10 Times Video Games "Did Right By The Fans" (And Pissed Everyone Off)
9. Bringing Lara Back From The Dead - Tomb Raider Chronicles
The fourth Tomb Raider game, Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, concluded with the apparent death of Lara Croft, who is seemingly left to perish inside the ruins of a collapsed temple.
And indeed, developers Core Design did genuinely intend to end the series here, with most of the focal dev team suffering from burnout after developing four Tomb Raider games in as many years.
But The Last Revelation's sales success combined with fan outcry about Lara's ambiguous fate ultimately led publisher Eidos to insist that Core Design get to work on a follow-up.
This turned out to be Tomb Raider Chronicles, a quasi-prequel which depicts four of Lara's previous adventures from the perspective of friends attending her funeral memorial service, before ending with the not-so-shocking reveal that, yes, Lara is still alive.
Yet Chronicles was the first game in the series to receive mediocre reviews, with many noting the lack of fresh ideas, making it abundantly clear that Core Design's enthusiasm for the franchise had basically evaporated.
And it didn't remotely help that the developer was forced by Eidos to develop two new games at once - Chronicles and the series' first foray onto PS2, the ill-fated Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness.
Eidos clearly hoped they could deliver a crowd-pleasing resurrection of Lara Croft, yet buried it within the most purely pedestrian entry into the entire Tomb Raider franchise.