No, it's not, because the backstory they chose for Lara doesn't work. Maybe if the series was called PTSD Raider.
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Polygon: From sex symbol to icon: How Crystal Dynamics saved Lara Croft
- Thread starter Tom Nook Sawyer
- Start date
No, it's not, because the backstory they chose for Lara doesn't work. Maybe if the series was called PTSD Raider.
BumblebeeCody
Member
Tinfoilhatsron
Banned
I agree, mostly.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
That's exactly the reason.
Every time they make a dev diary it's for marketing purposes. The only reason it was so short at e3 is because it was e3. As in, most games get 5-15 minutes at most for a presentation and/or demo. Minus the presentation from ND, where they spent a ton of time talking about the specifics. It's different from a dev diary but the EXACT same thought process is behind it, showing off the culmination of a shit ton of work from a shit ton of different artists. So again, you're completely misinterpreting the purpose behind them making a dev diary talking about the process and tech that makes up the Lara Croft seen in ROTR.
Hehe, this is a pretty interesting take. I'd say it's accurate.
There's nothing particularly stunning to me about the new Lara (and I was never a fan of the old Lara or Tomb Raider franchise). She's hardly any more of an icon now. But I don't think she's supposed to be sexy. She's just another muddied, hardened adventure game protagonist.
From what I played of the reboot neither she or any of the other characters were relatable or interesting. But if people want to applaud her new design as a huge step forward, then great. Way to go.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
It's part 2 in a trilogy. It's also an origin story.
Did you expect Bruce Wayne to be full-fledged Batman day 1?
Silent Chief
Member
Polygon: From silliness to click bait.
Is Lara saved? The exclusivity will reduce sales and that will probably carry on to the next iteration as well.
Is Lara saved? The exclusivity will reduce sales and that will probably carry on to the next iteration as well.
No, but you don't expect little Bruce to take arms and kill the entire Gotham mafia right after his parents are gunned down either.
That's what Tomb Raider 2013 was.
Silent Chief
Member
Did you play the Arkham games?
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Rocksteady's Arkham Trilogy was trying to tell it's own story, not trying to be an origin story.
I'm pretty sure the a random bystander on the street can recognize the "classic" Lara Croft outfit, no one besides dedicated gamers would know who the "new" Lara Croft was.
True. Although WB did develop "Arkham: ORIGINS."
True. Although WB did develop "Arkham: ORIGINS."
BadAss2961
Member
Just google "Lara Croft moaning" and it'll all be about Tomb Raider 2013. An animated porn was made in honor of that game, and it's kinda weird how accurate it was. They might've even sampled some of Lara's voice work from the game.
Silent Chief
Member
The first Tomb Raider I played was Underworld and I could make no heads or tails of the story. I did watch the movies. (Manor burns, some immortal enemy, some rival, something about Thor's hammer...several game breaking bugs along the way....)
I find it interesting that they decided to do an origin story after Uncharted 3 which was an origin story--vastly disliked here. I assume the original Tomb Raider had no origin.
CosmicGroinPull
Member
This reads terribly like a MS PR, things like "halo has a lore as deep as star wars", that kind of one sided nonsense.
Crossing Eden
Hello, my name is Yves Guillemot, Vivendi S.A.'s Employee of the Month!
Arkham Knight's credits show scenes from all of the games, they don't show any scenes from Origins, so I guess they don't count that.
Pretty sure Underworld wasn't an origin story but like, the culmination of what the story was leading up to, wasn't that the one with evil clone Lara Croft? Uncharted 3 also wasn't an origin story. It was a continuation of Nathan's story but also happened to have a childhood scene which is typical in third entries of a continuing story.
Eh, I see a big difference between promotional material made by marketing on a big trading show like E3 vs some developers who sit at a panel going through shaders, textures, and stuff like that.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
And? This doesn't mean the character was sexy but that some creepy people found her sexy and made creepy videos about her. She has an attractive model and the marketing team played that edge a bit. If you played the game and went, "DAT ass" as she climbed a ladder then you may be part of the problem. People did it in Life is Strange with Chloe and Max. Heck, you see this with most games that feature women. Think Samus was only featured as a "sexy" character by the community only after she had more poly models? Lots of creeps out there, buddy.
