There’s a fan remake of Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness in development right now, and the team has released the first proper look at the game – a video showcasing the updated Lara Croft model in her casual jeans look and a short snippet of new gameplay.
The remake – dubbed Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness 1.5 – is being worked on by developer Julian Guba (aka FreakRaider) and Lara character model creator Konrad Majewski. The pair are using Unreal Engine 4 to completely remake the most maligned of all the Tomb Raider games, similarly to the fan remake of Tomb Raider 2, The Dagger of Xi’an.
FreakRaider has been tinkering with the engine for over five years now but apparently the current version has only been in development about six months, and it sounds like the developers are nearly ready to properly reveal it. The new video released reveals Konrad’s highly detailed Lara Croft model, with 150,000 polygons, subsurface scattering, 4K textures, and realistic hair shading.
Most recently, FreakRaider posted a short video of the new Lara model in action in one of the game’s Paris opening areas. The devs say a “full in-depth dev log” about the project is coming soon.
It is worth noting that as a fan remake, this isn’t officially endorsed by anyone who controls the rights. As for the Tomb Raider franchise, there hasn’t been a peep about a new game since the underperforming Shadow of the Tomb Raider. However, it looks like a trilogy collection of the most recent Lara Croft reboot is on the cards, and there is both a Netflix animated series and a new movie on the way – so the franchise is still looking pretty healthy.