The next Tomb Raider game is in development on Unreal Engine 5

fortnite tomb raider
An image from 2015's Rise of the Tomb Raider. (Image credit: Square Enix)

During Epic's State of Unreal stream today, Crystal Dynamics announced that it's developing a new Tomb Raider on the just-released Unreal Engine 5.

"We have just started development on our next Tomb Raider game, powered by Unreal Engine 5," said Dallas Dickinson, Tomb Raider franchise manager at Crystal Dynamics. "Our goal is to push the envelope of fidelity, and to deliver the high quality cinematic action-adventure experience that fans deserve from both Crystal Dynamics and the Tomb Raider franchise."

Unreal Engine 5 has been available as a "preview" build for a little while, but today marks its official release, and a lot of game developers are working with it, including Remedy, Obsidian, Rare, Ninja Theory, InXile, Dontnod, and Eidos Montreal.

The last Tomb Raider game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, was developed by Eidos Montreal, but Crystal Dynamic developed the two previous Croft games, Tomb Raider in 2013 and Rise of the Tomb Raider in 2015.

Unreal Engine 5 introduces a bunch of features centered around streamlining game development while increasing fidelity. The Nanite geometry system, for example, allows devs to import and use "film-quality" assets without making our GPUs smolder—see this post for more on UE5's features.

During today's livestream, CD Projekt Red also showed up to talk about its switch to Unreal Engine 5, although it didn't reveal any specifics about the new Witcher game it's building with it.

Tyler Wilde
Editor-in-Chief, US

Tyler grew up in Silicon Valley during the '80s and '90s, playing games like Zork and Arkanoid on early PCs. He was later captivated by Myst, SimCity, Civilization, Command & Conquer, all the shooters they call "boomer shooters" now, and PS1 classic Bushido Blade (that's right: he had Bleem!). Tyler joined PC Gamer in 2011, and today he's focused on the site's news coverage. His hobbies include amateur boxing and adding to his 1,200-plus hours in Rocket League.