With over 37 years in the games industry and more than 29 titles to his name, Richard Morton has worked across multiple platforms and roles, from crafting 2D sprites and 3D environments to designing levels, crafting storylines and shaping gameplay. Richard’s Tomb Raider journey began with Tomb Raider (1996), serving as a creative influence in many of the level design meetings and story discussions, he then moved on to Tomb Raider II as an artist & level designer, where he worked on the iconic Temple of Xian level with some technical assistance from Heather Stevens (née Gibson). After that, he contributed to other classic-era Tomb Raider games in various roles, including lead game design, original story development, and concepts. 

You can read more about Richard’s role in shaping the stories of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and Tomb Raider: Chronicles in our article: Andy Sandham and Richard Morton Talk Lara's Characterization in The Last Revelation and Chronicles 

We also spoke with Richard about his role as the lead game designer on Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness. 

Q: The Angel of Darkness brought a more mature narrative and introduced new gameplay elements like a stamina bar and dialogue options, setting it apart from earlier Tomb Raider games. What were some of the key design choices that helped establish this darker, more grounded tone? 

Rich: We always knew Angel of Darkness had to be different, from the even more involved story to the unknown power of the PlayStation 2, to how Lara had to be reborn… things had to change, the industry had changed. We were looking at many current games at the time that contained more mature themes and gameplay styles, we felt we needed to push the game in that more mature and darker direction. 

Q: What were the biggest challenges in moving from PlayStation 1 to PlayStation 2 hardware, and what key advantages did the upgrade bring to the game design process? 

Rich: The transition was a bit scary; we started developing the game before we had final development hardware, we were building there very large and complex environments in Maya which the final hardware just couldn’t handle both in terms of memory size and on the processor. We had to simplify massively and cut the environments up, we didn’t have streaming technology back then, so we had to introduce loading too, which I didn’t like at all but we had to make best of the tools we had. I feel that splitting up the levels into chunks also throttled back the design layout. Unfortunately, the level editor we’d used in the PS1 series of games wasn’t continued for PS2 AOD, I think that harmed us in terms of what the level designers could achieve with having code input. 

Q: How did the transition impact your creative approach to game design, and how did it differ from your previous approach? 

Rich: As mentioned above, the level design had to be reined in quite a bit, not only was it taking us a lot longer to build the assets needed for the levels, but the levels themselves had to be structured in such a way that we could easily chop them into chunks that made sense to the player. The maps could no longer be huge sprawling creations, instead we had to focus them down, maybe a little too much. 

We had lots of extra game mechanics to play with though, which helped keep things moving… the upgrade system wasn’t perfect by any means, but it did pave the way for many modern games to do very similar systems. The hand-to-hand combat and stealth helped add different gameplay elements, but the control system suffered from many iterations, some worked and some really didn’t. What we ended up with was a semi-working but flawed control system. 

Q: Murti Schofield previously mentioned that he worked closely with you, combining his role as lead narrative designer with yours as lead game designer, to ensure a seamless integration of story and level design. Could you share some insights into how that collaboration worked?  

Rich: Yes indeed, Murti and I got on very well and hit it off right away. His work on the story and narrative structure was excellent, allowing us to really focus on how the story would work within the game, what levels we needed and how we could thread the story through them. We also realised after the initial design of the level running order was, we needed more tombs, so we tweaked parts of the storyline to include expanded tomb areas and added some that were not there at all. 

I think our biggest headache came when we had to cut the game in half, meaning Germany and Cappadocia would have to be left behind for AOD2. This meant having to restructure the story a bit to give us the end of game finale we needed, but also allowing that cliffhanger story continuation ready for the next game. Another casualty of the game cutting was Kurtis, which I’m sure by now you already know of the many psychic powers he had or should have had… only visible in the cinematic cut scenes in the finished game, we simply didn’t have time to add his true abilities, they were designed and animated, but we didn’t have time to code them. 

Q: What was your favourite level to design in the earlier Tomb Raider games, and which level or segment in The Angel of Darkness stands out as your personal favourite? 

Rich: I have a few favourites from the earlier games, Temple of Xian was my first fully built Tomb Raider level (from TR2) before that I’d sat in many level design meetings on TR1 and TR2, also assisting Vicky Arnold on story elements, at the time I was serving as Creative Manager for Core but was hungry to get back into building stuff. 

For TR3 I created the South Pacific levels, parts of Nevada and Lara’s Mansion expansion, out of those I think the Area 51 level and more specifically the UFO hangar comes a close second, but Madubu Gorge was my favourite purely because of the design challenge, it wasn’t a standard level in any way… it’s a shame the control system wasn’t a bit more forgiving, but I recently got a compliment that this level was responsible for a TR fan to become a professional kayaker. 

For Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, I made Cambodia and also the Kings Valley Egyptian levels and the Desert Railroad. Out of these levels I really enjoyed The Tomb of Seth with the guide helping Lara get through the trap filled chambers, but my favourite had to be the Desert Railroad, just because it was so different to any Tomb Raider level before it and had some interesting combat and gameplay situations. 

Tomb Raider: Chronicles had me returning to the character Von Croy, with Lara attempting to infiltrate VCI Tower with its many traps and security systems. Out of these I think Red Alert was the most challenging with Lara being pursued by a Helicopter Gunship, lots of choreographed explosions and large chunks of the environment being blown up. 

In Angel of Darkness my original favourite would have been the original training level, which was to be a large cavern system and was to be the home of Putai, Laras mentor and healer. This level would have relearned Lara some of her basic abilities and explain the upgrade system a bit more, with Putai appearing in person and as a spectral hawk, guiding her and pointing out key features. This mechanic was to continue through the main game levels too but was again a casualty of time restrictions.  

Of the levels that survived to the release my favourite level to build was the Hall of Seasons, with its classic Tomb Raider traps and puzzle! 

If you want to check out Richard Morton’s work, visit his website.  

If you're interested in learning more, check out The Angel of Darkness' behind-the-scenes feature, which explores the making of Lara Croft's PlayStation 2 debut and features many members of the Core Design development team.

For an in-depth look at the creation of The Angel of Darkness, check out our collaboration with Raidercast! In this video, Meagan Marie and Chris Carpineti sit down with Richard Morton, Murti Schofield, Peter Connelly, and Jerr O'Carroll to discuss the game's development.

Video Games

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness

Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered