Tomb Raider’s Creative Director Leaves Crystal Dynamics

The Tomb Raider franchise has come a long way over the past few years, thanks to the awesome 2013 reboot, as well as the 2015 adventure Rise of the Tomb Raider that followed shortly thereafter. Now, while we're questioning the future of the franchise, Crystal Dynamic has lost one of its key team members.

Ian Milham, who served on Crystal Dynamics as the creative director for the series, has departed to go work on a new adventure, according to his Twitter page.

"Hi friends!" he noted. "An announcement: last week was my last at Crystal Dynamics, I've joined old friends at @OutpostGamesInc! I'm now Creative Director on @playsosgame! I'm in love with the potential and freshness of it."

He also added, "Don't infer anything about CD or Tomb Raider based on this. They've been awesome and people should be very excited by what's coming. This was a chance to team up with old friends again on something exciting (and cut my commute from an hour to 10 minutes)."

With that, Crystal Dynamics has already begun the search for his replacement with the following job posting from Gamasutra:

"Crystal Dynamics is looking for a talented and passionate Creative Director for a new AAA action adventure title [this is Tomb Raider] we are developing. This individual will be responsible for overseeing all decisions that affect how the game plays, looks, and sounds. We would like to find a person who has experience providing creative direction for world class titles. The focus of the Creative Director will be to ensure the highest quality for the game play, artwork, music, and audio assets that will be in the final shipped version of the game. We expect the Creative Director to lead the overall vision of the game."

We certainly wish Ian and the team at Crystal Dynamics the best of luck!

Oh, and side note – someone already noted "No joke, this would be a fantastic place for Amy Hennig." The writer of Uncharted working on the Tomb Raider franchise? Man. We've got goose bumps just thinking about it.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is available now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.