Action game. Did you want a slow, methodical look on murder? It's not 100% a masterpiece but it worked even if it was shallow in plenty of places.
Relaxed Muscle
Member
Does that excuse bad writing? Spec Ops: The Line is also an action game...
Dangansona
Member
This article would have you believe Tomb Raider was one of the greatest and most important games we have witnessed to date, all because of the impactful story and wonderful performance of Croft's actress to show us how vulnerable the character truly is.
The game was pretty good, but that would be for gameplay and none of the things this article is picking out to mislabel new Lara Croft as an "icon." That's just my opinion though. And lol at mentioning the first games "remarkably diverse characters."
The game was pretty good, but that would be for gameplay and none of the things this article is picking out to mislabel new Lara Croft as an "icon." That's just my opinion though. And lol at mentioning the first games "remarkably diverse characters."
Stilton Disco
Member
Yeah, I loved the game, but the gameplay absolutely saved what was otherwise a weak story with bad, boring characters and a terrible lead voice actress. Frankly that whole vulnerability bullocks was just boring and unrelatable, since the trauma they put her through was almost cartoonishly over the top.
Lara only became likeable once she got ahold of that grenade launcher and started to get her rocks off with killing. As she should, it's Lara fucking Croft, you don't need to relate to her, you just sit there in awe of the incredible mad shit she does.
As for cast diversity, it's praised for the range of ethnicities, not well written characters.
And it should be, Tomb Raider is 100% the kind of story that should involve characters from all over the world and from a variety of backgrounds. It's great to see.
They should just also be well written.
SolidSnakex
Member
Square just added a Lara skin to Spelunker World (it was released this Tuesday on PSN)...the outfit they chose says it all
Subpar Spatula
Banned
Did it say it was great writing?
People were being creepy and want her to be sexy. She's wearing pants and a shirt. It's like the many men who scream this women's super sexy and looking for attention when they wear a t-shirt on Twitch.
Darth Kupi
Banned
Enosh
Member
yep
I loved the 2013 game, probably my favorite game that year, but original Lara is way way more iconic and recognizable
E-Cat
Member
More like a French face.
Man face.
Darth Kupi
Banned
Although to be fair the new Rise of the Tomb raider face is better than the creepy doll face of the 2013 TR definitive edition.
While I can respect artists wanting to perfect their craft... someone needs to tell these knuckle heads that a large component of attraction is familiarity.
First face is fine. Keep the damn face and people will come to like it more the more they're familiar with it.
NeoRaider
Member
I don't really think it's completely changed, her lips are little different and hair is more puffy, other than that it looks almost the same to me.
BTW. I can't believe how good this looks:
http://giant.gfycat.com/AgonizingDemandingChevrotain.gif
Wow.
MMaRsu
Banned
Your 100% correct imo. All these new AAA games try to be way to cinematic with their games to the point it becomes a detriment. Take fallout for instance and their new voiced protag with a predefined story. Terrible.
dragonbane
Member
Considering the author of this article, Brianna Wu, had this to say about the 2013 reboot:
I'm afraid I can't really take her opinion on the quality of anything writing related seriously anymore lol
https://medium.com/the-magazine/goty-2013-badass-girls-need-not-apply-1b56d8c8a1fb
I'm afraid I can't really take her opinion on the quality of anything writing related seriously anymore lol
Ivan Amiibo
Banned
They've been saying this literally every single Tomb Raider game since Legend.
"We've redesigned her so she's less sexy and more realistic now."
"We've redesigned her so she's less sexy and more realistic now."
MrRudiMentary
Member
From icon to exclusive to the less popular video games console. I dunno, seems like Lara Croft is harly as iconic as she used to be. Old Lara was clearly objectified but to say that that makes her character invalid and that objectification is all she was is kinda insulting to the previous devs of the series.
Talk about hyperbole. A game where a strong independent kick-ass woman is turned into an inexperienced strong independent kick-ass young adult that brutally murders hundreds of people is "historically important one". Uhm, OK.
Then maybe, just maybe, if your game depends mostly on brutally killing (again, Lara is not only shooting enemies to protect herself; she slashes their throats, stabs them with arrows or a pick axe, blasts their faces away with a shotgun etc.) waves of enemies you don't merge it with a story about a young untrained woman that tries to survive after a ship crash.
