New Lara Croft is "not a Tomb Raider game", says producer

During GDC, Crystal Dynamics' brand director Karl Stewart and producer Forest Large showed us a bit of Lara Croft, which does not take place in any time line contained within the Tomb Raider series.

In fact, it doesn't even contain that moniker, because according to Stewart, the developers wanted to give Lara a new coat of paint and freshen her up a bit.

"We decided to make Lara Croft after we finished up with Anniversary," said Stewart. "We wanted to take a step back an evaluate who we are as a studio and Lara as an IP - where she was going.

"Ultimately, we decided we wanted to try new things so we starting looking at the gaming space to see what could be done with Lara, and this is what we came up with.

"The reason Tomb Raider is missing from the title, is because this is not a Tomb Raider title. That part is saved for full game releases and we didn't want this game to affect the other titles."

Stewart would not go into any further detail on that, and instead changed the subject to talk about the game's engine, which just so happens to be the same CDC Engine used to create the core Tomb Raider games.

You can really tell too. When playing, you can see several levels down into the dungeons easily, the vistas in the game are crystal clear, and the depth is rather impressive for a game with isomeric views.

It reminded us a lot of Baldur's Gate on PS2 and Diablo II - which is a good thing.

Lara Croft and the Guardian of Light is slated for summer on PC, PSN, and XBL.

Crystal Dynamics told us at GDC that it would not see a WiiWare release.