Camilla Luddington revealed as the voice talent for new Croft;script writer and composer announcements due to follow

Camilla Luddington on the job

Square Enix ltd. today named True Blood actress Camilla Luddington as the new voice and character of Lara Croft, starring in Redwood City-based developer Crystal Dynamics' upcoming Tomb Raider (2013).

While not strictly music-related, MoTR has reiterated this press release because Luddington's voice is certainly something players will be listening to! Global brand director Karl Stewart made suggestions at E3 earlier in June that the composer will be announced in one of many subsequent 8 week periods following this anticipated statement:

London (26 JUNE, 2012) Square Enix Ltd., the publisher of SQUARE ENIX® interactive entertainment products in Europe and other PAL territories, today announced that the English-born actress Camilla Luddington has been chosen to be the voice and performance actress of famous video game adventurer, Lara Croft in the new Tomb Raider® game.

After an international talent search using scouts in Europe and the US, Luddington stood out as delivering both a depth of emotion and the youthful tone needed for Lara Croft in the upcoming reimagining of the Tomb Raider franchise, due for release on March 5, 2013.

“This has been one of the most important jobs for us to get right,” said Darrell Gallagher, head of studio at Crystal Dynamics “This Tomb Raider game is very different to any other and we are demanding far more from the voice and performance acting than ever before as we take the franchise in a new direction.”

This July Luddington will also participate in the Nerd HQ and Comic-Con panels in San Diego, where she will join the development team as they talk about Tomb Raider and the story behind its creation.

Recently Luddington has starred in hit Showtime series, Californication© and can also be seen in the current season of HBO’s True Blood©.

Tomb Raider is slated for release on March 5th 2013.

The Music of Tomb Raider celebrates its 1st Birthday!

MoTR as it began, 2011-12

Nearing 30,000 hits and having been attributed to the official Tomb Raider fan-site incentive program, the Music of Tomb Raider, colloquially abbreviated as "MoTR", has seen modest success over the course of 12 months since its commencement on June 20th, 2011. Immeasurable thanks is owed to Crystal Dynamics and the Tomb Raider community for their support!

In celebration, the site has received a visual overhaul to reflect our scope, purpose and individuality. Designed by our very own Oktawian "VikingWasDead" Ornoch, the sleek finish will motivate us to see through another year of scouring for the latest news on the music of Tomb Raider (2013), as well as reminiscing in retrospectives on audio delights from across the entire film and video game franchise.

Karl Stewart talks a little more to MoTR at E3:Tomb Raider soundtrack likely heading to iTunes

Eventually we got whiff of our exclusive interview with Karl Stewart at E3 2012, via our community ambassador from fellow official Tomb Raider fansite Guns & Grapple. While not all of our questions were asked due to time constraints, the Tomb Raider Global Brand Director offers a little more insight to inquires where he could, piggybacking from the full community sit-down.

Stewart intimates that like the presence of the Crystal Habit podcast on iTunes, he's confident the soundtrack release to Tomb Raider should make an appearance on the popular digital music distributor. The Irishman also expresses interest in making music from the previous entries of the franchise commercially available, to date no Tomb Raider video game music album is.

We'd like to thank our representative for completing the trip to L.A. despite several bumps along the road! The transcript excerpt follows:

Q: Will there be additional bonus material in the Collector’s or Limited Edition sets?

"Yeah... actually, we’re right in the middle of deciding that as we speak, there’s a lot of content that gets created in making a game and there’s a lot of stuff that ends up on the cutting room floor, you know, much like movies ...a movie starts at four hours and ends up at ninety minutes.

...for us, there’s a lot of stuff we want to talk about. We’ve been a little more strategic in the way in which we go about doing it now, so that when we do performance capture we capture all our B-rolls to make sure that we’ve got it all and then instead of just launching it all... in one big lump in a collector’s edition. This is where we’re going to be doing these chapters as you’ll see over the next coming months ...to bring some of that to life and in a very unique way. So it’s very important that we show people some of the procedure that we go through, the process that we go through. So yeah, you’ll see a lot of additional content." - Karl Stewart

Q: Regarding the soundtrack release, will any of the music either from this title or from previous titles make it's way to iTunes?

"I need to have a look at that right now ...obviously, you know, iTunes has now become the defacto place to go and get most all your music in a lot of cases. I know Meagan’s worked hard to make sure that we do things like getting podcasts up there. I know certainly from our experience of our soundtrack when we do release the soundtrack we’ll make sure that it’s on iTunes because it’s the defacto. So, you know – it’s interesting. I might have a look if they’re not up there already, I would like to make that happen actually, it would be great to get all the previous soundtracks – or whatever soundtracks are out there, up on iTunes." - KS

Q: You said the soundtrack will be released in line with the game – regarding the game’s release, is that going to be a worldwide release date or is it going to be staggered?

