To a degree Chronicles also started leaning that way, since the plot of that game is "Lara's friends all reminisce"--notably Zip, the tech guy from the Legend series, was introduced in Chronicles in the obligatory post-Matrix spy catsuit level. And the game was leaning towards Action ever since the second game--there were six human enemies in the original, and an army of Italian cultists in the second. IIRC, the plan for Angel of Darkness (when it hadn't become the clusterfuck that killed Core) was that they would actually use the secret society plotline to tie the franchise together better, when it had been a "Monster of the Week" style series. I'm not saying that the influence of the films does not loom large on the franchise because it certainly does (in both art direction and the way the plots were structured, as well as Lara's very motivations), but plenty of things we may or may not like about the more recent games were already cropping up on the PS1.
