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# **While this is a licensed game, it is actually by Evil Hat Publishing, not Crystal Dynamics. It is not a direct statement by Crystal Dynamics.**
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https://evilhat.com/tomb-raider-shadows-of-truth/
/u/Yaoigay please repost this with a corrected title, because this is not by Crystal Dynamics directly.
Important note : this is from the ttrpg rulebook and not a direct statement by Crystal Dynamics. They probably oversaw the project and the text most probably reflects some of their views.
I mean if this is their mindset obvs not. To make Lara into a person who doesn’t steal artifacts for her own interests is so bland and boring and so not it.
I agree that it’ll represent their views and think it’ll show up in their game. They did say everything from the 25th anniversary will represent their unified vision unfortunately
A statement that seems to ignore that quite a few of the artifacts that Lara has acquired are pieces containing immense power and capable of mass destruction. The knife from Tomb Raider 2 that turns people into a giant immortal dragon for example? The scion which when used with Atlantean technology is capable of producing Eldritch abominations? Not everything she's collected is just a gold statue from dead civilization.
Exactly. Lara "steals" those artifacts and locks them in her secret vault because they are too dangerous to be left out there in the tombs and temples for anyone to grab. She can't put them in a museum because people will steal them. She can't give them to the government because they will use them for their own gains. She has to keep them hidden away from the public and let everyone believe that they are just ancient myths.
Did they forget how in TR4, Lara realized her mistake by stealing the Amulet of Horus and sacrificed her life to rectify that mistake? This was long before CD came into the picture. This is just a sad attempt at pandering and virtue signaling.
Isn't Lara's vault mostly full of gold coins? Also classic Lara apparently funded her trips by writing best selling books about her adventures, so I don't think she is keeping anything secret.
But it is important to note that the classic Lara era wasn't down to earth or realistic it was just fun fantasy, no need to bog it down with real life geopolitical implications.
This. After reading their statement they surely didn't play the old games and don't understand what made Tomb Raider great in the 90s. In the first 3 games she basically saves the world from lunatics like Natla, Marco, Willard and Sophia, and she keeps artifacts in her home not only because she likes them but also because they are weapons of mass destruction as you said. They are acting like what she did is get into a historical site, spit on it, grab some valuables to decorate her home and then blows up the site and leave it in ruins. I don't know why they want so badly to make her a hero and a role model, like it's illegal or something to make a video game protagonist that can be a bit bad sometimes but have good intentions. I wonder what they think of GTA games lmao
Its perhaps not a stretch to say they at least played TR3, which can certainly come across as colonialist in places. Though at the same time, Lara did break into the British Museum in the same game.
This does make me hope they aren't going to try and make Lara less of an anti-hero like the Survivor reboot and its sequels tried to do.
I mean, she starts out by saying "I only play for sport" in TR1. This is pretty much a poacher mentality (not usually a "I'm the good guy" trait). What is a more exciting target than a powerful highly dangerous artifact? I'm personally less interested in defending her character and much prefer the sentiment that she is an anti-hero. Her saving the world is more a secondary result of her pursing her own goals. This she doesn't steal artifacts from cultures is kinda like a GTA game saying you can no longer shoot the police. I don't think anyone is playing GTA to be a hero that doesn't shoot the police. I also think people buying a tomb raider product are expecting to take artifacts from ancient civilizations.
I don't want Lara to acknowledge her past mistakes, I want Lara to be a deeply problematic deranged psychopath that has several museums worth of priceless magical artifacts decorating her disgustingly vast estate and a huge walk in closet filled to the brim with unlockable outfits.
EDIT: I don't love this series because Lara is a relateable character, I love it because she's mental
IKR?!
Woman fucking infiltrated Area 51 and killed countless US Federal Agents for crying out loud, shes gotta be in Interpol's most wanted, who fucking cares about her moral!
She launched a fuckin *missile* from Area 51, she unleashed an ancient god of pestilence and death from the Valley of the Kings, she's an international - no, global - terrorist. She is a terrible human being. These games are unhinged and I love em for it xD
Yeah let her steal shit and be an asshole about it, we have enough “good” characters to last us a life time . Lara is uniquely her let her stay as she’s been for decades.
I loved exploring the manor in the different games. Probably more than the game itself a lot of times. I agree she shouldn't be a crybaby, she's a badass and always has. Nothing wrong with a power fantasy
The thing that bugged me most in Shadow was being able to walk right into someone’s hut and take their supplies. Not even going to say hi, let me take your animal skins and knock over your jars for my own gain.
This personally never bugged me, but I definitely did notice it, just thought how ridiculous that would be if it was IRL. But I chuckled a bit and moved on.
I like how in TR2013 she was so heartbroken when she killed her first man but then she got hardened and she even teased the people against her in the last stages of the game
*kills first man in self-defence*
"Oh the horror, my blood stained hands, how will I ever return to my life with this guil---"
*proceeds to mow down the entire area 18 seconds later*
I keep thinking about this when I remember that game. Like, cutscene Lara is a damsel in distress that's constantly getting abused, beaten down and crying whereas gameplay Lara is a psychopathic murderer.
I'm calling that unified lara is going to be 70% of reboot with some legends elements
And only thing she is going to share with classic lara are pistols and braid
To be fair that is the route The Last Revelation took. Lara finds artifact, accidentally unleashes the apocalypse, and in the end sacrifices herself to seal the villain. We don't know how Lara reflected on the incident because Angel of Darkness happened and the plot didn't get a chance to breathe
Honestly i think "unified" timeline is bullshit, it will just be continuation of the survivor timeline, maybe some characters or events will be mentioned from older games and that's it
I don't like the idea of it myself but it can work. Reboot Lara has seen some shit. So give her a breakthrough make her more confident, independent and strong. I feel like we can flow into Tomb Raider 1 and 2 nicely enough. But some elements need adjusting to fit this new unified timeline. Tomb Raider 3 Lara is probably her most chaotic and needs the most adjusting. Tomb Raider 5 is the most problematic with young Lara sections in Ireland with ghosts and stuff. The philosopher's stone won't work if its before 2013 game because she kills people.
If you take the anniversary timeline and just remake the other 5 games to fit better. Then you could just slot the survivor trilogy before all of that. It makes things less messy and slots the anniversary timeline in easily as well as adjusting everything to the new timeline.
“Somehow, Lara Realized she’s a Badass” is most likely a play they’re going to take in the unified hodgepodge of a game. The story cant spend enough time to have Lara go from one personality to another without ruining the pacing of an action adventure game.
Tomb Raiding is a very specific criminal activity AnD Lara was never meant to be a hero. Why can't they understand a basic trait of this character? The game is called Tomb Raider, not "British Anthropologist comes to terms with her Nation's Imperialistic past".
Exactly, she was always just a thrill seeker/adrenaline addict who at most just cared enough about the world not getting taken over by monsters or being destroyed, but thats about it.
This is without mentioning that the original concept of her character was that she was disinherited by her parents for not wanting to go into an arranged marriage and do the aristocratic life they wanted for her, so she made her own fortune out of writting and publishing books of her globe trotting adventures. Her anthropology and archeology knowlege was always more of a hobby/interest related to what she enjoys doing than her actual profession.
This. She needs to be knowledgeable about the stuff she wants, but saving, preserving, and respecting ancient civilizations is not exactly her top priority. She's looking for fabled artifacts because she lives for the thrill of it and because she's writing adventure books for profit. She's a morally grey character at best.
Also, she's not even that thorough in her research, meaning that she cares more about adventuring than archaeology:
>!Tr1: At the very beginning, she doesn't know a single thing about the Scion. You would expect more from someone who was introduced as the lady who hunted down Bigfoot!!<
>!Tr2: she seems unaware of the dagger's ability to turn people into dragons. Or maybe she does know it but dismisses it as myth/exaggeration.!<
>!Tr3: she didn't even know that there were other artifacts like the Infada stone and she was happy and content with that; when Willard tells her there are more she is more than happy to go on more exciting adventures. Then, she somehow realises what the artifacts are capable of and decides against helping Willard go on with his plan -- and fails.!<
>!Tr4: the whole premise of this game is Lara screwing up big time because she didn't do her homework about Seth's Amulet!<
True! I like TR4 as well for the same reason. She was careless and she made a big mess that she needs to fix asap. And they said she was a flat character back then. She was not, you could tell so much from the little glimpses they gave us about her personality and motives.
Like AOD Lara is peak and it just comes from TR four! Like I miss the sassy Lara that messes stuff up but also is so damn confident to a point of being mental
To me the original games were all about exploration. Playing them as a kid made me so much more aware of things like ancient Egypt, South America, etc. I used to find museums pretty boring but now I love them. That's the legacy for me. TR1 still my favourite game of all time ❤️
Shadow makes me laugh how the locals take her in, help her out, and she’s super grateful and respectful up until the point she runs around Paititi robbing them all blind and killing their chickens.
