Tomb Raider · PlayStation 2 / PC · 2003 · Preceded by: Tomb Raider Chronicles (2000)
Lara Croft's ambitious next-generation reinvention was cut to pieces and forced out unfinished by a publisher desperate for cash — it nearly killed the franchise and did kill Core Design's hold on it.
The Angel of Darkness began as "Tomb Raider Next Generation," an ambitious plan by Core Design to reinvent Lara Croft for the PlayStation 2 era as the opening chapter of a story trilogy. It ended as one of the most notorious rushed releases in gaming, a game whose failure ended Core Design's stewardship of the character it had created. The root cause was financial. Eidos Interactive was in serious money trouble, and it forced Core Design to interrupt work on the new game to produce another traditional Tomb Raider in the meantime — splitting the studio, with its more experienced developers pulled onto the stopgap title while others built an entirely new graphics engine. When Core finally asked Eidos for a delay to finish the game properly, Eidos refused. The team was forced to compress what had been conceived as three games into one, cutting half the plot, locations, characters, and mechanics in the process. Eidos pushed the game out to coincide with the release of the film Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, and it shipped in an unfinished, unstable state riddled with bugs — awkward controls, broken stealth, and half-implemented systems all visible in the released product. The reviews were brutal, and the game became a byword for a publisher destroying a project by refusing it the time it needed. For Eidos the gamble was, cynically, a success: the company was so deep in debt it would not have survived until the game's planned November release, and the influx of initial sales and the resulting stock movement kept it afloat until SCI acquired it in 2005. For Core Design it was fatal. Exhausted and discredited, the studio was stripped of Tomb Raider, which Eidos handed to Crystal Dynamics; Angel of Darkness was the last Tomb Raider Core ever made, and the studio was shut down in 2010. It stands as the clearest example in the medium of a good team destroyed by a publisher's cash crisis.
The Angel of Darkness failed for reasons that had little to do with Core Design's talent. Eidos was in severe financial distress and could not survive until the game's planned November 2003 release, so it forced the title out early to coincide with the second Tomb Raider film. Core had already been split — experienced staff diverted onto a stopgap traditional Tomb Raider while others built a new engine — and when the studio asked for a delay to finish properly, Eidos refused. Three games' worth of design was crushed into one, with half the plot, locations, characters, and mechanics cut. The result was a game that shipped visibly incomplete because the publisher needed the cash more than it needed the game to work.
The gamble worked for Eidos and destroyed Core Design. Initial sales and the accompanying stock movement kept the publisher alive until SCI bought it in 2005, but the game's savaging in the press — and the exhaustion of a team that had been set up to fail — convinced Eidos to take Tomb Raider away from the studio that invented it and hand it to Crystal Dynamics. Angel of Darkness was the last Tomb Raider Core Design ever made, and the studio was ultimately shut down in 2010. It remains the definitive cautionary tale of what happens when a publisher's balance sheet, rather than a game's readiness, sets the release date.