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Core Design Loses Grip On Lara
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to an Eidos press release discussing major changes to the Tomb Raider franchise. Following the recent resignation of the managing director of Tomb Raider developers Core Design, seemingly due to the disappointing reception for Tomb Raider:Angel Of Darkness, Eidos has announced that "...in recognition of the Company's need continually to enhance the value and maximize the commercial opportunity of one of its key franchises, for which all intellectual property rights belong to Eidos, the Board has concluded that it will transfer development of the franchise to its Crystal Dynamics studio in the U.S." Crystal Dynamics are probably best known for the recent titles in the Legacy Of Kain series, so it'll be interesting to see what they make of the latterly lackluster Tomb Raider franchise.
"who have never put out a truly episodic game in their lives, "
Arguable. SR2 was fairly episodic, with the different time periods forming the framework for the episodes. My concern with handing the franchise to CD is that they seem to spend a lot of time building cutscenes to tell a story at the expense of gameplay - SR2 in particular is reduced to a game that can be played in hours if you skip the cutscenes*. If they can combine decent, deep stories with varied and interesting gameplay, then TR may have a chance of revival. But I'm waiting for Defiance before I hold my breath on that...
* yes, I know that the whole point is not to skip them, and the story is unusually intricate for a PC game (let alone a console one) but once you've seen them once you don't need to see them again.