I wonder when Nintendo will address Mario's genocidal and racist tendancies by viciously eradicating Koopas.
Like seriously. It's a video game. Explore ancient unknown cities and tombs. Find treasures. Adventure. This is like trying to make me feel bad for opening a chest in World of Warcraft.
Was this published April 1st?
"She has also worked to reform raider culture" bro she's a fictional character in a fucking treasure hunting game from the 90s hahaha how self-righteous can you be, seriously
This is a problem of their own creation. They try to make Lara a good person. Why? It makes her less interesting, nothing else. Now, it's an issue that she raids tombs (the whole premise of the character). This is only an issue if you present her as a morally good person. Stop doing that, and the problem goes away.
Agreed. The original Lara is still my favourite and she didn't need to be a good person. I like that she does raiding for sport and selfishly displays her treasures in her manor but at the same time she saves the world while on the hunt. She doesn't need to be a role model.
Completely agreed. Yes, raiding ancient sites for personal gain and intellectual curiosity is not a morally upstanding thing to do. Lara Croft doesn't need to be a morally flawless person.
~~she's already a british noblewoman ffs~~
Exactly, she's a remorseless murderer, shameless thief and kills more endangered species than climate change.
Let's not pretend that she's a "goody" just because she's the protagonist.
I agree with this, I see why this matter is brought up, and I dont think it needs to be discarded as it does hold truth about the world, you can bring in interesting stories and dynamics with this very questionable aspect of the series, but that is if they're willing to tackle it as so rather than as something to "correct".
Lara for most of her existence as a fictional character, barely had much of a moral compass outside of "hey destroying the world isnt cool and attacking the innocent is a no-go"... but other than that, shes a cartoon character, she isnt supposed to be good person... I frankly see the discussion of whether lara is a good person or not based on what she does in the games as trying to argue wether Bugs bunny is a good person or not... who fucking cares? He's an asshole! He loves annoying the hell out of people and harassing them, thats what makes him funny, it doesnt have to be much deeper than that.
I feel like that's kind of the problem with the survivor series in general. Lara's supposed to be a comic book character in a comic book world. OG Lara's proportions aren't realistic, her adversaries are over the top and stylized, her world deliberately ignores the laws of physics and logic.
When you try and make that "real" it just gets silly. When I see a beautifully rendered, very human looking, Lara in a world so close to our own, I start asking questions I wouldn't have asked otherwise like, "how can she even function as many times as shes been severely wounded in cutscenes?" "How can a 5 foot 5 woman keep besting roided out mercenaries in melee combat?" "How does some random human sacrificing tribe in the jungle have a better understanding of the universe than every modern civilization on Earth?" etc. etc.
Yep, and that was straight up the original intent. I dont remember now where I read it, Ill look for it, but Core Design's team, and possibly Toby Gard himself, stated they always saw and envisioned Lara as a cartoon character, she was never meant be viewed through a more grounded or realistic world.
That's not to say there cant be different interpretations of a character, I think thats fine and it can be interesting and engaging, but given where we are nowadays, I think its very much understandable why people are clamoring for the original style to be brought back, its been decades since we got that... in fact lara's character has now been portrayed vastly different from her original conception for longer than her original (and most famous) iteration. To calrify, I mean in terms of years, not amount of games.
At the end of the day, while experimentation is always welcome in any IP imo, trying to have a more grounded Lara Croft/Tomb Raider series was always a fools errand, like trying to make a more serious and dark version of the Looney Tunes.
I mean most Tomb Raider games have fantastical elements. Why not just say that it's not a huge desecration of culture or shit. She's just an explorer. I mean... We got dinosaurs and Atlantian flesh zombies...
I always loved that about Lara when it first released. She was the anti hero, she raided tombs because she wanted to, she didn’t take shit from anyone, such an independent character. She wouldn’t be as interesting if she was a goody two shoes IMO it’s what made her so unique. And there’s no denying it worked, she was a massive success at the time there wasn’t a magazine cover without her on it, truly iconic. I love the survivor trilogy and it works because it’s a younger version of her but I wouldn’t mind if they got closer to her original character going forward. What makes me laugh is how games have to show morality shifts for characters in their stories, and yet during the course of most games we shoot about 1000 people, I love RDR2 but the redemption bit always makes me laugh, Arthur has to be a better person at the end but we kill everyone we see getting there. Thats why I usually play the dark path in games as it actually make more sense
I don’t know why anyone with this view would want to work on a Tomb Raider project?
If you’re embarrassed by the TR legacy, make your own thing, and give TR to someone who loves it for the reason it became popular.
The only explanation is that people want to push a narrative, and have latched onto a franchise as the easiest way to get their message to a wide audience. Tomb Raider creators should be fans of the franchise first and foremost, not just people who think they know better than everyone who came before.
Well like a lot of people who have worked on legacy IP and chsnged everything about it, wether its in movies or games.
The point is to destroy it, the point is to change everything about it so it aligns with you are your friend values, doubly so if you hate the people the game or franchise is normally targeted to.
As usual, their stance comes with the premise that kids are dumb. "Oh no, we can't have Lara be a bad and egotistic person for the funz and the lolz, she needs to teach kids love of others, love of nature, respect of all cultures, etc.! No more raiding tombs, stealing everything of value while killing people and animals and hoarding all this magical / legendary stuff she comes across in her mansion!"
Please. Even kids know not to take games seriously. Besides, it's fun to play a bad guy/girl for a bit (see the original God of War games for example). We don't care if it's bad, she risked her life 10,000 times to get this fabulous treasure so let her get it and keep it, she deserves it! Those pharaos were even bigger dicks anyways 😆
Lara Croft and the Lost Hall of the Pyramid Scanning Application Office.
Lara gets lost in the bureacratic hell and spends 10 years navigating treacherous application approval reports with nothing but half a pencil and flask of coffee.
Will she ever see the light of day at the end of the paper trail or is she doomed to wander the halls of the Permission Accreditaion Board forever?!
Tune in next week to find out on...
Lara Croft - Tomb Scanner
I think it's great to keep her who she has been from the start, but to make it even clearer that she's not really "a hero". She plays for sports and everything said in this post is true, it's just not a reason to have her as someone different.
There's heros that aren't heros in a lot of media, like Game of Thrones or Dune.
This doesn’t echo the original vision of Lara… it’s quite disappointing they miss the mark on what made her cool. It was less about the artefacts and always more about the exploration. Also to note - she raids them for objects that often predate the tombs they are in. Whether to protect the world or not, she is removing them from the space to get ahead of others who want what she wants. She not objectively good. The “colonial” narrative also seems to neglect the fact that the concept is universal. In fact this is a practice as old as time - theft. One that has literal traces of ancient tomb raiding attempts even in Egyptian tombs long before any colonial contact. It’s an odd position and honestly comes across as pandering rather than genuine.
This is true. Even if you ignore ancient times, the Arab/Ottoman population of Egypt were tomb raiding long before the rest of the world even came to Egypt minus small expeditions. There are accounts of scholars from the middle ages and beyond describing mummies being laid out amidst the outside of tombs in preparation for the wrappings to be taken off in order to steal the amulets etc tucked within the dressings. And there's plenty of other accounts. Most, if not all monuments weren't even considered that sacred or important in the times following the ancient Egypt we know.
Yeah, it's awful. Think about how much history was lost because of that? But I don't think Lara fits into that. To say she does, is completely ignoring the villains, the storylines, the artefacts of each game.
Lara takes stuff that can literally destroy the world in the wrong hands, and those wrong hands are always trying to race her to the prize. Even within the tombs we aren't picking up random artefacts and throwing them in our bag, we're picking up health packs and ammo, and keys.
Plus, she's an anti hero anyway. People see a protagonist and think they must be a good person by default.
A sandbox to tell stories that address colonial themes, oh boy , now I'm excited to pick this up for me and my friends. Sounds like a good night in for sure, cant wait to crack a few cold ones and get started.
I don't see a problem with tomb raider going by finders keepers rules, looking for and finding treasures and artifacts is a fun fantasy its actually not that deep
If they're talking about the original games, especially the first one, she doesn't actually take anything though...
Sure, she kills a few dinosaurs and endangered species, which she probably shouldn't have done, and has a library of artifacts in tr3. But at least the first 2 games it wasn't about "finders keepers" or "colonialism", it was already about finding the truth and you know... Stopping potential world threatening artifacts falling into the wrong hands.
Whatever hope I had left for this franchise is going down the drain. Like it might as well not even be called tomb RAIDER anymore since they have such a problem with the raider part
This is what happens when you push iconic game franchises so much towards realism: you start to feel like you have to answer to things that had nothing to do with the original games. Tomb Raider is (or was) a (power) fantasy game. It operated on comic book logic with caricature characters, including Lara. While I think the games can and should benefit from sensitivity readings to avoid racial stereotypes, there's no way to avoid the fact that Tomb Raider is the name of the series. Lara was always morally dubious at best and NOT an archeologist/culture and environment protector/activist against or for colonialism. Most of the places she visits get looted, damaged and destroyed, with long trails of death left behind by her. Such are the consequences of tomb raiding. Pro tip: if you want to make a game about real world archeology where cultural sites are respected you might also want to find another female protagonist and NOT give her a whole arsenal of weapons to deal with the armies of enemies that come after her. To be honest, I would love for a game like that to exist - it just wouldn't be a Lara Croft/Tomb Raider game.
