4Players: Your name always gets associated with Lara Croft. But is there any game that you'd rather like to be associated with?

Toby Gard: Galleon I was really pleased with, actually.

4Players: Even though reviews were quite moderate?

Gard: They weren't, actually! Critics were extreme. They either liked it a lot or they hated it. It got really high scores and really low scores, but virtually none middle scores.

4Players: When you invented Lara Croft what was she as a character? Who did you want her to be?

A character like no other: Lara goes back to her roots.

Gard: Well, the key thing was: I wanted to make the opposite of a character that everyone else was making. Everyone was making blond-haired, blue-eyed, American, square-jawed, muscular guys who were sarcastic and rude. And so, I wanted to make a character instead who was an English aristocrat, well mannered, but equally incredibly dangerous. So basically, its pretty much the opposite of what everyone else was doing.

4Players: Is there anything you didn't accomplish from what you set out to do?

Gard: No, the goal was to invert that style, and she was literally the opposite of that type of hero.

4Players: Apparently you left because you weren't pleased with how Lara Croft was represented by Eidos. Is she now where you want her to be? Is she going where you want her to be going?

Gard: It's definitely in the right direction. I've been working with Crystal Dynamics for a couple of years now. Lara going in that way is definitely very close to the right stuff for me. I think they're doing great!

4Players: Are you going to stay with the series?

Gard: For the time being, yes. There is a lot of stuff I'm interested in seeing. There are aspects of the character I

In Anniversary wild animals appear in the same places as in the original - scary moments guaranteed.want to explore. Some of it is being explored in Anniversary, which is really good. The basis of Lara Croft is that she is very driven. She does things no normal person would do in order to achieve her goals. And her goals are normally like getting her stuff out of tombs and solving mysteries. So with a character that's that driven and that dangerous there are always going to be interesting stories about how far she is willing to go in order to get what she wants. And that's really the key thing in Anniversary: How far she is willing to go to get the artifacts that she is seeking?

4Players: Are we going to get some insight into Lara Croft that is new to players of the original Tomb Raider?

Gard: It depends. Understanding the story in Tomb Raider 1 is going to be a big thing in and off itself, because most people didn't really understand the story. There is a lot of information in Tomb Raider 1 or in Anniversary that's really important to Lara, that ties into her obsession. We are all going to understand more afterwards and we are going to see critical changes in Lara, things that make out who she is.      

4Players: I know Tomb Raider 8 is still in development and something you can't talk about yet. But can you say where you want to go, what you want to see story-wise and character-wise?

Gard: Well, I mean, it's difficult to talk about that stuff, because stuff that I do want to see tends to end up happening!

Driven and dangerous: Lara Croft at work.*laughs* I mean, not always. I'm not designing it...

4Players: Are you going to stay as an advisor?

Gard: Yes.

4Players: Why is that, anyway? Why not be the designer?

Gard: Well, when you become creative director on a project it completely takes up all of your energy and time. And the fact is that there are lots of things going on for Tomb Raider, like different games, different people coming up with ways to use the license or the brand. Ian (Livingston, ed.) was talking about a movie coming and all those kinds of things. And there's no one really looking for the coherence of the whole thing. And I think there needs to be. So I try to look at everything I can.

4Players: So, you're overlooking Lara's development.

Gard: Yes, unofficially. *laughs*

4Players: What do you think is the most important aspect about games? Story, characters, gameplay?

Gard: Oh yes, that's tough! I don't think the characters are even a necessary part of a game. I truly believe that story is integral to making any kind of experience that's going to have any real effect on people. You know, I never remember an

In the tombs of Peru you will catch up with old friends.individual game of Tetris, because there's no story to tell. I think story is so important to humans, and I think that designers who ignore story do so at their own peril. But obviously gameplay is the key thing. I mean what you're doing and how much fun the experience is is the key thing. That's what people play games for.

4Players: Do you think an older Lara could be an interesting character as well?

Gard: Well, you know, that's the beauty of digital actors: They don't age.

4Players: Did Lara get older during the course of the games?

Gard: She's pretty much stayed the same. She's in that time warp. *laughs* And that's really a great thing when you think about it, because real actors - you can't get a young Harrison Ford any more...   

4Players: You said before that you don't like generic game characters. Do you think you achieved that game characters have grown less stereotypical after Tomb Raider came out?

Gard: I think so. I hope so. I mean, there are always people who want to make great characters. And then there are always people who want to play save.

4Players: What's save these days?

Gard: What's save these days is the girl with big boobs. 

Girls with big boobs seem to be the new cliché.That seems to be the new cliché. And the blond-haired, blue-eyed, American, square-jawed marine - he's still there as well.

4Players: Would you say Angelina Jolie is a good Lara Croft?

Gard: I think she was great. My issue with the film portrayal of her was that she was coming across somewhat arrogant and rude. Lara should never be any of those things. Lara should be nice, very pleasant to people. Only if you stand in her way she will shoot you between the eyes.

4Players: Nice!

Gard: Yeah, the point is you don't have to be rude to be a frightening person. You know, at the end of the day she's a lot like the stereotypical Hollywood villain: well-spoken, very polite, extremely cultured but really, really dangerous.

4Players: Did you work out a back story when you invented the character?

Gard: No. A lot of her back story was basically done for Legend.

4Players: Which ancient place did you not yet discover in Tomb Raider? Where else could she possibly go?

Gard: That's a good question! *laughs* Well, the places that we have been - there's just so much more we can do with it. So far we have only scratched the surface - a single legend or a single story in a given culture. For example the Greek part in Anniversary, which is very loosely based on a few Gods. In all honesty, there is so much that you could take from the Greek legends and real Greek locations that you could go on for ages.

4Players: Where do you take your ideas? Are they based on the findings of real artifacts or historical facts?

Gard: Generally we research into legends and stuff like that. The critical and difficult part of making Tomb Raider 

Lara's way into the future: How far will she go to get what she wants?games is to make Lara travel all over the world. And it's quite hard to tie all these totally different cultures together. They are from totally different epochs of time, you know.

4Players: Do you think it was a good idea to take Lara into big cities? It feels like old tombs really fit her best and she gets kind of lost in modern cities.

Gard: Yes, she's not designed for that. She is meant to be out, where no one else is. Anything else doesn't really make sense, even though occasionally it's fine, because it lends a bit of reality to her situation.

4Players: Thank you very much for the interview!