The latest update to Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered managed to do a fair bit across all games, such as fixing Steam achievements, Photo Mode blunders, and improving elemental-based textures, but one thing that we weren’t suspecting was the removal of some pinups. While not the end of the world, fans were quick to notice and called it censorship of the original games.
Spotted by people over on Reddit before finding its way elsewhere, the removal caused a little ruckus as this update is nowhere to be seen in its patch updates. To make this even weirder is the fact the team kept other unsavory aspects of the game such as ethnic stereotypes in the third entry to keep the game “unaltered,” instead it shows a splash screen warning of stereotypes for remaster of an over two decade old game.
No fcking way. They did it. They actually did it.
Crystal Dynamics censored out the pics of Lara in the update on Tomb Raider.
WTF!?
Credit/Thx: @momiji_doa pic.twitter.com/yaSBtFXaoH
— Smash JT (@SmashJT) April 19, 2024
The posters were even featured on the game’s blog previously, making this sudden act of removing them even more weird. Some allege this is by Crystal Dynamics request, but no evidence has been brought forward, especially as the developer had no direct hand in the remastered version itself.
Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered brought fans of the franchise back and new fans dragged in when it released back in February. Smash Jump’s Luke Gittens said: “The nostalgia is there, and the features of the original trilogy are all placed into this neatly designed package, waiting for you as the player to explore its contents.”
