Tomb Raider reboot studio join Perfect Dark reboot

After rebooting Lara Croft with 2013’s Tomb Raider, Square Enix’s Crystal Dynamics studio are now helping reboot another vintage hero: Joanna Dark. They’ll be chipping in on Microsoft’s mysterious new Perfect Dark, helping out the mysterious Santa Monica studio named The Initiative. Secrecy might be thematically appropriate for a game about a futuristic superspy but we don’t know much of anything about it so all you can really say is “Yup, I guess they’re doing that.”

When Microsoft announced the resurrection of Perfect Dark in December 2020, they didn’t have much to say about it, simply saying it’s “a secret agent thriller set in a near-future world”. Apparently the world was mucked up by ecological disasters then megacorps stepped in to rebuild and it turns out megacorps are bad? I’d assume it’s a first-person shooter still, but who knows. It does have guns, at least. Look, you can see one in the picture for today’s team-up announcement:

“The teams couldn’t pass up a chance to work together,” The Initiative added. “We’re still early in development, but incredibly excited to use this unique opportunity to deliver on the vision for Perfect Dark!”

It is unusual to see a studio owned by Squeenix collaborate with a Microsoft studio in this way but hey, I assume something secret is going on. Initiative studio head Darrell Gallagher was previously the head of Crystal Dynamics so perhaps he’s getting the crew back together for one last heist.

Perfect Dark was created for the Nintendo 64 by Rare, who are also part of Microsoft these days. They released a prequel on Xbox 360 in 2005 and the first game was remasted for 360 in 2010, then it’s not been seen since. Someone at Microsoft must have rediscovered the rights down the back of the sofa.