Tomb Raider III - Plot

Plot

Millions of years ago, a meteoroid strikes Antarctica, decimating a large area full of life on the then-near-tropical continent. In the present day, a corporation called RX Tech, under the guidance of Dr. Mark Willard, excavates the site, finding strange Rapa Nui-like statues and the grave of one of the Darwin's sailors.

Within the game, while India must be visited first and Antarctica last, the three other locations: South Pacific Islands, London, and Nevada, can be visited in any order.

India

When the game begins, Lara Croft is searching for the artefact in the ruins of an ancient Indian temple once inhabited by the Infada tribe. She encounters a researcher working for RX Tech who appears to be insane. After parting ways, the researcher beats Lara to the Infada Stone, gaining supernatural powers. After killing him and taking the artefact, Lara is approached by Dr. Willard, the head of RX Tech, who explains the origins of the Infada Stone. Thousands of years ago, Polynesians came across the meteoroid crater and found that it had incredible power. Using rock from the meteoroid, they crafted four crystalline artefacts, one of which is the Infada Stone. They then fled Antarctica for unknown reasons, but, in the nineteenth century, a group of sailors travelling with Charles Darwin came to Antarctica and discovered the artefacts. The four stones were then distributed across the globe. Dr. Willard has been able to track the artefacts by using the diary of one of the sailors. Lara agrees to help find the other three stones.

South Pacific

On an island in the South Pacific, Lara fights cannibal tribesman, Velociraptors, a T-Rex and encounters a wounded soldier who tells her of a deity who lives in the hills of the island. Lara pursues the deity and learns from one of the tribesman that one of Darwin's sailors brought one of the artefacts to the island from Antarctica. She also learns about why the inhabitants fled their city there; the son of the leader was born without a face, caused by prolonged exposure to the Meteorite. Lara then infiltrates the deity's temple and the deity Puna, who has immense power granted by the meteor artefact called the Ora Dagger.

London

In London, Lara searches for the Eye of Isis, now in the possession of Sophia Leigh, the head of a cosmetics corporation. Lara learns that the corporation has performed sick experiments on humans in order to achieve immortality and eternal youth for Sophia's personal gain. The deformed subjects of Sophia's failed experiments, presumed dead by the corporation, were dumped in the sewers, and assist Lara in exchange for a bottle of embalming fluid from the Natural History Museum. Sophia sends a number of assassins, under her employment, to kill Lara. However, they are all unsuccessful and Lara climbs through a ventilation shaft to Sophia's office where she is sitting with the artefact on her desk. Sophia mockingly offers Lara a job, telling her that with her lifestyle she would be the perfect face for her products, then Lara tells Sophia that her human subjects she experimented on are still alive. Lara demands she hand over the artefact which she refuses to do. Sophia takes the artefact and runs out the balcony to the other building and Lara who works her way up Sophia's building and across to the one she is on. Sophia attempts to kill her using the powers of the artefact, but Lara defeats her by shooting a fuse box connected to an electrical bridge that Sophia was standing on after the battle causing her to get electrocuted.

Nevada

Arriving in Nevada and making her way through a desert canyon, Lara tries to enter Area 51, where Element 115, one of the four artefacts, is located in an alien spacecraft guarded by the government. But she faces a severe setback when she is taken as a prisoner in the base after her attempted break-in ends disastrously. Freeing herself and the other inmates, she escapes the security compound and stows away in a truck to Area 51.

Antarctica

Angered, she meets and confronts Dr. Willard, who reveals that he is planning to encourage rather than halt the mutations, only on a global scale, using the combined power of the Artefacts and the Meteorite they were carved from. As Lara voices her opposition to his operation, Willard betrays her, stealing the artefacts and disappearing into the excavation site. After fighting more mutants (including insectile and reptilian things within the city itself) and navigating the treacherous ruins of the ancient city built atop the meteor crater, Lara faces Willard, who has now used the power of the four artefacts to activate the even greater power of the meteor: to greatly speed up the evolutionary processes of the human body and thereby turning himself into a terrifying and all-powerful spider-like creature. Lara deactivates the meteor by taking the artefacts out of their positions that they were put in, kills the mutated Spider Willard and escapes by helicopter.