At PlayStation's State of Play on June 2, 2026, Amazon Game Studios and Crystal Dynamics showed a new trailer for Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis. Release date, edition details, gameplay, story setup. A lot landed at once.
The headline is a delay. The game was targeting 2026. It's now February 12, 2027. But based on what the trailer actually shows, the extra months look like they're being used.
What This Game Actually Is
This is not a remaster. Legacy of Atlantis is a full ground-up reimagining of the original 1996 Tomb Raider, built in Unreal Engine 5, co-developed by Crystal Dynamics and Polish studio Flying Wild Hog. It's published by Amazon Game Studios as the first piece of a planned franchise reboot.
This is also technically the second remake of the 1996 game, after Tomb Raider: Anniversary in 2007. But Anniversary was a fairly faithful recreation. Legacy of Atlantis is clearly going further than that. The environments are expanded, the level design is restructured, and the story has been deepened to connect Lara's origin adventure to the broader continuity the franchise has built over the decades.
The connection to the wider franchise runs deeper than most people expected. The project was quietly foreshadowed in the unpatched ending of Shadow of the Tomb Raider (2018), which included a removed scene showing Lara's dual pistols and a letter from Jacqueline Natla. The people building this knew exactly where they were going.
Story: What the Trailer Sets Up
The core premise follows Lara hunting for the scattered pieces of the Scion, an artifact tied to the lost civilization of Atlantis. Anyone who played the 1996 original knows this story. The journey takes her from the jungles of Peru, through the ruins of Greece, into the deserts of Egypt, and eventually to a mysterious Mediterranean island.
That's the skeleton of the original game. What Legacy of Atlantis adds is a more developed narrative around it. The trailer hints at returning characters, and the PlayStation Blog post specifically teases a returning character revealed, though the details are kept close to the chest. Given that the game is built on the foundation of the 1996 original, the most likely candidates are people from that story's roster: Jacqueline Natla, Larson, or Pierre.
Earlier leaks from earlier in 2026 described the trailer beginning with the familiar encounter between Lara, Larson, and Natla in Calcutta, which would set up the Scion hunt from the start. If that's accurate, the game is preserving the original's setup while expanding what happens around it.
There's also an Amazon Prime series in development, with Sophie Turner cast as Lara Croft. The game and the series are running in parallel as part of the same franchise relaunch, though Legacy of Atlantis appears to be its own story rather than a tie-in.
Lara is voiced here by Alix Wilton Regan, who most will recognize from previous entries in the series.
Gameplay: What's Changed and What Stayed
The most important design decision this game makes is structural. The original 1996 Tomb Raider was built around self-contained rooms. You cleared one chamber, moved to the next. It worked for its time because level design technology at the time couldn't really do anything else.
Legacy of Atlantis throws that structure out.
The PlayStation Blog described it directly: the spaces have been opened into semi-connected environments you can traverse, explore, and approach from multiple angles. The Peru sections shown in the trailer are the clearest example. The Lost Valley, which in 1996 was a series of connected rooms with a famous T-Rex encounter, is now a proper open environment. Bigger, denser, full of secrets and collectibles. The iconic cog puzzle comes back, but rebuilt and grounded in the world rather than existing in a vacuum.
This is closer to how modern open-world adjacent games handle legacy content. Think of how God of War (2018) restructured the Kratos mythology into a more organic world. The bones of the original are there, but the scaffolding has been completely replaced.
Combat uses Lara's dual pistols as the anchor weapon, with other unlockable guns added as you progress. She also has a grappling hook for traversal, and the trailer shows her gymnast-level agility being put to use across climbing, leaping, and sliding through environments. Human mercenaries are in the mix as enemies, and so are animals and, apparently, mythological creatures as the story moves deeper into Atlantean territory.
The T-Rex is back too, and it looks nothing like the blocky polygon threat from the original. Based on the trailer, it's a proper predator encounter, with Lara firing her dual pistols while sliding under its jaws in a sequence that is clearly going to be one of the game's signature moments.
Visual Style and Tone
Unreal Engine 5 is doing a lot of work here, and it shows. The environments look dense and grounded in a way the original could only gesture toward. Peru's jungle sections have depth and atmosphere. The Greek ruins look like places that existed before Lara arrived. Egypt, glimpsed briefly, has the dry, oppressive heat that the original tried to communicate with geometry alone.
