Rhianna Pratchett Has Been Working on New Tomb Raider for Two Years

Tomb Raider "the reboot" - due out next year - has been the butt of accusations of misogyny and even of using rape as some for of super-heroisng incentive against the young Lara Croft. So the news that Rhianna Pratchett (Heavenly Sword, Overlord) is the lead writer, and has been working on the game for two years is fascinating addition to the pre-sale tale.

Crystal Dynamics has just press released the following: "award-winning games writer Rhianna Pratchett is the lead writer of Tomb Raider - the acclaimed origins story of Lara Croft, set for release 5th March 2013."

To be honest, that sounded to me very much like a neat piece of PR. Putting one of the best known female game and pop culture writers around at the moment onto a game suffering bad publicity would certainly enable a strong defence to be put against accusations of horribly violent sexism.

But it then came to my attention that Rhianna Pratchett had tweeted that she'd been writing the game for two years. That would of course mean that this was no mere trick of spin, and my cynicism was just that.

So, off I went to look. What she tweeted was:

"@RebeccaJ Thanks, Rebecca. Feel like I've been sitting on my hands for 2 years... well aside from when I was doing the actual writing bits!"

Being curious I wanted be extra sure, so I asked:

"@rhipratchett hiya, just to clarify: do you mean you've been writing Tomb Raider for the last 2 years?"

I got this response:

"@GasheadAu (that's me) Yes, I've been on the project for 2 years."

I wanted to be really sure, so I asked:

"@rhipratchett just to clarify, does "on the project" for two years mean "writing the game" for two years please?"

Now, the fact that I've not had a response to that is probably entirely down to the fact that Rhianna Pratchett is a very busy writer and has no responsibility to respond to every single tweet she gets.

Either way, we now know who the lead writer on Tomb Raider is... and has been... it's Rhianna Pratchett.

And here is a quick update:
Rhianna got back to me with the following: "@GasheadAu It didn't literally take me 2 years to write, if that's what you mean :) But I've been on the project as lead writer for 2 years"

Source: Square