Tomb Raider 2 Almost Didn't Include Lara's Loyal Butler Winston

thegamer.com:

For those of you out there who grew up with the Tomb Raider series, chances are you'll remember Winston the butler. Despite him doing his best to bring Lara a nice cup of tea wherever she went, most people gave Winston nothing but grief by quickly locking him up in Croft Manor's walk-in freezer after he dutifully follows you inside. It's a cruel, yet rather funny, bit of trickery that has given Winston icon status in the Tomb Raider series, but it turns out his inclusion in the game was "very last-minute".

In an interview with Retro Gamer (thanks GamesRadar), lead programmer Gavin Rummery revealed that Winston was only added once development on the game was almost finished. A French animator called Jocelyn Charmet apparently came up with the idea for Winston after completing all of his work on Tomb Raider 2, explaining that he thought that upper-class British people all had butlers and that Lara should have one due to her wealth.

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While Rummery wasn't too keen on making Lara Croft the type of person that would have her own butler, he eventually went ahead with the idea of Winston by explaining that the butler came with the house after it was inherited by Lara. Due to the fact that Winston's sole purpose is to follow you around and creep you out a bit, it only took "about three days" to add the butler to the game once the idea had been conceptualized.

"Winston was a very last-minute addition to the game," says Rummery. "Joss was French, and to him this is what upper-class Brits would have. I was originally sceptical that Lara was the kind of girl to want a butler, but we hit on the excuse that he'd come with the house."

Rummery also