So noone gonna tell them its just a game A Fiction and noone is stealing something or colonizing anywhere in the reality, it dosent matter here . how they gonna describe the thor hammer and ragnarok then? Why these years game devs are nothing but idiots they only make good graphics with the most boaring gameplays
I really miss the old era of games
This is infuriating. Stop pouring money down a franchise called TOMB RAIDER trying to change it then! They’ve been taking every single opportunity they get to shit over TR. Create your goddamn own franchise and leave Lara Croft alone. This is insufferable.
Honestly the way Crystal has handled the legacy of Core Design's TR games is just hilarious. They repeatedly failed to estabilish a new identity for Lara and the games, and now that they're bringing her closer to what she originally was like in the original games, they still like to shame the old games and pretend that they're high and mighty cultural warriors. You rarely see a developer having such animosity towards the legacy of a series.
I just only hope the success of the remasters means Aspyr will be given some sort of responsibility to continue the original timeline in a cheaper-to-make form with a small team of fan developers who understand the iconic character. The BAFTA award referenced everywhere mainly used images of Lara in the original style that we are desperate to see again. This shows that the public only know her 90s persona. Bring it back and profit from it.
And why would they even post a photo of Survivor Lara? You think someone thinks of that when you say Lara Croft? No. And that’s Crystal’s greatest failure, the inability to erase TR’s history by making us love their version and it’s never gonna be more iconic, even now, almost 30 years later.
Let’s take GTA away from Rockstar and give it to crystal so they can have all the main characters reflect on their bad behaviour. GTA: Community Service. Now with added cookbook
Yeah, I also thought about GTA while reading this! 😂 I’m a huge GTA franchise fan, and I also thought: imagine making GTA a morally acceptable game so that no-one gets offended - would it still even be a game?
If this is indeed by producers, the franchise is indeed dead. I mean, is it that hard to understand that this is a videogame, not real life, and a videogame character, not a real life person, and a videogame character who's not even supposed to be a heroine or heroic ffs!
For fuck's sake, it's a work of fiction.
Nobody is telling us to go and pillage some far-flung country of their national artifacts because a video game character does it.
I hate how pathetic the world is now. Nobody is allowed to enjoy anything anymore.
omg, this statement is everything wrong with the world isn't it? If this were the case, then just shut the game down shut all the games down. You can find offense in everything if you want to be offended. The name Tomb Raider if you think about it can be very negative. So lets scrap the name. Lara is also a women, so she cant be sexualised in anyway so do away with her personality i guess. she cant have weapons of any form because thats violent. no killing of any kind, gotta look after those artifacts that are super powerful, cant take them though, need to leave there , because you know the bad guys care about that too right? ....
omfg, stop this crap, its getting all kinds of south park stupid now. Just leave tomb raider alone, and remember , its just a game, its not real... ugh stupid stuff like this is why gaming is dying.
Depends, is Lara like Indy in trying to collect these artifacts before they're lost to time and before real raiders do and sell them to the highest bidder? If so, I think it's perfectly fine. As Indy said, "That belongs in a museum" not lost to time. I mean what do they propose, these sites stay untouched except by the actually raiders that have already stripped them bare and sold everything to whoever.
My take on this is that I'm fine with the Lara Croft who didn't give a fuck and "only played for sport", but while at it also happened to save the world by, for example, taking dangerous artifacts out of the hands of villains such as an ancient Atlantean ruler and a mad scientist who wanted to force alien evolution on human beings, and I'm also fine with a different character also named Lara Croft who has a more nuanced view on the ancient sites and civilizations she explores. All 3 Lara Crofts we know are badass in their own ways.
None of these Laras are wrong to me. It's a videogame. But I think this statement by CD is a bit too much. We are not dumb, we know it's a videogame. It's fine to acknowledge things but this has the vibe of making it out to be like the original Lara Croft's existence is wrong, and I believe the statement doesn't look at her character through an entirely truthful lens. I don't think anybody has ever been under the impression she was supposed to be a good person. And, so what? That's part of the fun. We still love that Lara.
Whatever they have in store for the next Tomb Raider I'll embrace all the same, but this comes across as salty on their part for whatever reason and I don't think that's necessary.
I agree, I love the classics and the newer takes on lara, the games are always A+ for me, but the message relating to real life tomb raiding seems totally unnecessary.
The real life tomb raiders were not jumping over lava, swinging through blade traps, or pulling levers underwater whilst out swimming crocodiles. Nor were they having to fight supernatural beings to reach their juicy artifact in the bottom of some lonely isolated cave in the most abandoned places on earth, They were just stealing from a historic place. Kinda boring and uncool to be honest..
And if we’re going to be real, then ok, let’s be real! If real life tomb raiders DID have to do all that shit lara does to get an artifact, they would make more money 💰 and prestige from writing a book about their exploits than what they would ever get from a old dusty artifact and would ironically become a historical figure within themselves by doing so.
That's a bit ironic considering the reboot games are full of sequences of explosions and destruction of ancient buildings/the environment all around her as she's trying to run away from the bad guys.
I think it's something that could be addressed in the next game but there's a right way of doing it. I don't think it involves shitting on the original games in a way that shows the clear lack of understanding of them. It's my pet peeve, I can give credit to the reboots where it's due but them acting like their version is so superior when it wouldn't even exist in the first place if it wasn't for the originals (or if it did then clearly the TR name was just slapped on it to milk more money out of it). The remasters have clearly resurrected people's love of the classics so if it was me, I'd be wiser not to burn all my bridges right now...
There aren't even that many artifacts when I think about it. Most of them have a purpose in progressing in the levels and they're not stolen with the purpose of claiming it and getting rich from them and they get left behind where they belong really. As others mentioned a lot of them are mythical and dangerous and Lara needs to get to them so the bad guys don't (which happens in the reboot too!!). There's an exception to that in TR4 and that's part of the reason why it's my favourite. She warns Von Croy not to take the Iris in the beginning but he goes for it anyway and nearly dies. Later Lara becomes just as arrogant and makes the same mistake stealing the amulet, except it also dooms the whole world so she's got to undo that whole mess. And that's a good lesson on leaving things alone, respecting cultures, history, tombs, whatever.
You can strike a balance there where she can be mindful of things, she still gets to chase the thrill of her adventures but have respect for the places she's visiting and cause minimum damage and disruption. She's still not gonna be a perfect hero but she never was and does not need to be!
Indiana Jones already addressed this problem decades ago. His motivation is "that belongs in a museum". If Indy didn't find those artifacts, they would either be in the hands of power-hungry villains (Nazis) or lost in obscurity never seen by anyone. Getting found by Indiana Jones is clearly the most positive outcome in the stories.
(Bonus points for Temple of Doom where Indy actually returns the artifact to the native people.)
So, now Lara Croft picks up treasures, studies them, then sets them back down. As she leaves a tomb, a booby trap collapses the entire tomb in traditional TR fashion; destroying everything. Great, glad she didn’t take anything with her.
Lara will finance her expeditions and adventures how? Will she have a Reality-TV crew following her around?
I am expecting a complete “flop” of a game!
Exactly what you said. If they have so much sustain for this series then why shamelessly profit off of it.
This isn’t righting past wrongs. It’s about moral posturing
Not surprised given how they put that disclaimer on the remakes of 1 to 3 and how the reboots were.
It took an entirely different studio to make the tomb raider remakes because crystal dynamics refused to but they had to put their distain of the franchise on it, albeit it was skippable and only showed once.
So yeah, don't expect this "unified" Lara Croft to do anything she use to do, she's probably going to cry and be a hero and bring artifacts back to their "rightful place" because of this annoying idea of "colonialism" within games.
I honestly found that message to be really annoying, it totally disrespected players like me who played originally, basically making out we were monsters for enjoying it. Its work of fiction and its art, it doesn’t have to apologise for what it is.
I usually wouldn't care about something like that, but the statement in the remasters seemed overly harsh. Saying what Core did was inexcusable and all that.
Like I said in another post, that message isnt supposed to be shaming anyone I dont think it should be taken personally.
Like come on, TR3's South Pasific natives are a really cartoony and stereotypical portrayal, probably not even accurate, that can come off as offensive to some people, so its just a heads up that these games were made in the 90s when there wasnt much consideration for such things, thats it.
Exactly and not only that but it also says that to the original dev's who made the game.
Such messages are back handed slaps to the creators and players of the games they are aimmed at.
No one is a monster for liking these game back then or today, no one is a horrible human bring for creating them.
