Tomb Raider: Anniversary hits stores this week, named so because one decade ago, Eidos took a chance on an action-adventure game starring a female Indiana Jones style character named Lara Croft.

Toby Gard, Lara's original character designer and Cinematic Director of Anniversary about the original character, talks about creating the game icon, how's she's changed and how she'll appeal to a new generation of gamers.

What was your inspiration for creating Lara?

The most important part of it was the old English lores, the exploration, the Antarctic. [We wanted] a game with modern-day explorers. Lara's like a female Indiana Jones in that way.

Lara Croft creator Toby Gard.

You left Core Design shortly after Tomb Raider was released? Why was that?

Well, I wanted to go off and do my own work, but also, I was realizing that I had very little control over the design. Towards the end of the production, I didn't actually have very much control over the character and what they were doing.

Were there particular things about the way they wanted to make Lara that you didn't like?

The main point was the sexiness of Lara. The whole point was that most of the women in video games at the time were bimbos or dominatrices, really terrible stereotypes. Lara was supposed to be someone who was strong, and sexy but only because of her power. So I didn't like that part.

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