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Core Design boss Adrian Heath-Smith has sensationally revealed details on the future direction of British aristocrat Lara Croft and the Tomb Raider series: "The story in The Angel of Darkness has been really important for us, it's been argued that there's maybe too much story in this game. The reason is that we decided we'd do more than one game from the get go, rather then one new game and then go 'guess what guys, you've got to do another one'."

The bigger picture - "We thought we would try to knit the story together, as the other way has always been a nightmare. From the start we assumed we were doing more than one new game, so we went away and wrote the story. The source of the inspiration has been over all a theme that we wanted to run across the three games. It's just explained, almost scratched upon the surface of the first one, the second is based much more around the big thing and the third is the natural ending of it, how Lara resolves it, how she fits into it. The overall theme is the Nephilim, said to be the descendants of angels and mortals. They're mentioned in the Enochian Gospels. This was the original big theme we came up with, as it had a lot of potential and sure inspired the terrific new characters you meet in The Angel of Darkness. We looked at things like X-Files and we thought that was a great example. Because there's the big 'Are there or aren't there?' story line and each episode stands alone but they tell you a little more about the bigger story."

The Nephilim - "The overall goal for us was let's use the Nephilim theme and run it across all three games. For us it was great because the second game is going to be a belter, it's very Tomb Raider. It's set in the Nephilim realm under Turkey, Cappadocia. It's all temples and tombs and lost cities, which is all very Tomb Raider-esque; full of fantasy grounded in reality. There are no aliens with big tentacle arms but it has some strange looking humans. In The Angel of Darkness we had to introduce the Nephilim and put Lara into a situation that was different to what we've done in the past. She's always been squeaky clean, she's gone and found artefacts and gone out and saved the world. We couldn't change Lara's character, absolutely not. We couldn't turn her into a mass murderer. We couldn't have her going around slaying small children. The end of the Last Revelation was the last game for us. Lara was missing. That was a clean start, something really important."

Continuity - "There's a whole time period between the temple collapsing and the beginning of this game that isn't covered in The Angel of Darkness but may be in the second. We call the period internally 'Lara of Arabia.' We have the whole time period mapped out, what actually happened to her, where she's been. There's also another time period of when she came back to London. She had a near death experience when she survived the temple. Causing her to hang up her guns. We seriously looked at making her an alcoholic, having Croft Manor burnt down. We wanted her life in a mess and she returns facing one catastrophe after another, she comes back and Croft Manor is burning to the floor. Then she hits the bottle, of course. Lots of things to change the situation, to really get her down. But we thought that was a little bit extreme. We also had reservations about what the movie people were doing, in so far as we burn Croft Manor down it would stick out a bit and make it difficult for them. That's as much as we've ever tied-in to the movies."

Wanted: Lara Croft - "So the idea we came up with was let's get her accused of murder in Paris. Everything that has worked for her in the past because she's famous and well known, all these doors have been open for her. Suddenly they're all shut, because everybody does know her and everyone is trying to catch her. Lara comes in and has this argument with Von Croy, at the end of the day she's got blood on her hands, she jumps out of the window and the game starts."

Following Tuesdays return to Derbyshire-based studios' Core Design to meet and greet new PR Manager Gary Reading and to snatch a sneak-preview of this years most anticipated video-game, tombraiderchronicles.com can exclusively reveal further details from Tomb Raider Next Generation - specifically the dramatic increase in detail from past to present Lara Croft models ahead of the official unveiling by Core Design on March 20.

The new Lara Croft model is a marvel of modern-day technology, an adhesive marriage of mesh, bone and cloth lacquered with high resolution detail and illustration. Lara Croft's face has undergone extensive digital surgery - re-modeled sporting the proportional crisp characteristics of an attractive young brunette.

Lara Croft's standing pose now boasts a realistically-teasing, hip-swaying draw while the mechanics of her upper skeleton gently inflate with each intake of breath.

The model we saw had Lara dressed in a ragged demin jacket and long blue-jeans and her movements bore the fluid resemblance and organic feel of a character whose former 500 polygon skeleton has been replaced with an additional 5,000 shiny new polygons, each dripping with realism. The attention to detail was superb with a maze of crease and shadow-lines spawning across her attire.

Lara Croft's supporting cast is enormous, and although we're not allowed to reveal too much until the official March release, we witnessed the same attention to detail in the supporting characters as found in Lara Croft herself.

Core Design has stripped the characters down to the wire-frame, rebuilding the basic mesh and mechanical architectures and in turn rendering a more organic and fluidic movement and feel. This coupled with detailed illustration and the terrain-based power of Sony's PS2 effectively adds a new dimension of realism to the game.

Pinned to the wall of Next Gen Mission Control were various sketches and concept illustrations of characters yet to be confirmed. Many bore the marked resemblance of scientific gene exploration gone drastically wrong. Core Design will also be implementing ground-breaking lip-synchronization technologies which realistically tailors dialog with mouth movement for FMV segments and in-game scenes.

The traditional open/shut motion of in-game dialogue will be made redundant in favor of advanced speech to mouth synchronization (lip-synch) so effective the company speculates players will be able to follow a conversation by deciphering the movement of a characters lips as he/she speaks.

Core Design will officially unveil Tomb Raider Next Generation - including the games heavily guarded title - on March 20 at a secret location in London, arming their press release with a media onslaught including FMV movies, screen shots and high resolution concept art.

Tell me that any of that had to do with us ( Eidos) Like i said Core Design had the slate.