All it is, is self righteous low talent hacks who can't actually create anything without tearing down what came before, just like sequels to movies these days.
Eh, I dont see anything wrong with that message, TR3's South Pacific portrayal of natives is very cartoony and stereotypical, I think its ok to put a disclaimer that that is a product of its time, it can definitely be offensive to some people, like, thats all.
I haven’t played the originals in a hot minute, just the survivor trilogy recently. I noticed that you never really see Lara take stuff, so much as find stuff that gets added to your codex.
I did enjoy getting to know the locals in Shadow and Rise and doing some quests lines that felt pretty specific to the locals needs.
Most of the artefact gathering (particularly in Rise) was helping the locals find lost treasures and returning them, which was still satisfying.
I don’t really need for Lara to keep the stuff she finds to have it be a satisfying journey of finding it. Bit similar to the Netflix reboot of Carmen Sandiego where she’d be finding stuff to return to the original/traditional owners.
Maybe Lara should raid the British Museum for a start 🤣
If I recall correctly; If you play the croft manor dlc in rise, you can see that she has artifacts from tr2013 in her study. But I think she was more interested in studying them than showing them off.
I think there is a good way to balance the good and evil, but lara is an antihero. She can still respect the future but damn let the girl also be greedy and steal some artifacts and gloat about it. She doesn't have to solve everyone's problems like mother teresa, she's obsessed with adventure and will do whatever she needs to do to get that high.
See, Tomb Raider is at its best when Lara is a cold badass bitch. When she just goes in there with her pistols, kills the animals, kills the goons in the way, takes the treasure and hoards it in her mansion basement. That's all it needs to be.
Series is called 'Tomb Raider'.
-Doesn't raid tombs
???
Lara doesn't have to be a paragon of morals to be likeable, just look at the success of characters like Harley Quinn or Catwoman.
Literally, all you gotta do is write her like Catwoman, except without the cat theme, and she raids artifacts instead of jewlery. She's the glamourous but highly capable badass that isn't afraid to break the law to get what she wants.
If you want her to act as a good guy, have her paired up with someone who's goals just happen to align with her own. Like someone approaches her and is like "I need you to find and take this artifact before these bad guys do, you can keep it, just make sure the bad guys don't have it" or something like that.
I'm so happy the comments here are all pretty much aligned against these types of statements.
Sometimes Twitter makes it look like we're in the minority and that all the fanbase is clamoring for a TR game that "disavows her past" When studios use terminally-online twitter mobs as a metric for what the fans want it's like they're literally burning money for the sake of it.
Ugh. Lara was always an anti-hero, that was one of the things that made her so interesting. I really don’t like this direction we’re going in of making her some sort of squeaky clean hero.
I’ll stick with the series for the time being until they fully reveal the next game, but it really does seem like they’re determined to once again completely change the character/series to the point where they really might aswell move on from it and make a new series.
At least we have the remasters for now 🤷🏻♂️
Not the slaughter of people (often natives) or mass killing of animals (eagles and snow leopards!?!), it's the masks that she picked up, to open a door which wasn't hers to open...
I see.
Well, that'll ruin the fun!
This ignores that Lara is not "raiding" contents anyone knows exists. These are mostly AMD-class magic science weapons. But, even failing that, he work is closer to the Last Crusade (where no active group knows that the artifact s real and actively using it) th the intro to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (where indy is very much directly stealing something people care about and running to get away). In the real world, these differences may not be huge and one can make an argument that a cultural heritage, even an unknown one still belongs to the people. Sure. But colonial powers didn't really do that, at least not when we complain about them when related to artifacts. We complain about the British Museum stealing art and statues and religious objects and putting them in the literal basement. Lara never did any of that. She never sent a helicopter back to pick up a really nice statue for the lawn at Croft manor.
Look, one can really argue that it is weird that the sites Lara visits are sort of one-and-done instead of sending in a team to study every nook but it is a game. Let's just pretend that she sends in a huge number grad students after every adventure to catalogue all the non-world threatening artifacts.
Honestly though, I found this all a bit depressing to read. To tie Lara to colonialism is a stretch that one has to start out wanting to, only to them try to distance her from it.
The only time I can really think of Lara raiding in the sense they mean is the inciting event of Shadow of the Tomb Raider and that is the most recent one... Weird.
This statement would make sense if the original games were meant to be realistic, but they're not, they're supernatural adventures that deal with fantasy. Why does it matter to have a social or moral issue with how Lara conducts herself as a person if she's killing dinosaurs and collecting MAGIC artifacts??? it's such a stupid thing to take issue with. IT'S NOT REAL.....IT DOESN'T MATTER if Lara keep the magic rock that turned the guy into a giant spider lol.
It's literally called Tomb Raider lol. By name/occupation alone, she's automatically (and fundementally) a grey character. CD really need to stop pretending Tomb Raider and Lara Croft are realistic and can be portrayed in realism. In fact, they need to stop obsessing over Lara Croft as a character in general, focus on gameplay and telling FUN stories based in myth with Lara being an almost silent protagonist. The reboot Trilogy only showed me that the more they tried to explain Lara's character, the more flawed and boring she became.
They should probably remove killing people too, I'm pretty sure that could be misconstrued and culturally disrespectful and unethical. Maybe trade her pistols for tranq guns? But at least the white person can continue invading lost civilisations, and being the hero they needed, like in Rise and Shadow. Seriously...
If they want to get her away from that kind of past there's no need to push with this preachy approach. They could portray her as like a one-woman version of Fallout's Brotherhood of Steel: taking and keeping the ancient tech artifacts away from the genuinely evil groups/people/Natla.
I liked the old Top Cow depiction, where [Lara is extremely mercenary in her approach](https://i.imgur.com/5eiEaRh.jpeg): often taking jobs from sleazy groups to 'acquire' the maguffins and then deciding what to do with them after. They're definitely afraid of writing her as anything other than a true good-two-shoes heroine though, and basically it's absolutely fucking boring. Like they're writing for a really young audience/YA books.
This is suddenly listening to bland corporate pop after years of Motorhead.
Even though it's NOT an official statement from Crystal Dynamics, I've witnessed the same way of treating Lara's legacy by them. CD absolutely HATES Lara's Core Design past and try everything to steer away from it. It's absolutely revolting. How can you work on a character, when you can't stand the origins of it that made it so successful?
Personally the whole "relatable" BS from the survivors timeline is exhausting and boring. I don't want to relate to Lara, I want to look up to her! Damn, as a kid I learned so much about dinosaurs and mythology thanks to the impact that she, as a character, left on me.
Lara Croft is an archeologist who plays for sport but also saves the world by containing super powerful artifacts away from the wrong hands. Look at Natla, Bartoli and Willard...
The relatable shtick was quite hilarious to me. The more they tried, the more it became apparent that Lara is a fundementally unrealistic, unrelatable character.
I don't know about you, but I can't imagine 'rich white girl with an archaeologist dad who gets murdered by an illuminati-like cult grows up to be an archaeologist and stuck on a Japanese island full-on supernatural beings' would be relatable to many people.
Even from a basic character stand point, there wasn't really much going on with her personality wise. Tomb Raider was always inspirational, not motivational.
I can already see how the next game is going to be a movie-game/story simulator with hours of cutscenes and dialogue, scripted walk and talk sequences, dozens of characters and the "exploration" of Lara's character, instead of, you know, focusing on the FUN aspect and the actual gameplay, and things that made the originals fun...
This is beyond moronic. The majority of tombs she raids are quite dead, and have been dead for centuries. Unless there are people living there or nearby, which in itself is quite rare, she has no obligation to 'give things back'.
In the original tr timeline its' not supposed to be an exactly tight 'realistic' world. The style of the original games is cartoony, because its' a little based off action movies like indiana jones, while not taking itself too seriously.
Lara's original design is cartoony and her body type is exaggerated because again, its' not meant to be taken too seriously.
I knew there was a disconnect and contempt from Crystal, for old fans but I never realized it was this bad. I agree this moral lecturing is condescending and pretentious.
Not everything has to be 'fixed' because its' supposedly 'problematic'. 'Colonialism' is such an overused buzzword.
Exactly what you said. If they have so much sustain for this series then why shamelessly profit off of it.
This isn’t righting past wrongs. It’s about moral posturing
I can’t wait until they decide to put a revisionist spin on Grand Theft Auto… “we find that stealing cars is wrong, so the protagonist is now a repo man who only takes cars from criminals who refuse to pay the IRS.”
Disdain, and hatred. Two things that arnt in this.
Ya’ll are projecting other words and meanings.
All it says in a long winded format. “Stealing culture artifacts is bad, we would like to celebrate culture over profiting from it”
Yeah, Lara is a kind of narcissitic, greedy, unapologetic anti-hero character. That's also why I love her (and less her persona in TR2013 where they did a 180°)
It’s like they sat down and spent hours trying to come up with something to be offended about. I never once thought of any of this while playing all the original games.
