'No old code exists': Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis experience director confirms the 'reimagining' had to be built totally from the ground up on Unreal Engine 5 — but this meant Crystal Dynamics could add more tech upgrades

(Image credit: Crystal Dynamics / Flying Wild Hog) Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis experience director Jeff Adams confirms "no old code exists" for the original 1996 gameThis meant Crystal Dynamics had to build the game from the ground up on Unreal Engine 5Adams says the engine also allowed the studio to create its own custom tech for the "reimagining" of the classic titleCrystal Dynamics has explained why it chose to build Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis from the ground up, instead of doing anything close to a remake of the 1996 game, revealing that no source code exists.In a Q&A at Gamescom following an exclusive presentation that TechRadar Gaming attended, experience director Jeff Adams discussed what he's previously called a "reimagining" of the original Tomb Raider game and what it meant for the development team, who built the game from the ground up using Unreal Engine 5."We are in Unreal Engine 5," Adams said, "no old code exists. We are basically taking it and remaking it, or not remaking, reimagining it. We are bringing it from the ground up."When asked to talk about how effective Unreal Engine 5 has been for the team, Adams explained that it enabled them to "have our own custom implementation for physics in the engine," which means engineering their own features, custom physics, and general upgrades; this made Legacy of Atlantis a true, modern reimagining."Unreal creates a really great sandbox platform for building a game, but when we're making a specific type of experience, we're going to have things that we really want to target and get to a right fidelity level where we're happy with it," the developer continued."So while things like Nanite and Lumen [UE5's technologies that offer realistic graphics capability] allow us to make a beautiful game environment, there might be some things that we're saying, 'Hey, we wish it could do this a little bit better.' That's when we'll break out and say, our engineers will create something custom that helps solve that issue, so that we can make sure that we're delivering an authentic Tomb Raider experience on Unreal."He added that Lara Croft's long braid, which reacts to her movement, is "a perfect example of that."Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis launches on February 27, 2027, for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch 2, and PC. Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews, and opinion in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button! Demi is a freelance games journalist who helps cover gaming news at TechRadar. She's been a games writer for five years and has written for outlets such as GameSpot, NME, and GamesRadar, covering news, features, and reviews. Outside of writing, she plays a lot of RPGs and talks far too much about Star Wars on X. With contributions from Rob Dwiar Managing Editor, TechRadar Gaming and Streaming