The Next Tomb Raider Game Needs To Respect Underworld

thegamer.com:

I’ve written a fair bit about the new Tomb Raider, which is weird when you consider that we know basically nothing about it. It has been four years since Shadow of the Tomb Raider, making this the second-longest we have gone without a Tomb Raider game since the series began in 1996. And, barring a surprise “and it’s out right now!” reveal at Gamescom, that wait is going to get significantly longer. In the meantime though, I want to talk a little about Tomb Raider Underworld.

Underworld is perhaps the most overlooked of all the Tomb Raider games. Though not as reviled as Angel of Darkness, AoD at least has notoriety going for it. Underworld is part of the least cohesive era of Tomb Raider and is overshadowed by both Anniversary and Legend, but its importance to the overall texture of Lara Croft cannot be forgotten. Unfortunately, I’m afraid it might be.

Related: Who Even Wants Lara Croft To Have Daddy Issues At This Point?

Even though we will have to wait the longest time ever for a new Tomb Raider game (ignoring all human history before the first Tomb Raider game, as we should), a lot has happened in that time. It has been confirmed in the most low-key manner that the new game will unite the existing reboot trilogy’s story (known as the Survivor story) to the events of Anniversary, Legend, and Underworld. Survivor was a relatively hard reboot for the series, taking Lara back to the very start of her career and seeing her become the Tomb Raider. It also ditched globe trotting for fixed, individual settings to be explored in depth and softened Lara’s edges, all while throwing in an entirely new cast. Why Sam was written out, I have no idea, but it was a very different story.

How does this all line up with the classic Tomb