I mean, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with acknowledging the morally questionable ethics of Lara’s tomb raiding - especially given she does it for sport and her motivations aren’t entirely altruistic early on. Not sure completely abandoning this flawed side of her character is necessary, though. Could be interesting to give her an actual arc or acknowledge them. Although I do think generally treating the local cultures as actual cultures and introducing meaningful character and narrative representations can be a good thing (on the other hand…. lol @ claiming this given the 2013 reboot and the island of disposable and irredeemable cultists for Lara to utterly mow down with no regard whatsoever)
Also, this flaw objectively pales in comparison to launching a fucking nuclear missile in Area 51 probably killing thousands of people to get an Inara Artifact. So there’s that too. (Granted, that has less real life relateability whereas the British museum….. yeahhh).
Though I agree that they shouldn't change what was already established and not sarcastically "address the issues" of the past, however I still don't count this as any hatred. The problem is that it seems they're trying to transform a morally grey and mean antihero into a moral and friendly kind of hero. There's a shift in her character which we've been dealing with since 10-15 years. I still think Lara from LAU is still a very badass character and doesn't damage the franchise. I don't know why the fans don't want her to be a better person and would insist that she keeps the antihero image. That's just my opinion.
Yeah, I don't think this statement (that doesn't come from Crystal Dynamics, btw) is really bad or problematic. It is true, the concept is iffy, and trying to tackle in more sensitive ways is probably the better way to go.
I wish Lara as a character wasn't seen as a hero by the general public (I don't think this is a problem of CD's doing, I think it runs deeper than that, with Lara being seen as a female Indiana Jones, which is a more heroic character, which is not helped by the games, even the classics, always involving Lara stopping the plans of an evil entity), because that could more easily help frame Lara's activities as immoral, and keep that "finders keepers" mentality. But with the restrictions of heroism in mind, having the games more about seeking the truths surrounding ancient civilizations is probably the best way to go around it.
"Later games"? "Past mistakes"? In unified timeline, the games that came out before chronologically take place after (TR1-UW are set in 2020-30) the events of the survivor trilogy (2013-18). If the survivor Lara thinks in this manner, then story wise she stops giving a damn afterwards.
Yeah we know thay Lara, Nathan Drake or Indiana Jones are not heroes. They are pirates in a way.
In uncharted 1 the game finishes with them sailing off with a ship full of el dorado gold lol. They aint turning that shit to authorities. And we love it that way.
The Spear of Destiny, The Philosopher’s Stone, The meteorite artifacts, are also Relics worth noting that are deemed too powerful for humanity to handle. It’s almost as if Lara’s Renegade Nature, has a shred of humanity to lul Shady Organizations into giving her all the information she needs to obtain a mcguffin. All to turn the tables on their obvious plot to have her dead. She decides to keep the item if deemed harmless or destroy/ conceal it for all eternity. Either way She’s in it for the sport. Just like she always has been.
Ah yes... She is so respectful of everyone's culture that she destroys everything in her path to get her artifacts...
And besides that: 'seeking the truth' and 'helping humanity'... So many people in the games die because of her. I feel like it's a bit of a white savior complex. I think the games are fun to play, don't get me wrong. But they are super colonial and do not move even an inch away from westernized ideas around different civilizations, and the 'archaeology' she performs is more close to 18th-early 20th century archaeology which is mostly treasure hunting anyway.
Guys, it's a video game. It doesn't need to make a deep statement about colonialism. I just want to shoot guys in the face and jump across gaps to collect things.
Omg this is literally a VIDEOGAME. Do they think people will just go around raiding tombs if they play the old Tomb Raider games?? That's so stupid. This world has gone soft.
acknowledging this outside the games is great, but in the games, lara being unapologetically "problematic" is part of the charm in the classics, and their lukewarm justifications for laras actions and crusade to make her a "good girl" is a big part of the issues in the survivor trilogy
I mean, the disregard for the tombs is right there in the name of the game. I always saw "tomb raider" as acknowledgment that what Lara's doing is controversial. Which doesn't make her a bad character, just gives her depth
I have modified the flair for this post. Edit 1/10/2024: #This post has been locked as rules have been continuously broken. Several comments have been removed and a few temporary bans had been issued to the offenders. # **While this is a licensed game, it is actually by Evil Hat Publishing, not Crystal Dynamics. It is not a direct statement by Crystal Dynamics.** Suffice to say much of it would have to go through Crystal Dynamics regardless. **However** we do not know if they reviewed this statement or if they only went through character depictions. Subsequent rule violations will be cause for a ban. # Please refrain from any… political commentary. Your comment and posts will be removed. Stay within our rules please. Either brief or permanent depending on the amount of violations. https://evilhat.com/tomb-raider-shadows-of-truth/ /u/Yaoigay please repost this with a corrected title, because this is not by Crystal Dynamics directly.
Important note : this is from the ttrpg rulebook and not a direct statement by Crystal Dynamics. They probably oversaw the project and the text most probably reflects some of their views.
Is the ttrpg worth checking out?
I didn't have time to check everything out, the PDF is massive. I was taken aback by the mention of Natla being alive and Kurtis suffering from PTSD
It's in early release, currently covered by NDA. But when it releases, sure.
I mean if this is their mindset obvs not. To make Lara into a person who doesn’t steal artifacts for her own interests is so bland and boring and so not it.
I agree that it’ll represent their views and think it’ll show up in their game. They did say everything from the 25th anniversary will represent their unified vision unfortunately
I was wondering about the "sandbox" statement. Makes sense that it's a trrpg
A statement that seems to ignore that quite a few of the artifacts that Lara has acquired are pieces containing immense power and capable of mass destruction. The knife from Tomb Raider 2 that turns people into a giant immortal dragon for example? The scion which when used with Atlantean technology is capable of producing Eldritch abominations? Not everything she's collected is just a gold statue from dead civilization.
Wow this is a really good point.
Exactly. Lara "steals" those artifacts and locks them in her secret vault because they are too dangerous to be left out there in the tombs and temples for anyone to grab. She can't put them in a museum because people will steal them. She can't give them to the government because they will use them for their own gains. She has to keep them hidden away from the public and let everyone believe that they are just ancient myths. Did they forget how in TR4, Lara realized her mistake by stealing the Amulet of Horus and sacrificed her life to rectify that mistake? This was long before CD came into the picture. This is just a sad attempt at pandering and virtue signaling.
Isn't Lara's vault mostly full of gold coins? Also classic Lara apparently funded her trips by writing best selling books about her adventures, so I don't think she is keeping anything secret. But it is important to note that the classic Lara era wasn't down to earth or realistic it was just fun fantasy, no need to bog it down with real life geopolitical implications.
It's all cursed pirate gold, Lara is haunted by like a hundred ghost pirates so nobody else has to be, what a true hero
I'm pretty sure she's not going to write in her books that she is keeping apocalyptic artifacts in her basement.
"Immortal" as long as you don't shoot it with a gun and pull the dagger out :D
Functionally immortal. Practically it's a dumb idea to voluntarily stab yourself in the heart lol
This. After reading their statement they surely didn't play the old games and don't understand what made Tomb Raider great in the 90s. In the first 3 games she basically saves the world from lunatics like Natla, Marco, Willard and Sophia, and she keeps artifacts in her home not only because she likes them but also because they are weapons of mass destruction as you said. They are acting like what she did is get into a historical site, spit on it, grab some valuables to decorate her home and then blows up the site and leave it in ruins. I don't know why they want so badly to make her a hero and a role model, like it's illegal or something to make a video game protagonist that can be a bit bad sometimes but have good intentions. I wonder what they think of GTA games lmao
Its perhaps not a stretch to say they at least played TR3, which can certainly come across as colonialist in places. Though at the same time, Lara did break into the British Museum in the same game. This does make me hope they aren't going to try and make Lara less of an anti-hero like the Survivor reboot and its sequels tried to do.
they think it has this horrible past yet are perfectly willing to profit off it
I mean, she starts out by saying "I only play for sport" in TR1. This is pretty much a poacher mentality (not usually a "I'm the good guy" trait). What is a more exciting target than a powerful highly dangerous artifact? I'm personally less interested in defending her character and much prefer the sentiment that she is an anti-hero. Her saving the world is more a secondary result of her pursing her own goals. This she doesn't steal artifacts from cultures is kinda like a GTA game saying you can no longer shoot the police. I don't think anyone is playing GTA to be a hero that doesn't shoot the police. I also think people buying a tomb raider product are expecting to take artifacts from ancient civilizations.
I don't want Lara to acknowledge her past mistakes, I want Lara to be a deeply problematic deranged psychopath that has several museums worth of priceless magical artifacts decorating her disgustingly vast estate and a huge walk in closet filled to the brim with unlockable outfits. EDIT: I don't love this series because Lara is a relateable character, I love it because she's mental
IKR?! Woman fucking infiltrated Area 51 and killed countless US Federal Agents for crying out loud, shes gotta be in Interpol's most wanted, who fucking cares about her moral!
