India | Nevada |South Pacific | London
All of the cinematics, regardless of whether they have dialogue, are included in my Tomb Raider 3 Cinematics YouTube playlist.
Lara is the sole passenger on a helicopter flying to the RX Technologies base in Antarctica. Presumably she's been in contact with Dr. Willard after finding the four meteorite artifacts and is on her way to meet him, though this is not shown in the game. She surveys the icy landscape whipping past the open door as the pilot attempts to keep the craft on course.
"This is [...] to base. Come in, base." The pilot speaks into the radio. When he gets no reply he repeats, "Come in, base."*
There is still no response from the base as the falling snow becomes heavier.
"Dead air, ma'am," he tells Lara. "Gotta get down. This is too much."
The pilot attempts to set the chopper down, but the wind whips it around wildly. At first Lara stares forward with a steely expression, but soon the storm intensifies.
"Hold on back there!" the pilot yells. Lara barely manages to do so.
The chopper's skids scrape against a snowbank. The pilot lets out a scream as he struggles to bring the helicopter to rest in a flat area.
"Whoo! Uhhh!" the pilot huffs with relief. "Ha, ha! Ah, that was hairy."
Lara, who has been knocked out of her seat and pinned under a storage container, shoves the box aside and struggles to her feet. A moment later, she feels the ice crack and the bulk of the helicopter shift forward. She dives out the door, landing on the ice shelf just as the chopper nosedives into the frigid water. Unfortunately she's too late to help the pilot. He screams briefly and disappears.
*NOTE: I can't quite make out the pilot's radio call sign due to the background noise and music. According to the Tomb Raiders Traveler's Guide, Core Design's Rich Morton said that section was not scripted and was not able to confirm the actual dialogue.
[London Level 4: City | Antarctica Level 1: Antarctica]
Lara enters the cabin carrying a leather briefcase and discovers Dr. Willard chowing down on some tomato soup. (At least we hope that's what it is.)
"Hi! Come in." He greets her warmly. "Make yourself at home. I won't be a minute."
After fighting her way through a small army of henchmen in order to see him, Lara is clearly not interested in pleasantries. She immediately confronts him about the mutant she met in the cantina.
"At home?! I just met a man who may as well have been Brundlefly."
"Fascinating, isn't it?" He dismisses her concerns, obviously delirious at his experiments' potential.
"He was your own employee!" Lara reminds him, slamming the briefcase on the table next to him.
"He was a molecular biologist," Willard scoffs at her concern. "He'd have been intrigued with himself. Thanks to this material, his hox genes were multiplied. Do that and the complexities of our bodies increase beyond our comprehension. But this is of the fringe of its possibilities we're seeing here. My pal's exposure came from material impregnated into the meteorite crater. The real capacities lie in its core, which these artifacts you're so attached to will let me access."
"But you've no control over this!" Lara argues.
"This is not just about avidly spawning mutants, " Willard counters, pounding on the table and waving his toast in Lara's general direction. "It's an entirely natural acceleration of evolution. A real live laboratory of spurred-on life."
This is not the first time Lara has contracted with an employer who later turned out to be a megalomaniac dabbling in eugenics, and she has no intention of helping Willard jump start evolution.
"Not everyone here wants to be guinea pigs. Multi-appendaged, or not!"
"Well, that's unfortunate." Willard continues eating, smacking his lips as he talks. "It's been hit and miss here for too long. Now the timing's spot-on. I can't leave it. The Polynesians fled in their ignorance. Darwin's half-wit sailors the same, ironically making Darwin himself miss this angle on evolution. But now I'm here. I have the access, the knowledge, the artifacts."
As he speaks, Lara draws her guns, perhaps realizing that talk alone will not convince him.
"Yes, but you bumped into me in India and sent me to find them for you, bringing me here, listening to this gibberish." She cocks one pistol and aims it at the doctor. "Your perception of good timing is...bad!"
"I don't know about that!" he counters, rising to his feet, upending the table and knocking Lara over in the process. He clutches the briefcase and dashes for the exit, whacking Lara in the head with the case as he passes. As she struggles to her feet, Willard grabs his coat and runs outside.
She pursues him cautiously, ducking back into the cabin when he shoots at her. Willard then dashes across the clearing and climbs the hill, fumbling with the satchel, his gun, and a remote control, which he uses to call the call the elevator. Lara follows and fires off a few shots as Willard flings himself into the elevator and keys the remote to send it down. Lara then jumps down into the shaft, landing on top of the elevator car as it descends.
[Antarctica Level 1: Antarctica | Antarctica Level 2: RX-Tech Mines]
Lara enters a large cavern with a central crater surrounded by giant statues. She finds Willard arranging the meteorite artifacts in alcoves around the edges of the room. As he puts the final piece in place, the entire room begins to shake, and Lara is knocked off the ledge onto the walkway below. There is some garbled dialogue made up of snippets from earlier cinematics, which I have not attempted to transcribe.
If Willard notices Lara, he doesn't let on at first. Instead he stands, arms spread, laughing, and watches as a huge meteor rises from the central crater. He glances back at Lara then throws himself into the blue liquid beneath the hovering meteor. Lara gasps and rushes forward to peer into the crater. Assuming that's it for the mad doctor, she turns to leave, but Willard is not finished. Rather, he is changed—into a huge, spider-like mutant!
[Antarctica Level 3: Lost City of Tinnos | Antarctica Level 4: Meteorite Cavern]
Lara approaches the RX-Tech helicopter cautiously and opens the door. The pilot seems surprised to see her. Lara returns his smile but quickly decides a few bullets will make him give up his seat faster. With Lara at the controls, the helicopter lifts off, strafing a ground-based gun turret before it can turn and fire. Then a surface-to-air missile locks onto the chopper. Lara pulls up just in time and the missile just misses her. She then heads through a narrow canyon with another helicopter in pursuit. The bad guys fire their machine gun, punching a series of holes in the tail of Lara's helicopter. Still, she manages to evade them, make a stealthy U-turn, and fire on the other aircraft from above. The pursuing craft explodes in a spectacular fireball, and Lara flies off into the darkness. THE END!
[Antarctica Level 4: Meteorite Cavern | Bonus Level: All Hallows]
[Tomb Raider 3 Level Menu | Previous 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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