India | Nevada |South Pacific |Antarctica
All of the cinematics, regardless of whether they have dialogue, are included in my Tomb Raider 3 Cinematics YouTube playlist.
Lara chases and disarms a sniper in the bell tower. He knocks her down and pins her to the floor beneath the huge bell. For a moment he appears to have the upper hand, but Lara still has her pistols. When she interrogates the man at gunpoint, he has an intriguing story to tell.
"Who are you working for?" Lara demands.
"What?" he asks, above the tolling of the bell.
"You heard me."
"I didn't! Honest!" he pleads. "What did you say?"
"I said, who employs you?" Lara pulls his head down toward her so the bell just misses him.
"Aaaah!" he screams over the noise. "Miss Sophia Leigh."
Lara rolls them both out from under the bell and stands, training one pistol on the mercenary.
"Who's she? What does she do?" Lara asks.
"I don't know. Really! I don't! I just shoot people for her."
"A commendable work ethic, I guess."
"Yeah," he concedes. "I put my hours into it, as my father did and his father did before."
Lara leans casually against the wall, still not letting the man out of her sights. Noticing his graying hair, she is understandably skeptical that he's a third-generation worker for the same employer.
"Well, how old is this Miss Leigh?"
"I don't know. Late 20's, early 30's."
"Right," Lara answers dryly.
As the thug goes for his gun and struggles to his feet, Lara now aims two pistols at him.
"Yeah," he continues. "For some people, like yourself, we get a special bonus."
"I'm flattered."
"I mean, I could even be retiring from you." The mercenary's voice takes on a note of smugness as he slowly raises his gun and backs away from Lara.
"Then you might like to mind...the bell."
But it's already too late. The huge bell swings forward, knocking the man flying over the edge. She wishes him a "happy retirement," then slides down into Aldwych station.
[London Level 1: Thames Wharf | Level 2: Aldwych]
Lara drops into the lair of the Damned. As she struggles to stand after the long fall, one of the gang members grabs her arm and drags her forward to kneel before their leader, a masked man sitting on a throne made from the back half of a cab and holding a trident like a king's scepter. His identity remains a bit of a mystery, but gamers call him Geordie Bob, due to his accent and the title of Nathan McCree's musical track for this section.*
"So, you must be after Miss Leigh then," he says.
"Business, not pleasure," Lara replies.
"Though obviously not for revenge, man. You've hardly got the face for that."
"And you have?" she asks, not immediately catching his meaning.
"Feh!" He spits. "How moronic a question is that, eh? I don't even have a face, man!" he shouts, banging the butt of his trident on the floor. "Came down here looking for work, and what do I get, eh? Miss Leigh's cosmetic company and her lab assistant job. No experience necessary. Good wage. Accommodation with it." His tone as he recites the help-wanted advertisement is dripping with sarcasm. "Aye, locked in a flotation tank for days on end in some fetid syrup. And when we come out—'cause lots was applied, like—no face or flesh, man! And a booting down the waste disposal chute here. Presumed dead!"
"Some kind of failed experiment then?" Lara asks, trying to understand his strange tale.
"Oh, ta very much!* But, aye. And for added insult, when I tried to take my own life, I found it just didn't work."
"You mean Sophia's testing some sort of immortality power?" Lara asks incredulously, then mutters, "Along with her own brand of facelift."
"Oh, aye, man! Everlasting beauty. She's obviously not fully worked it out yet. She takes the best results for herself. See, I don't care what your business with her is. You can't be any more shiftless than what she is. So I'm going to go out of my way to help you. That is, after you've done something for us here, like."
"Very generous of you." Lara is clearly suspicious. "What do you want?"
"A bottle of that mummy preservation stuff. From the natural history museum."
"Embalming fluid?"
"Aye," Geordie Bob answers. "For rotten flesh, you cannae whack it, man.* The museum's pretty interesting, I'm told. You'll like it," he adds, trying to appeal to Lara's interests.
"So why don't you go yourself?" she asks.
"One of them Egyptian lassies there is a bit pissed off, like, that she didn't get immortality the way she wanted it. And seeing as we'd done better than her in that department, I didn't care to imagine what curse we could get given any worse than we've got already, like." He starts to wander away from Lara as he finishes his explanation. "You'll be fine though, pet. You die easily."
"Thanks," Lara replies sarcastically.
*According to Wikipedia, "Geordie" is both a regional nickname for a person from the larger Tyneside region of North East England and for the dialect spoken there. The voice actor plays up the accent, saying "mon" instead of "man," "dat" instead of "that," and such, but I have included the standard spellings here for people using online translators. By "ta very much," he means "thank you very much," though his tone makes it clear he's being sarcastic. By "ya cannae whack it," he means "you can't beat it." That is, embalming fluid is the best thing for the rotting flesh he and his boys suffer from, thanks to Sophia's tests.
If you'd like to hear Nathan McCree's "Geordie Bob" without the cut scene dialogue, or any of the other TR3 musical tracks, visit The Music of Tomb Raider.
[London Level 2: Aldwych | Level 3: Lud's Gate]
Lara emerges from the ventilation ducts into a spacious office lined with tropical fish tanks. She approaches the room's sole occupant, the stylish and quite well-preserved Sophia Leigh.
"Ah, Miss Croft! I take it you're ready to sign on," Sophia says, apparently not at all surprised to see Lara.
"To what?" Lara asks.
"Well, my books," Sophia answers. "You see, with your lifestyle, you'd be the perfect campaign for my products. Just think, you wouldn't be needing those unsightly weapons anymore."
"No, but I probably have an unsightly face, judging by your past experiments."
"My what?" Sophia asks, clearly surprised.
"Oh yes. They're all still alive. Very much so, in fact." Lara reaches for the jeweled scepter lying on the desk between them, explaining, "All I want is the artifact."
Sophia snatches the scepter away, chuckling at Lara's audacity. "Right! In your next life."
As Sophia runs out of the office, Lara draws and cocks her pistols. "We'll see," she says.
[Level 3: Lud's Gate | London Level 4: City]
[Tomb Raider 3 Level Menu | Previous Cinematics |Next Cinematics]
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Special thanks to The Tomb Raiders Traveler's Guide for assistance with these transcripts. Their versions are quite complete and include numerous details provided by the developers, some of which have been incorporated here.
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