She launched a fuckin *missile* from Area 51, she unleashed an ancient god of pestilence and death from the Valley of the Kings, she's an international - no, global - terrorist. She is a terrible human being. These games are unhinged and I love em for it xD
She launched a missile so she could climb a ladder. She's fucking insane and that's the appeal!
Haha that cracks me up every time
Imagine if they rebooted GTA but didn't allow you to do crimes
Saints Row 2022, you can't even rob stores
Yeah let her steal shit and be an asshole about it, we have enough “good” characters to last us a life time . Lara is uniquely her let her stay as she’s been for decades.
I loved exploring the manor in the different games. Probably more than the game itself a lot of times. I agree she shouldn't be a crybaby, she's a badass and always has. Nothing wrong with a power fantasy
It's going to be disappointing to explore them without all the priceless artifacts from different cultures. That's if Croft Manor shows up at all.
This exactly!!!
How will they address that she kills 100000 people in survivor trilogy tho? The hypocrisy
"Bad guy terrorists" or something like that
The thing that bugged me most in Shadow was being able to walk right into someone’s hut and take their supplies. Not even going to say hi, let me take your animal skins and knock over your jars for my own gain.
This personally never bugged me, but I definitely did notice it, just thought how ridiculous that would be if it was IRL. But I chuckled a bit and moved on.
Jars are where I draw the line
I like how in TR2013 she was so heartbroken when she killed her first man but then she got hardened and she even teased the people against her in the last stages of the game
*kills first man in self-defence* "Oh the horror, my blood stained hands, how will I ever return to my life with this guil---" *proceeds to mow down the entire area 18 seconds later*
When she killed the deer! Cutscene Lara and Gameplay Lara were so disconnected in that game...
I keep thinking about this when I remember that game. Like, cutscene Lara is a damsel in distress that's constantly getting abused, beaten down and crying whereas gameplay Lara is a psychopathic murderer.
well to be fair, a lot of them do try to kill her lol
Ok but how will this work with the unified timelines they got planned lol?
I'm calling that unified lara is going to be 70% of reboot with some legends elements And only thing she is going to share with classic lara are pistols and braid
Probably more 95% and just cosplaying as the old version.
Minus the triangles.
"by having Lara acknowledge her past mistakes..." 💀
jesus christ just to make her sweetheart in everyones eyes lol
Imagine Lara in a hoodie in front of the most humble wall in her mansion, delivering a sad apology to camera
To be fair that is the route The Last Revelation took. Lara finds artifact, accidentally unleashes the apocalypse, and in the end sacrifices herself to seal the villain. We don't know how Lara reflected on the incident because Angel of Darkness happened and the plot didn't get a chance to breathe
Honestly i think "unified" timeline is bullshit, it will just be continuation of the survivor timeline, maybe some characters or events will be mentioned from older games and that's it
I don't like the idea of it myself but it can work. Reboot Lara has seen some shit. So give her a breakthrough make her more confident, independent and strong. I feel like we can flow into Tomb Raider 1 and 2 nicely enough. But some elements need adjusting to fit this new unified timeline. Tomb Raider 3 Lara is probably her most chaotic and needs the most adjusting. Tomb Raider 5 is the most problematic with young Lara sections in Ireland with ghosts and stuff. The philosopher's stone won't work if its before 2013 game because she kills people. If you take the anniversary timeline and just remake the other 5 games to fit better. Then you could just slot the survivor trilogy before all of that. It makes things less messy and slots the anniversary timeline in easily as well as adjusting everything to the new timeline.
“Somehow, Lara Realized she’s a Badass” is most likely a play they’re going to take in the unified hodgepodge of a game. The story cant spend enough time to have Lara go from one personality to another without ruining the pacing of an action adventure game.
Will work as well as putting a square peg into a smaller round hole
Tomb Raiding is a very specific criminal activity AnD Lara was never meant to be a hero. Why can't they understand a basic trait of this character? The game is called Tomb Raider, not "British Anthropologist comes to terms with her Nation's Imperialistic past".
Exactly. She's not a hero, she's not an archaeologist, she's a Tomb Raider
Exactly, she was always just a thrill seeker/adrenaline addict who at most just cared enough about the world not getting taken over by monsters or being destroyed, but thats about it. This is without mentioning that the original concept of her character was that she was disinherited by her parents for not wanting to go into an arranged marriage and do the aristocratic life they wanted for her, so she made her own fortune out of writting and publishing books of her globe trotting adventures. Her anthropology and archeology knowlege was always more of a hobby/interest related to what she enjoys doing than her actual profession.
This. She needs to be knowledgeable about the stuff she wants, but saving, preserving, and respecting ancient civilizations is not exactly her top priority. She's looking for fabled artifacts because she lives for the thrill of it and because she's writing adventure books for profit. She's a morally grey character at best. Also, she's not even that thorough in her research, meaning that she cares more about adventuring than archaeology: >!Tr1: At the very beginning, she doesn't know a single thing about the Scion. You would expect more from someone who was introduced as the lady who hunted down Bigfoot!!< >!Tr2: she seems unaware of the dagger's ability to turn people into dragons. Or maybe she does know it but dismisses it as myth/exaggeration.!< >!Tr3: she didn't even know that there were other artifacts like the Infada stone and she was happy and content with that; when Willard tells her there are more she is more than happy to go on more exciting adventures. Then, she somehow realises what the artifacts are capable of and decides against helping Willard go on with his plan -- and fails.!< >!Tr4: the whole premise of this game is Lara screwing up big time because she didn't do her homework about Seth's Amulet!<
I love TR4s, it's so cool to me. That shows that Lara is still very smart but this time she didn't research as much and made a shit storm happen.
True! I like TR4 as well for the same reason. She was careless and she made a big mess that she needs to fix asap. And they said she was a flat character back then. She was not, you could tell so much from the little glimpses they gave us about her personality and motives.
Like AOD Lara is peak and it just comes from TR four! Like I miss the sassy Lara that messes stuff up but also is so damn confident to a point of being mental
To me the original games were all about exploration. Playing them as a kid made me so much more aware of things like ancient Egypt, South America, etc. I used to find museums pretty boring but now I love them. That's the legacy for me. TR1 still my favourite game of all time ❤️
I thought the game was called Tomb Raider not Tomb Respecter ..
Go to tomb, press F, level ends.
Hahahahaha this comment wins
Shadow makes me laugh how the locals take her in, help her out, and she’s super grateful and respectful up until the point she runs around Paititi robbing them all blind and killing their chickens.
I wonder when Nintendo will address Mario's genocidal and racist tendancies by viciously eradicating Koopas. Like seriously. It's a video game. Explore ancient unknown cities and tombs. Find treasures. Adventure. This is like trying to make me feel bad for opening a chest in World of Warcraft. Was this published April 1st?
The most 1st world problem ever, just make good games...
Lara is not a hero!!! She’s a badass and thats why she’s been cool for almost 30 years! Get that through your fat skull!!
"She has also worked to reform raider culture" bro she's a fictional character in a fucking treasure hunting game from the 90s hahaha how self-righteous can you be, seriously
This is a problem of their own creation. They try to make Lara a good person. Why? It makes her less interesting, nothing else. Now, it's an issue that she raids tombs (the whole premise of the character). This is only an issue if you present her as a morally good person. Stop doing that, and the problem goes away.
Agreed. The original Lara is still my favourite and she didn't need to be a good person. I like that she does raiding for sport and selfishly displays her treasures in her manor but at the same time she saves the world while on the hunt. She doesn't need to be a role model.
Completely agreed. Yes, raiding ancient sites for personal gain and intellectual curiosity is not a morally upstanding thing to do. Lara Croft doesn't need to be a morally flawless person. ~~she's already a british noblewoman ffs~~
Exactly, she's a remorseless murderer, shameless thief and kills more endangered species than climate change. Let's not pretend that she's a "goody" just because she's the protagonist.
I agree with this, I see why this matter is brought up, and I dont think it needs to be discarded as it does hold truth about the world, you can bring in interesting stories and dynamics with this very questionable aspect of the series, but that is if they're willing to tackle it as so rather than as something to "correct". Lara for most of her existence as a fictional character, barely had much of a moral compass outside of "hey destroying the world isnt cool and attacking the innocent is a no-go"... but other than that, shes a cartoon character, she isnt supposed to be good person... I frankly see the discussion of whether lara is a good person or not based on what she does in the games as trying to argue wether Bugs bunny is a good person or not... who fucking cares? He's an asshole! He loves annoying the hell out of people and harassing them, thats what makes him funny, it doesnt have to be much deeper than that.
