“New Lara Croft project” set to raid GDC 2010?

Crystal D head Darrell Gallagher pseudo-confirms Lara Croft dev duties at Redwood HQ. Gaming insider Geoff Keighley tweets possible GDC unveiling of “a new Lara Croft project”. Official GDC site lists Team Lara devs as guest speakers at the SF event. Are all signs pointing to a Tomb Raider 9 unveiling next week?

Yes — but then again, may be not.

Let’s look at the Sandbox Strat-initiated, excitement-inducing Gamasutra interview at face value: a vague, hype-generating, now-new-info-really interview that strums our ‘Raider heartstrings. Sure, we’re told new info on the next Tomb Raider game will be out in “a couple of months”, but when exactly?

But then there’s Keighley’s tweet that hints at a sooner-rather-than-months-later unveiling of the game — even as soon as next week’s GDC. The merit to this? At first, none, especially since hearing “rumblings” hardly qualifies as confirmatory; that is, until the official GDC site points us to two Crystal D speakers who will handle different sessions at next week’s event.

Jonathan Hamel, according to the site, will be one of the speakers for the annual Game Design Workshop. Hamel is currently Senior Designer at the Tomb Raider dev house. The workshop will engage its participants in “hands-on activities, group discussion, analysis and critique” of various game design philosophies.

Dan Kline, on the other hand, will be talking AI and interactive storytelling in video games. Kline currently holds Lead Game Engineer post at Crystal D.

The materials and sample game designs the two speakers will be presenting are of course unspecified on the site, but it’s possible that Lara Croft will be making an appearance somewhere, some time during their respective sessions. But, alas, we don’t know that for sure.

And that’s precisely why we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for GDC details in the coming days. For now, keep it here on FYLC for new info as they come. Pity we’re left to speculate at this point, but that’s three-quarters of the fun in anticipating a game now, innit?