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Development on Angel of Darkness began in parallel with work on Chronicles in 1999. This was to be a risky reworking of the series, based on a new, darker Lara and an ambitious, more realistic and more narrative-driven approach to the gameplay. While the existing Tomb Raider team finished Chronicles, a new team was put to work creating a new engine and new concepts for the series. This Tomb Raider would have revolutionary controls and a new animation system, stealth elements inspired by the Metal Gear Solid series, and an RPG-style system of interactive dialogue that would directly affect the direction of the game.

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Angel of Darkness added adventure elements and increased the emphasis on stealth. Shame the game was so lacking in polish.

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Sadly, Angel of Darkness was a disaster. To read the full story, check out the fine EDGE feature. Core put years of work into the animation system, then had to design the controls to fit in with it. The result was barely playable at times. Even after huge delays, whole sections of the game had to be ripped out in order to get it into a shippable state, leaving key characters underdeveloped and huge whacking holes in the plot. Eidos had talked up a second playable character, Kurtis Trent, as a potential star for a spin-off series, but the majority of fans plain hated him. Worse, the game spent too much time in the streets, museums and discos of Paris, and too little time raiding tombs. The game was a critical failure and a commercial underachiever. A sequel designed to finish off the story was rapidly canned. Fairly or not, Core took most of the blame.

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Angel of Darkness took Lara in a dark new direction. Neither it, nor a second playable character, Kurtis, proved popular.

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