"Right now it’s a world-wide release date, we’ve been talking with our European counterparts and we’ve made the decision that March 5th will be the date that we launch the game in our EFIGS territories [English, French, Italian, German, Spanish] and North America. We haven’t made a final decision yet with regards to our Asia markets and our Japanese markets, that will be a little harder because they’re a little more complex, to make sure that, you know, translations and VO and making sure it hits at the right time.

So certainly from North America, South America, right through to all of Europe our goal is for it to be day and date, which is a big thing, because obviously normally it’s Tuesday at one place and Friday at the other – we wanted it to be March 5th as a global release date." - KS

Tomb Raider's emotional score showcased at E3

Tomb Raider (2013) made presence at several high profile stage demos at the 2012 Electronic Entertainment Expo last week, including the Microsoft Press Conference, plus private shows with GTTV, IGN: Live and G4TV. A fitting finale, the game was awarded "Best Overall Game" from IGN's Best of E3 Awards.

GameSpot was last to stage a demo of the game, but pulled off by far the longest play. The media outlet has released three pieces of footage, devoid of any commentary or the noise of the crowds. It is these videos that showcase the capability of the music to provide atmosphere to the environment, dynamically accompany tense game-play and most significantly apply emotional importance to key scenes where Lara must make troubling decisions in order to survive.

Warning: significant plot elements, characters and dialogue are revealed in the following footage, which leads on directly from E3 2011's demonstration.
Spoil at your own risk!

The first scene sees a dishevelled Croft line coastal cliffs after emerging from the collapsed area seen in last year's demo. Ethnic percussion sets the tone, with tense stingers triggered during dangerous plat-forming:

Croft is forced to take the life of a wild animal in the next clip. The moment is scored in a thematic melancholy sweep, most emotionally, as she undergoes something she has never had to do before in order to survive. Minimalist ambience accompanies the area, with sibling percussion to clip 1 returning:

Lastly, Lara explores an underground meat shed supposedly built by the mysterious castaways whom she previously encountered. A peculiar vocal-driven ambient track fleshes out the oriental vibes of the island, providing an unsettling yet exploratory tone to the potentially dangerous situation:

Furthermore, cinematics presented appear to be individually scored. The composer remains unannounced but is expected to be revealed some time after the voice actress for Croft, the latter likely to be next month. The rumour is that Dead Space's Jason Graves holds the position.

Tomb Raider soundtrack "will be released at launch" says Karl Stewart, composer to be named soon

"Mountain Climb"

During our participated E3 coverage, input from MoTR was included in an exclusive community based interview with Karl Stewart, Crystal Dynamics' Global Brand Director. The Irishman let loose on some juicy information about the music to Tomb Raider (2013), of which the biggest news was the reaffirmation that an official soundtrack is in the works:

Q: Tomb Raider has always had great music that was really immersive. Can you tell us who the composer is?

"You're right, Tomb Raider has always had awesome soundtracks. We've been very keen to make sure that for this game we have an awesome soundtrack, and we are creating a soundtrack right now that will be released at launch. You've seen most of my tweets, I love soundtracks. I listen to soundtracks 99.9 percent of the day, I don't listen to words in songs, and I've got every movie that I can think of that I love... So we're very passionate about soundtracks. With that, we made sure we've chosen the right team of people, including a composer, to be able to bring together this soundtrack. Again, we are getting very close to announcing this person..." -Karl Stewart

Thus the unannounced composer continues their existence under embargo. Consequent of extensive MoTR research, the BAFTA-winning Jason Graves remains the most conspicuous. Stewart also intimates that the composer is scheduled to be revealed sometime during the media campaign throughout the remainder of the year, most likely after the voice actress for Croft.

This marks the first anticipated commercial Tomb Raider soundtrack release in over 15 years of the video game franchise. To date only the films starring Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft have ever seen bodies of marketable music.

Read the entire transcript excerpt after the jump:

"Crossroads" soundtrack of multiple origins, includes RipTide Music trailer score by composer Cliff Lin

Crossroads

After it premiered on May 31st, Tomb Raider's debut "Crossroads" game-play trailer was later awarded "Best New Trailer" by IGN's Best of E3 2012 Awards.

The music that features in the trailer consists of presumably a third party cue, followed by possibly in-game pieces by the unannounced composer for the game, contiguous with a tailored edit of trailer score company RipTide Music's licensed piece, "Thermal Shock", by composer Cliff Lin. Starting at 2:14 and resuming at 2:54, the rock-influenced "Shock" is cut surrounding a definite reiteration of the new Tomb Raider theme.

Sampled below, the track was made purchasable in March, 2012, via iTunes and Amazon MP3, in Lin's compilation album "This is War":

Thermal Shock [Excerpt]

Update: The beginning trailer score has been identified as "Paradigm Shift" by music powerhouse Groove Addicts from the promotional license album Full Tilt - Convergence. It is currently not commercially available.