Tomb Raider superfan and modder XProger has taken to Twitter / X to reveal they led development on the newly-released, highly-praised Tomb Raider I-III Remastered release. XProger had previously been working on OpenLara, an open source engine for Tomb Raider, and put the project on pause while they quietly worked on the official version of the game.
“I’m grateful to the heads of Saber Interactive for trusting me to lead the project and assemble a dream team of true fans,” XProger said. “Thanks to Aspyr for providing the source code for their Mac ports to us. Many thanks to Digital Forms for coming to our aid, your are great pros!”
“From the beginning, we had complete freedom and set ourselves an impossible goal, which could only be approached by a small ‘Development Team’ of crazy people, ready to work 24/7 next year with an absolute vision of what and for whom we are doing.”
Read: New Tomb Raider collection includes warning of ethnic stereotypes
According to XProger, the team worked diligently to address feedback from the original game developers and the community of Tomb Raider fans, reading through countless comments, interviews, reviews, and reactions with a responsibility to serve this audience and deliver them a solid, worthy remaster.
The decision to employ talented, passionate fans on the Tomb Raider remaster project appears to have paid off for Saber Interactive and Aspyr, with the collection earning strong reviews on launch. Critics have praised its graphical updates and its polish, noting that while the fundamental gameplay is still fairly dated, its remastering has allowed a sleek sense of modernisation that preserves and highlights the franchise’s legacy.
Tomb Raider may have aged, but it’s one of the most important video games in modern history, and it’s very clear the team working behind the scenes understood this, and the importance of refreshing the game for a new generation.
With the knowledge that XProger and other members of the game’s development team have spent years working on their own iterations of the Tomb Raider engine, the quality and vision backing the remaster becomes much clearer.