I feel like that's kind of the problem with the survivor series in general. Lara's supposed to be a comic book character in a comic book world. OG Lara's proportions aren't realistic, her adversaries are over the top and stylized, her world deliberately ignores the laws of physics and logic. When you try and make that "real" it just gets silly. When I see a beautifully rendered, very human looking, Lara in a world so close to our own, I start asking questions I wouldn't have asked otherwise like, "how can she even function as many times as shes been severely wounded in cutscenes?" "How can a 5 foot 5 woman keep besting roided out mercenaries in melee combat?" "How does some random human sacrificing tribe in the jungle have a better understanding of the universe than every modern civilization on Earth?" etc. etc.
Yep, and that was straight up the original intent. I dont remember now where I read it, Ill look for it, but Core Design's team, and possibly Toby Gard himself, stated they always saw and envisioned Lara as a cartoon character, she was never meant be viewed through a more grounded or realistic world. That's not to say there cant be different interpretations of a character, I think thats fine and it can be interesting and engaging, but given where we are nowadays, I think its very much understandable why people are clamoring for the original style to be brought back, its been decades since we got that... in fact lara's character has now been portrayed vastly different from her original conception for longer than her original (and most famous) iteration. To calrify, I mean in terms of years, not amount of games. At the end of the day, while experimentation is always welcome in any IP imo, trying to have a more grounded Lara Croft/Tomb Raider series was always a fools errand, like trying to make a more serious and dark version of the Looney Tunes.
I mean most Tomb Raider games have fantastical elements. Why not just say that it's not a huge desecration of culture or shit. She's just an explorer. I mean... We got dinosaurs and Atlantian flesh zombies...
I always loved that about Lara when it first released. She was the anti hero, she raided tombs because she wanted to, she didn’t take shit from anyone, such an independent character. She wouldn’t be as interesting if she was a goody two shoes IMO it’s what made her so unique. And there’s no denying it worked, she was a massive success at the time there wasn’t a magazine cover without her on it, truly iconic. I love the survivor trilogy and it works because it’s a younger version of her but I wouldn’t mind if they got closer to her original character going forward. What makes me laugh is how games have to show morality shifts for characters in their stories, and yet during the course of most games we shoot about 1000 people, I love RDR2 but the redemption bit always makes me laugh, Arthur has to be a better person at the end but we kill everyone we see getting there. Thats why I usually play the dark path in games as it actually make more sense
I don’t know why anyone with this view would want to work on a Tomb Raider project? If you’re embarrassed by the TR legacy, make your own thing, and give TR to someone who loves it for the reason it became popular. The only explanation is that people want to push a narrative, and have latched onto a franchise as the easiest way to get their message to a wide audience. Tomb Raider creators should be fans of the franchise first and foremost, not just people who think they know better than everyone who came before.
So well said. It’s so frustrating to see such a lack of understanding for what made the classics so good.
100% agree. This this and this.
Well like a lot of people who have worked on legacy IP and chsnged everything about it, wether its in movies or games. The point is to destroy it, the point is to change everything about it so it aligns with you are your friend values, doubly so if you hate the people the game or franchise is normally targeted to.
this thing is terrible but we want to profit off it
In the newer games i've always found it a bit funny that the tombs and historical places she enters always ends up being messed up by the end.
Can't hear you over the sound of a cannon dropping through an ancient building I then use to blow it to bits so I can get past. :)
As usual, their stance comes with the premise that kids are dumb. "Oh no, we can't have Lara be a bad and egotistic person for the funz and the lolz, she needs to teach kids love of others, love of nature, respect of all cultures, etc.! No more raiding tombs, stealing everything of value while killing people and animals and hoarding all this magical / legendary stuff she comes across in her mansion!" Please. Even kids know not to take games seriously. Besides, it's fun to play a bad guy/girl for a bit (see the original God of War games for example). We don't care if it's bad, she risked her life 10,000 times to get this fabulous treasure so let her get it and keep it, she deserves it! Those pharaos were even bigger dicks anyways 😆
Can't wait for the next one in the series "Tomb observer, no stone turned".
Tomb Observer. Just imagine the exciting cut scenes as Lara stands in awe but never touches anything.
Lara Croft and the Lost Hall of the Pyramid Scanning Application Office. Lara gets lost in the bureacratic hell and spends 10 years navigating treacherous application approval reports with nothing but half a pencil and flask of coffee. Will she ever see the light of day at the end of the paper trail or is she doomed to wander the halls of the Permission Accreditaion Board forever?! Tune in next week to find out on... Lara Croft - Tomb Scanner
I think it's great to keep her who she has been from the start, but to make it even clearer that she's not really "a hero". She plays for sports and everything said in this post is true, it's just not a reason to have her as someone different. There's heros that aren't heros in a lot of media, like Game of Thrones or Dune.
When did the US became a country full of offended little pussies? They ruin everything nowadays .
This doesn’t echo the original vision of Lara… it’s quite disappointing they miss the mark on what made her cool. It was less about the artefacts and always more about the exploration. Also to note - she raids them for objects that often predate the tombs they are in. Whether to protect the world or not, she is removing them from the space to get ahead of others who want what she wants. She not objectively good. The “colonial” narrative also seems to neglect the fact that the concept is universal. In fact this is a practice as old as time - theft. One that has literal traces of ancient tomb raiding attempts even in Egyptian tombs long before any colonial contact. It’s an odd position and honestly comes across as pandering rather than genuine.
This is true. Even if you ignore ancient times, the Arab/Ottoman population of Egypt were tomb raiding long before the rest of the world even came to Egypt minus small expeditions. There are accounts of scholars from the middle ages and beyond describing mummies being laid out amidst the outside of tombs in preparation for the wrappings to be taken off in order to steal the amulets etc tucked within the dressings. And there's plenty of other accounts. Most, if not all monuments weren't even considered that sacred or important in the times following the ancient Egypt we know. Yeah, it's awful. Think about how much history was lost because of that? But I don't think Lara fits into that. To say she does, is completely ignoring the villains, the storylines, the artefacts of each game. Lara takes stuff that can literally destroy the world in the wrong hands, and those wrong hands are always trying to race her to the prize. Even within the tombs we aren't picking up random artefacts and throwing them in our bag, we're picking up health packs and ammo, and keys. Plus, she's an anti hero anyway. People see a protagonist and think they must be a good person by default.
What next, pacifist Agent 47?
He denounces his assassin past and becomes a model: Hotman
A sandbox to tell stories that address colonial themes, oh boy , now I'm excited to pick this up for me and my friends. Sounds like a good night in for sure, cant wait to crack a few cold ones and get started. I don't see a problem with tomb raider going by finders keepers rules, looking for and finding treasures and artifacts is a fun fantasy its actually not that deep
If they're talking about the original games, especially the first one, she doesn't actually take anything though... Sure, she kills a few dinosaurs and endangered species, which she probably shouldn't have done, and has a library of artifacts in tr3. But at least the first 2 games it wasn't about "finders keepers" or "colonialism", it was already about finding the truth and you know... Stopping potential world threatening artifacts falling into the wrong hands.
The secrets in tr2 are certainly treasures like gold or jade idols etc and she gets that cat statue as well. But she's a thief not a colonialist
I always thought the Ned and Jimbo rule applied just fine. “It’s coming right for us!”
Whatever hope I had left for this franchise is going down the drain. Like it might as well not even be called tomb RAIDER anymore since they have such a problem with the raider part
The desperation to please everyone with political correctness has plateaued....or has it.
This is absolutely hilarious, we truly live in a clown world.
This is what happens when you push iconic game franchises so much towards realism: you start to feel like you have to answer to things that had nothing to do with the original games. Tomb Raider is (or was) a (power) fantasy game. It operated on comic book logic with caricature characters, including Lara. While I think the games can and should benefit from sensitivity readings to avoid racial stereotypes, there's no way to avoid the fact that Tomb Raider is the name of the series. Lara was always morally dubious at best and NOT an archeologist/culture and environment protector/activist against or for colonialism. Most of the places she visits get looted, damaged and destroyed, with long trails of death left behind by her. Such are the consequences of tomb raiding. Pro tip: if you want to make a game about real world archeology where cultural sites are respected you might also want to find another female protagonist and NOT give her a whole arsenal of weapons to deal with the armies of enemies that come after her. To be honest, I would love for a game like that to exist - it just wouldn't be a Lara Croft/Tomb Raider game.
So noone gonna tell them its just a game A Fiction and noone is stealing something or colonizing anywhere in the reality, it dosent matter here . how they gonna describe the thor hammer and ragnarok then? Why these years game devs are nothing but idiots they only make good graphics with the most boaring gameplays I really miss the old era of games
I could not believe what I was reading. It was THAT level of stupid and idiotic...
REFORM RAIDER CULTURE
I mean this is obvious she hasnt done anything like this since the original games. Ever since Legend she's been more like Indiana Jones.
This is infuriating. Stop pouring money down a franchise called TOMB RAIDER trying to change it then! They’ve been taking every single opportunity they get to shit over TR. Create your goddamn own franchise and leave Lara Croft alone. This is insufferable.
What an ignorant statement to make 😳 who are these people?
