PS1 Players May Be Disappointed in Tomb Raider Remake Change

Fans of the original Tomb Raider might be disappointed in the forthcoming remake, which makes a significant change to the classic PlayStation game. Tomb Raider debuted all the way back in 1996 and quickly became a genre-defining action-adventure game, spawning a massive franchise. Despite its longstanding appeal, the original game has been remastered and remade once since its release, but that was nearly two decades ago. The 2025 Game Awards unveiled not one, but two new Tomb Raider games. One set for release in 2026 is Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, a remake 30 years in the making.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis’ developers at Crystal Dynamics revealed that the game’s difficulty was evolving from the original to reflect “modern players’ tastes.” The original game was always challenging, requiring players to take a trial-and-error approach as they progressed through various levels. These typically included insta-kill traps featuring giant boulders or spikes, forcing the player to take a new approach. This is a core element of Tomb Raider, but according to the devs at Crystal Dynamics, they’re taking a less lethal approach to the game’s exploration mechanics.

Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis Might Have Its Difficulty Toned Down

Scott Amos, the head of studio at Crystal Dynamics, and Will Kerslake, game director at Crystal Dynamics, sat down for an interview with Video Games Chronicle to discuss the forthcoming remake. Amos described Legacy of Atlantis as a “love letter by fans, all of us, for fans,” so it’s certainly in good hands. The whole game is being rebuilt from scratch via Unreal Engine 5, so they’re looking at it as less of a remake and more of a “reimagining.” They’ve kept all of the original elements that make the game Tomb Raider, but they pushed “it through a modern-day gamer’s lens,” and significantly improved every graphical element.

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Kerslake had the following to say regarding the difficulty adjustment: “Part of reimagining a game is adjusting that game, evolving for modern player tastes. But it is core to the Tomb Raider experience that there are puzzles, combat, traversal, and death-defying action. If you look at the trailer that we had for Legacy of Atlantis, you’ll see big rolling balls, and the things that you expect in a Tomb Raider game are going to be there.” While he doesn’t outright say that the difficulty will be reduced, that’s the implication in reference to “evolving for modern player tastes.”

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New Tomb Raider Game Is Doing Something the Franchise Hasn’t Done in Almost 30 Years

If you look back to the Golden Age of Video Games, they were considerably harder than they are today. Progressively, game difficulty has scaled downwards, or games have incorporated difficulty settings to allow players to adjust the game to their preferred style. Crystal Dynamics will likely include a difficulty slider in Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, though this remains unconfirmed as of writing. Whatever the case, the teaser suggests that the game will adapt the story and most of the mechanics of Tomb Raider into a modern retelling, bridging a 30-year gap in development to land yet another classic game in the hands of contemporary gamers.

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