead and face when she squints, smiles or frowns. Bengston credits Epic’s Unreal Engine with taking the characters “to the next level” in both looks and movement.

A real tailor for a digital outfit

For clothing, the team sculpted Lara’s base body, had it 3D printed at full scale and sent it to a vendor, who dressed the mannequin in real garments and scanned it, so denim, silk, cotton and wool each fold the way they would in real life. For one of her outfits the studio went a step further and hired a tailor to make the actual clothes, then scanned them on the mannequin to create the in game version.

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One Lara built from thirty years of games

Narrative Director John Stafford of Crystal Dynamics splits the update into three parts. Her intelligence, fearlessness and appetite for thrills stay untouched, her emotional depth and relationships grow, and the mythic, realistic and over the top styles of earlier eras are blended into one character. He says the 2007 remake Anniversary taught the studio that players hold on to the feeling Lara gives them more than to plot details, while the Survivor games proved she works best when danger carries real consequences.

For newcomers, Stafford wants Lara to come across as the smartest and boldest person in the room, someone who chases adventure rather than just surviving it. The one trait he says could never change is her curiosity, a Lara who always “needs to know what’s behind the next door.”

Legacy of Atlantis, a reimagining of Lara’s first adventure, launches on February 12, 2027, and preorders are open now. Watch the official release date trailer below.

Release date, platforms and price

• Release date: February 12, 2027 (launch time not announced yet)
• Platforms: PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2 and PC (Steam)
• Price: Standard Edition 59.99 US dollars, Deluxe Edition 69.99 US dollars
• Store links: PlayStation Store, Xbox Store, Steam

Based on the official PlayStation Blog post by Amazon Game Studios, with release details from the official PlayStation Store and Steam listings.

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