Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness is a 2003 action-adventure game developed by Core Design and published by Eidos Interactive for PlayStation 2 and Microsoft Windows. A Mac OS X port was developed by Beenox and published by Aspyr the same year. It is the sixth instalment in the Tomb Raider series, acting as a direct sequel to Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation (1999) and Tomb Raider: Chronicles (2000). The storyline follows Lara Croft as she attempts to clear herself of being the suspect of her former mentor Werner Von Croy's murder while investigating the activities of a black magic cult. The gameplay follows series tradition, with Lara navigating platforming environments while incorporating stealth and character growth elements.
The game's development began three years before its release. The intention was to create a different game from previous entries in the franchise, one that could compete better with newer action games and fully exploit the potential of the sixth generation of gaming platforms. It was also planned to be the first in a new trilogy of Tomb Raider games released for the new generation. However, development was fraught with difficulties, which led to the game being delayed twice and numerous planned sections of the game were scaled back in order to meet deadlines.
Despite selling 2.5 million copies worldwide, The Angel of Darkness received generally negative reviews from critics; while some praise went to its story, the game was widely faulted for its poor controls, camera and numerous technical issues. In the aftermath of the game's release, the planned sequels were scrapped, and the development of the franchise was transferred to Crystal Dynamics for the next entry in the series, Tomb Raider: Legend (2006). A remastered version, which reinstates dialogue and mechanics that were scrapped during the original game's development, was included in Tomb Raider IV–VI Remastered, released in 2025.
Gameplay Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness, like previous Tomb Raider games, is a third-person action-adventure puzzle game. Players control the main series protagonist Lara Croft throughout the majority of the game. The majority of Lara's basic moves are carried over from the previous instalment, such as walking, jumping, climbing, swimming, crawling, swinging on ropes and standard gunplay. Her new moves include a small hop, army-crawling, hand-to-hand combat and a "super-jump" that can be performed while running. Lara can also sneak up on enemies and perform stealth attacks, flatten herself against walls and peer around corners. Lara's ability to sprint, present in the three previous entries in the series, is only available when the player opens a cabinet containing gas masks in the 'Galleries Under Siege' level. Her weapons arsenal is also modified from previous games, featuring new weapons such as a K2 Impactor stun gun and upgraded versions of weapons like the shotgun.
Unlike previous games in the series, Lara has a stamina meter that depletes while she is performing bouts of climbing: if the bar empties before reaching her destination, she falls. The rate at which the meter decrease slows if the player performs special actions that increase Lara's strength. These actions are also necessary to progress through many of the levels. The game incorporates elements similar to a role-playing game, whereby Lara can talk with various NPCs encountered throughout the environment and choose what kinds of answers to give: early in the game, these answers will directly affect her progress through the story. The game also features a second playable character, Kurtis Trent. Initially appearing to be an antagonist, he becomes controllable by the player late in the game. He features mainly identical moves to Lara, and his sections of the game are more based around combat.
Plot The Angel of Darkness follows on from events in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and Tomb Raider: Chronicles, where Lara Croft was presumed dead. An unspecified time later, Lara arrives in Paris at the request of her former mentor, Werner Von Croy, who was tasked by a man named Eckhardt to find a set of artifacts known as the Obscura Paintings. The city, and Von Croy, are gripped with fear over a serial killer the press has dubbed the "Monstrum". During an argument between Lara and Von Croy, an unknown force attacks them, and Lara is knocked unconscious. She wakes to find Von Croy dead and her memories of the attack blurred. Suspected of his murder, Lara goes on the run. After retrieving Von Croy's journal from a colleague named Margot Carvier, she learns that Von Croy discovered the location of the fourth Obscura Painting beneath the Louvre; during her time in Paris getting help from local businessman and mob boss Louis Bouchard, Lara is stalked by Kurtis Trent, the last survivor of a society called the Lux Veritatis who are sworn to fight against Eckhardt's plans. After infiltrating the Louvre, she learns that the paintings hide pieces of the Sanglyph, an alchemical artefact created by Eckhardt hundreds of years before. The paintings were seized and hidden by the Lux Veritatis centuries before. After retrieving the painting from its hiding place, Lara is ambushed by Kurtis and robbed of the painting.
