One of gaming’s elder franchise which has seen some tough times the last couple years has been the Tomb Raider series. The franchise was one of the most popular ones during the late 90’s and early 2000’s but since the latter half of this new millenium’s first decade the games for the series has been lackluster at best and awful at they’re worst. Part of this downward could be blamed on the two films adapted from the game starring Angelina Jolie, but I like to believe that the series was already on it’s way down before those two films came out.

This latest entry to the Tomb Raider franchise looks to revive the series by rebooting the character and making the game an origin title which would put Lara Croft in her early 20’s and still quite new to the tomb raiding and worldwide adventuring game. Crystal Dynamics remains as the game’s developer with Japanese game publisher Square-Enix doing the releasing of the title.

From what was shown at Microsoft’s E3 Press Conference this latest Lara Croft looks to not just be younger but also design with realism in mind. While she still looks quite curvaceous there’s also a more athletic look to her physique which previous Lara Croft designs never truly had. Those past Lara Croft pretty much took the concept of a “teenage boy’s ideal woman” and gave it shape.

I have some hope that this latest title in the franchise will look towards Sony’s and Naughty Dog’s own action-adventure franchise, Uncharted, as a blueprint to bring Lara Croft back to prominence and relevancy in the gaming industry.

Tomb Raider has no definite release date other than sometime around Q3 2012.