Lara Croft Icon Birth

Lyrics

[Intro]
In a small room in Derby, 1996.
The air smells of instant coffee and warm CRTs.
There you are, on the screen.
Just a wireframe ghost.

[Verse 1]
Five hundred and forty-three polygons.
That's all you were.
Toby Gard sketches you out, gives you a braid.
Paul Douglas gives you code to jump.
Heather Gibson builds you a home of forgotten stone.
They tried a machine gun on a backpack rig.
It blocked the camera angles.
So they gave you two pistols instead.
Simple. Clean. Iconic.

[Chorus]
And with the click of a triangle button, you leap.
Out of the green glow of the monitor.
Out of that little office in the Midlands.
You weren't just a model, you were a feeling.
A promise of places we hadn't been.
A new kind of power, held in our own hands.

[Verse 2]
They almost called you Lara Cruz.
South American, a different story.
But Croft sounded right. English. Stately.
A name to build a mansion around.
And the uncredited women, the reference models...
Their movements are in your bones.
Their faces are lost to the documents.
But they're in you, too. The ghosts in your machine.

[Chorus]
And with the click of a triangle button, you leap.
Out of the green glow of the monitor.
Out of that little office in the Midlands.
You weren't just a model, you were a feeling.
A promise of places we hadn't been.
A new kind of power, held in our own hands.

[Bridge]
I wonder if they knew, in that summer of 1996.
As they mapped the swan dive and the roll.
That they weren't just making a game.
They were making a key.
A key to unlock a different kind of hero.
Not a princess to be saved.
But the one kicking the door down herself.

[Outro]
Five hundred and forty-three polygons.
It was enough.
It was more than enough.
The screen goes dark.
But you're still out there.
Raiding tombs.