The two escape the Louvre as it is assaulted by mercenaries, with Kurtis using a magical disc to keep both Lara and the mercenaries at bay; both are knocked out by a shape-shifting stranger. Lara is rescued by Bouchard, who takes her to Von Croy's apartment to find further clues. At the apartment, Lara relives the murder and realizes that a strange man, revealed to be Eckhardt, had knocked her unconscious and killed Von Croy. However, Bouchard sends an assassin to kill Lara; she is able to eliminate the hitman and heads for Prague, where a new Monstrum killing has taken place. Arriving in Prague, she finds the location of the final painting and re-encounters a captive Bouchard. He reveals that Eckhardt is planning to use the Sanglyph to awaken the Cubiculum Nephili, the last surviving member of the hostile Nephilim race, and breed them back into existence. Bouchard is later murdered by Eckhardt, who is revealed to have been killing and extracting samples for his experiments under the guise of the Monstrum. Lara infiltrates Eckhardt's headquarters in the Strahov Sanitarium, with help from an investigative journalist named Thomas Luddick. The journalist is later captured and murdered by Eckhardt. Lara encounters members of the Cabal, a secret society that shares Eckhardt's ambitions. While going through the complex, she switches off the power, releasing a rabid creature called the Proto-Nephilim. Later on, Lara is locked in a containment area by Kurtis so he can turn the power back on without interference.
Kurtis succeeds, finding his way through the Sanatorium and killing the Proto-Nephilim. Forming an alliance, Lara retrieves the final painting, while Kurtis goes to retrieve a Periapt Shard, one of three magical daggers which can kill Eckhardt. After retrieving the painting, Lara is forced by Eckhardt to hand over the paintings to save Kurtis' life. After Eckhardt releases one of the Cabal's monsters on them, Kurtis helps Lara escape—giving her the two Periapt Shards in his possession—before killing the monster, being seriously wounded in the process. Lara recovers the final Shard and reaches Eckhardt, who reforms the Sanglyph and begins reviving the Cubiculum Nephili. Lara succeeds in wounding him but is stopped by Joachim Karel, Eckhardt's right-hand man. Karel proceeds to kill Eckhardt, revealing himself to be a Nephilim who has been secretly aiding Lara using his influence in the Cabal and shape-shifting abilities. He offers Lara the chance to join him, but Lara refuses after remembering that it was Karel who murdered Von Croy in Eckhardt's form. Lara uses the Sanglyph to destroy the Cubiculum Nephili, causing an explosion that kills Karel. On her way out, she finds Kurtis' weapon and it leads her toward the monster's chamber. Smiling, Lara walks through the door into the shadows, ending the game.
Development
The Angel of Darkness started development three years prior to its release under the working title Tomb Raider next generation. As part of the preparation for the game, the company conducted market research, and decided to create a new setting and story for the main character. One of the main drives behind the game was fully using the new platform's potential and reinventing the character of Lara Croft, including rebuilding her character model and allowing her to perform melee combat. It was the first game in the series to be made for the PlayStation 2 platform: the previous entry Tomb Raider Chronicles had pushed the PlayStation to its technical limits, contributing to lower review scores and sales than previous titles in the series. Core Design separated into two teams, with a new team working on The Angel of Darkness and series regulars on Tomb Raider Chronicles. By this stage none of the creators of the original Tomb Raider were working on the titles except programmer Gavin Rummery who had moved into a management role. After the completion of Tomb Raider Chronicles, designer Richard Morton came over and found that the new team had gone "off the rails", scrapping the entire project once already and only completing the game's basic story. Former designer Andrew Sandham, who left Core Design during production, recalled that the new team were aiming at something like Grand Theft Auto set across the entirety of Europe, which would have been impossible on the hardware. There was also a general lack of leadership, causing the entire development system to be fragmented. The developers later admitted to being overambitious. Some of them also commented that none of the Core team were prepared for the added complexity of developing for the advanced PlayStation 2. The CGI cutscenes were created by Attitude Studio.
Among the goals of the team for The Angel of Darkness were to create more complicated puzzles and make the character of Lara Croft, together with the tone of the game, darker and more hard-edged. They also wished to compete with some of the newer action-adventure games on the market, which were providing heavy competition, and include gameplay ideas from Shenmue and the Metal Gear series. Many character movements were drawn from and based directly on movements made by real people, similar to later motion capture techniques, and the world design drew from various artists and elements of films from the likes of Luc Besson and David Fincher. Murti Schofield, who had previously worked with Core Design, was brought in to write the story and script. As part of writing the background for the organisations involved in the story, he researched historical secret societies and artefacts, and accurate translations of Latin text incorporated into the game. Schofield created the character Kurtis Trent upon a request for someone who could become the focus of a spin-off franchise. Core spent two years trying to reshape the franchise as well as writing a back story in the form of a book separated into multiple chapters, with The Angel of Darkness being the first of those chapters. According to Schofield, the early plan was for The Last Revelation character Jean-Yves to be the murder victim, but due to a controversy about the character's similarity to real-life archaeologist Jean-Yves Empereur, Jean-Yves was replaced with Von Croy and the story subsequently rewritten.