The Tomb Raider Remastered trilogy was led by a fan who's spent the last 8 years working on an unofficial Tomb Raider game engine

15.02.2024 - 16:41 / gamesradar.com / Hope Bellingham / Raider Remastered

A Tomb Raider fan, who's been unofficially remastering the first five games for the last eight years, has announced they worked on the official remastered trilogy. 

XProger, the developer of game engine OpenLara, has spent the last few years upgrading the first five Tomb Raider games and allowing players to enjoy Lara Croft's early adventures in their browser. According to this breakdown, the project stays true to the original's look and feel but adds some enhancements that make the old-school games "look a bit less archaic."

OpenLara alters the original games' framerate so that it's no longer fixed to 30FPS and can instead reach between 60 and 144FPS. It also allows players to set the internal resolution and adds things like new water effects, self-shadowing on all the player models, improved lighting effects, a local multiplayer mode, a first-person view, and a range of optional graphical enhancements. 

You may think that since the Tomb Raider 1 - 3 Remastered collection is now a thing, XProger would be out of a job. That's actually the complete opposite of what's happened, as the developer has recently revealed that they've put their projects on hold, since they've been working on the official remastered trilogy instead. 

I'm grateful to the heads of @SaberGames for trusting me to lead the project and assemble a dream team of true fans.Thanks to @AspyrMedia for providing the source code for their Mac ports to us.Many thanks to Digital Forms for coming to our aid, you are great pros! (2/4)February 14, 2024

On February 14, the programmer took to Twitter to tell OpenLara fans why they've not been updating the program for a while: "For the past year, I've been busy with a dream project that has become the culmination of the last eight years of my life - Tomb Raider 1 - 3 Remastered." 

In a thread, the developer shares more about their experience working on Aspyr's remaster, revealing that they worked with "a small 'Development Team' of crazy people" who had an "absolute vision of what and for whom we are doing" it all for. They also took the time to thank the studios behind it for "trusting" them to not only lead the project but also "assemble a dream team of true fans." 

The Tomb Raider 1 - 3 Remastered is available now on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch. 

Find out what other new releases are on the horizon with our new games 2024 list.