If they wanted to tell a story about young Lara's hardship to survive in a dangerous environment that would result in her becoming a tomb raider, they could have done that in many different ways. Look at TR1/TR Anniversary where there were only few human enemies (only 1 in Anniversary if you don't count Natla, and even that one kill resulted in Lara feeling guilty) that Lara had to deal with, while every other enemy was just a wild animal or an ancient monster. It would be much more realistic (if we can even use that word in a game with ancient demons) than turning her into a mass murderer and claiming it's so deep.
Haha oh wow. She eats up that sub-par writing like a 14-year-old goes nuts for Twilight.
Subpar Spatula
Banned
There's endless ways to make this story and they chose this one. Is it perfect? No, but it hits the marks they wanted and that's undeniable whether or not you like how it happened. What did you expect from an action adventure game about Lara Croft? It's like asking for a deep Friday the 13th movie. At best all they could do is make a fun, kickass Lara who grows from child to adult in the span of a game with good visuals, action, and story that doesn't make her fall to many tropes other female characters face in other games. They did their part.
Banana Aeon
Member
That is a ridiculously hyperbolic statement. Evrn if you liked the new Lara, you should be able to recognize that there is nothing important about it.
The game does succumb to many generic female tropes.
Just skimming through the thread and it seems that most people here thinks CD shouldn't be patting themselves on the back.
I thought they did an incredible job with the new Lara and Camilla Luddington is fantastic. She went from a crappy paper thin female to a much more 3 dimensional character. I hate female characters like Black Widow in the Marvel cinematic universe and I think the early Lara was a kind of Black Widow of that time.
That said, I have a friend that didn't get any of that from the 2013 Tomb Raider. I saw a strong well written female character, and he saw a generic character who's just constantly bombarded by hardships without any real growth.
I thought they did an incredible job with the new Lara and Camilla Luddington is fantastic. She went from a crappy paper thin female to a much more 3 dimensional character. I hate female characters like Black Widow in the Marvel cinematic universe and I think the early Lara was a kind of Black Widow of that time.
That said, I have a friend that didn't get any of that from the 2013 Tomb Raider. I saw a strong well written female character, and he saw a generic character who's just constantly bombarded by hardships without any real growth.
It's not about what I expect. It's about what developers state they were reaching for. From the quote from OP:
That "most believable women in video games" cries over a killed deer one second, trembles when she is forced to kill a human in another second, and then goes on a brutal killing spree killing dozens of armed mercenaries (and she wins in a fight against those mercenaries).
And then that character is praised by journalists as Brianna Wu as something "real and relatable". Sorry, but no. Crystal Dynamics sure changed Lara's look to the most realistic yet, but her actual character - given her experience and what's she's actually doing in the game - is the most cartoonish one.
The funny thing is, Crystal Dynamics already wrote a believable Lara Croft character. In Anniversary, where she shows her human side by things like: trying to avoid killing her human enemies; looking shocked when Pierre is killed by centaurs; only killing Larson after he refused to let her go to stop Natla, and then actually feeling guilty about this (which Natla even points out later: "What are a few lives to sacrifice for your dream" and "You're here because you belong here, Lara."). And that didn't require any origin story bullshit, erasing her past and making her an inexperienced rookie.
Again, If you want to focus the gameplay on shooting enemies, don't make the story about a rookie youngster who has never killed anybody. And if you shoot for a realistic and believable character that only starts to rise to be a hero, don't put her against dozens of armed mercenaries. Just because it's an action-adventure game doesn't mean you have to put there countless of human enemies to be killed.
plasmawave
Banned
She's a lead in the AAA big budget game, so it must be the most well written and empowered woman in video games. It has to be.
semiconscious
Gold Member
she was also captured (aka 'helpless') three different times
...badass lara croft will always be the lara croft. accept no substitutes...
SuperAndroid17
Member
Cool bump?
Council Pop
Member
Whooooops didn't realise this was an old thread.
potatohead
Member
100%
Nu-TR pales so much in comparison to Legend series in terms of drawing up Lara's character, and even the Legend series didn't do it that well, but at least she was a cool character.
BigTnaples
Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
Why bump this?
Especially when there is a fresh topic on this subject posted literally today.
Take your discussion there.
Especially when there is a fresh topic on this subject posted literally today.
Take your discussion there.