The visual design of Lara herself is worth noting. This is not the hyper-realistic survivor version from the 2013 reboot trilogy. This is the classic Lara, the one with the braid, the turquoise tank top, the combat shorts. She looks like the character people had on their bedroom walls in 1997, rebuilt with modern fidelity. The dirt on her skin, the weight of how she moves, the details in her face all serve the idea that this is the Lara people imagined when they were playing the original on a CRT television.
The tone sits somewhere between the grounded survival atmosphere of the reboot trilogy and the pulpy adventure energy of the classic games. It takes the danger seriously but it's not grimdark. There are dinosaurs. Lara is clearly having, on some level, the time of her life.
The Delay and What It Means
Legacy of Atlantis was originally targeting a 2026 release. It's now February 12, 2027. That's a delay of a few months, not a catastrophic setback.
One factor worth flagging: GTA 6 is releasing in 2026, and its shadow over the entire games market this year is real. Multiple studios have quietly shuffled their release windows around it. Moving Legacy of Atlantis into early 2027 gives it cleaner air to breathe commercially, regardless of whether the development time is the primary reason.
The game also launches on more platforms than originally confirmed. It was previously PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC. The State of Play reveal added Nintendo Switch 2 as a day one platform. That's a significant addition and suggests confidence that the game will run well on the hardware.
Edition Breakdown: What You're Actually Getting
Three editions were announced. Here's what each one includes, pulled directly from the official pre-order materials.
Standard Edition ($59.99)
The base game as a full digital download. If you pre-order, you also get the Lara Croft Survivor Outfit as an early unlock. That's the only bonus attached to the Standard Edition. No early access, no extra content.
Deluxe Edition ($69.99)
This is where things get more interesting. The Deluxe Edition includes the full base game plus four additional items:
- Pre-Order Bonus: Lara Croft Survivor Outfit (early unlock, same as Standard)
- Pre-Order Bonus: 48-Hour Early Launch Access. This means you can play from February 10, 2027, two days before the official release date.
- DLC Story Pack (post-launch). This is a full narrative add-on, not just cosmetics. The details haven't been revealed yet, but it's included in the Deluxe purchase.
- Lara Croft Parisian Fugitive Outfit. An exclusive costume not available in the Standard Edition.
At $10 more than Standard, the 48-hour early access alone makes this the obvious choice for anyone who knows they're going to play on day one anyway. The DLC Story Pack on top of that makes it genuinely good value, assuming the DLC is substantial.
The Parisian Fugitive Outfit is a nod to the classic Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness (2003), where Lara spent a significant portion of the game as a fugitive in Paris. The outfit shown in the pre-order art fits that reference, a sleek, urban look that contrasts with Lara's usual adventure gear. A nice detail for longtime fans.
Collector's Edition ($199.99)
The Collector's Edition is not available to pre-order yet. It's listed as "Pre-Order Coming Soon." The contents, though, are fully confirmed, and this is the one that's going to get people talking:
- Base Game
- Pre-Order Bonus: Lara Croft Survivor Outfit (early unlock)
- Pre-Order Bonus: 48-Hour Early Launch Access
- DLC Story Pack (post-launch)
- Lara Croft Parisian Fugitive Outfit
- Lara Croft vs. The T-Rex Statue. A collector's statue depicting the iconic confrontation between Lara and the T-Rex from the Lost Valley.
- Mini Art Book
- Triumvirate Talisman Keychain. A physical keychain referencing the three-piece Scion artifact that drives the game's story.
- Croft Signet Pin. A collectible enamel pin.
- Premium Steel Case. A physical steel case for the game disc.
The T-Rex statue is the obvious centerpiece. The original T-Rex encounter is one of the most memorable moments in video game history for people who were there, a sudden, terrifying shift in scale that nobody saw coming in 1996. Having that as a physical collector's item makes sense for a franchise that's leaning hard into nostalgia alongside modernity.
At $199.99, it's priced in line with other premium collector's editions from major releases. Whether it's worth it depends entirely on how much that T-Rex encounter meant to you the first time around.
What Comes Next
Legacy of Atlantis is not the only Tomb Raider game in development. Crystal Dynamics is also building Tomb Raider: Catalyst, described as a direct follow-up to 2008's Tomb Raider: Underworld and an entirely new adventure rather than a remake. Catalyst is slated for sometime in 2027 as well, making next year a significant one for the franchise.
The plan, based on how Amazon has positioned both games, is for Legacy of Atlantis to function as a re-entry point for the franchise. Bringing people back to the beginning, or letting new players start there, before Catalyst takes the story somewhere new.
February 12, 2027. For everyone who spent time in the Lost Valley in 1996 trying to figure out how to survive that T-Rex encounter, this one is going to hit differently.