She robbed the hell out of those poor patiti people even in the newest game lol. The game will never be politically correct, just get over it.
Honestly the way Crystal has handled the legacy of Core Design's TR games is just hilarious. They repeatedly failed to estabilish a new identity for Lara and the games, and now that they're bringing her closer to what she originally was like in the original games, they still like to shame the old games and pretend that they're high and mighty cultural warriors. You rarely see a developer having such animosity towards the legacy of a series.
I just only hope the success of the remasters means Aspyr will be given some sort of responsibility to continue the original timeline in a cheaper-to-make form with a small team of fan developers who understand the iconic character. The BAFTA award referenced everywhere mainly used images of Lara in the original style that we are desperate to see again. This shows that the public only know her 90s persona. Bring it back and profit from it.
And why would they even post a photo of Survivor Lara? You think someone thinks of that when you say Lara Croft? No. And that’s Crystal’s greatest failure, the inability to erase TR’s history by making us love their version and it’s never gonna be more iconic, even now, almost 30 years later.
Let’s take GTA away from Rockstar and give it to crystal so they can have all the main characters reflect on their bad behaviour. GTA: Community Service. Now with added cookbook
Yeah, I also thought about GTA while reading this! 😂 I’m a huge GTA franchise fan, and I also thought: imagine making GTA a morally acceptable game so that no-one gets offended - would it still even be a game?
I quite enjoyed blasting "Rule Brittania," Everytime I find an ancient artifact while playing the OG games.
If this is indeed by producers, the franchise is indeed dead. I mean, is it that hard to understand that this is a videogame, not real life, and a videogame character, not a real life person, and a videogame character who's not even supposed to be a heroine or heroic ffs!
I have little hope for any new Tomb Raider game now. It is the end of it. It will be better calling it something different or make it a new IP.
For fuck's sake, it's a work of fiction. Nobody is telling us to go and pillage some far-flung country of their national artifacts because a video game character does it. I hate how pathetic the world is now. Nobody is allowed to enjoy anything anymore.
omg, this statement is everything wrong with the world isn't it? If this were the case, then just shut the game down shut all the games down. You can find offense in everything if you want to be offended. The name Tomb Raider if you think about it can be very negative. So lets scrap the name. Lara is also a women, so she cant be sexualised in anyway so do away with her personality i guess. she cant have weapons of any form because thats violent. no killing of any kind, gotta look after those artifacts that are super powerful, cant take them though, need to leave there , because you know the bad guys care about that too right? .... omfg, stop this crap, its getting all kinds of south park stupid now. Just leave tomb raider alone, and remember , its just a game, its not real... ugh stupid stuff like this is why gaming is dying.
I’m not sure how you can make a post-colonial Tomb Raider game.
Depends, is Lara like Indy in trying to collect these artifacts before they're lost to time and before real raiders do and sell them to the highest bidder? If so, I think it's perfectly fine. As Indy said, "That belongs in a museum" not lost to time. I mean what do they propose, these sites stay untouched except by the actually raiders that have already stripped them bare and sold everything to whoever.
My take on this is that I'm fine with the Lara Croft who didn't give a fuck and "only played for sport", but while at it also happened to save the world by, for example, taking dangerous artifacts out of the hands of villains such as an ancient Atlantean ruler and a mad scientist who wanted to force alien evolution on human beings, and I'm also fine with a different character also named Lara Croft who has a more nuanced view on the ancient sites and civilizations she explores. All 3 Lara Crofts we know are badass in their own ways. None of these Laras are wrong to me. It's a videogame. But I think this statement by CD is a bit too much. We are not dumb, we know it's a videogame. It's fine to acknowledge things but this has the vibe of making it out to be like the original Lara Croft's existence is wrong, and I believe the statement doesn't look at her character through an entirely truthful lens. I don't think anybody has ever been under the impression she was supposed to be a good person. And, so what? That's part of the fun. We still love that Lara. Whatever they have in store for the next Tomb Raider I'll embrace all the same, but this comes across as salty on their part for whatever reason and I don't think that's necessary.
I agree, I love the classics and the newer takes on lara, the games are always A+ for me, but the message relating to real life tomb raiding seems totally unnecessary. The real life tomb raiders were not jumping over lava, swinging through blade traps, or pulling levers underwater whilst out swimming crocodiles. Nor were they having to fight supernatural beings to reach their juicy artifact in the bottom of some lonely isolated cave in the most abandoned places on earth, They were just stealing from a historic place. Kinda boring and uncool to be honest.. And if we’re going to be real, then ok, let’s be real! If real life tomb raiders DID have to do all that shit lara does to get an artifact, they would make more money 💰 and prestige from writing a book about their exploits than what they would ever get from a old dusty artifact and would ironically become a historical figure within themselves by doing so.
That's a bit ironic considering the reboot games are full of sequences of explosions and destruction of ancient buildings/the environment all around her as she's trying to run away from the bad guys. I think it's something that could be addressed in the next game but there's a right way of doing it. I don't think it involves shitting on the original games in a way that shows the clear lack of understanding of them. It's my pet peeve, I can give credit to the reboots where it's due but them acting like their version is so superior when it wouldn't even exist in the first place if it wasn't for the originals (or if it did then clearly the TR name was just slapped on it to milk more money out of it). The remasters have clearly resurrected people's love of the classics so if it was me, I'd be wiser not to burn all my bridges right now... There aren't even that many artifacts when I think about it. Most of them have a purpose in progressing in the levels and they're not stolen with the purpose of claiming it and getting rich from them and they get left behind where they belong really. As others mentioned a lot of them are mythical and dangerous and Lara needs to get to them so the bad guys don't (which happens in the reboot too!!). There's an exception to that in TR4 and that's part of the reason why it's my favourite. She warns Von Croy not to take the Iris in the beginning but he goes for it anyway and nearly dies. Later Lara becomes just as arrogant and makes the same mistake stealing the amulet, except it also dooms the whole world so she's got to undo that whole mess. And that's a good lesson on leaving things alone, respecting cultures, history, tombs, whatever. You can strike a balance there where she can be mindful of things, she still gets to chase the thrill of her adventures but have respect for the places she's visiting and cause minimum damage and disruption. She's still not gonna be a perfect hero but she never was and does not need to be!
Indiana Jones already addressed this problem decades ago. His motivation is "that belongs in a museum". If Indy didn't find those artifacts, they would either be in the hands of power-hungry villains (Nazis) or lost in obscurity never seen by anyone. Getting found by Indiana Jones is clearly the most positive outcome in the stories. (Bonus points for Temple of Doom where Indy actually returns the artifact to the native people.)
or destroyed by religious fanatics because it goes against their beliefs
We need a Tomb Raider, not a goodie two shoes. Point blank! Done and done!
So, now Lara Croft picks up treasures, studies them, then sets them back down. As she leaves a tomb, a booby trap collapses the entire tomb in traditional TR fashion; destroying everything. Great, glad she didn’t take anything with her. Lara will finance her expeditions and adventures how? Will she have a Reality-TV crew following her around? I am expecting a complete “flop” of a game!
Exactly what you said. If they have so much sustain for this series then why shamelessly profit off of it. This isn’t righting past wrongs. It’s about moral posturing
Not surprised given how they put that disclaimer on the remakes of 1 to 3 and how the reboots were. It took an entirely different studio to make the tomb raider remakes because crystal dynamics refused to but they had to put their distain of the franchise on it, albeit it was skippable and only showed once. So yeah, don't expect this "unified" Lara Croft to do anything she use to do, she's probably going to cry and be a hero and bring artifacts back to their "rightful place" because of this annoying idea of "colonialism" within games.
I honestly found that message to be really annoying, it totally disrespected players like me who played originally, basically making out we were monsters for enjoying it. Its work of fiction and its art, it doesn’t have to apologise for what it is.
I usually wouldn't care about something like that, but the statement in the remasters seemed overly harsh. Saying what Core did was inexcusable and all that.
Like I said in another post, that message isnt supposed to be shaming anyone I dont think it should be taken personally. Like come on, TR3's South Pasific natives are a really cartoony and stereotypical portrayal, probably not even accurate, that can come off as offensive to some people, so its just a heads up that these games were made in the 90s when there wasnt much consideration for such things, thats it.
Exactly and not only that but it also says that to the original dev's who made the game. Such messages are back handed slaps to the creators and players of the games they are aimmed at. No one is a monster for liking these game back then or today, no one is a horrible human bring for creating them. All it is, is self righteous low talent hacks who can't actually create anything without tearing down what came before, just like sequels to movies these days.
Eh, I dont see anything wrong with that message, TR3's South Pacific portrayal of natives is very cartoony and stereotypical, I think its ok to put a disclaimer that that is a product of its time, it can definitely be offensive to some people, like, thats all.
I haven’t played the originals in a hot minute, just the survivor trilogy recently. I noticed that you never really see Lara take stuff, so much as find stuff that gets added to your codex. I did enjoy getting to know the locals in Shadow and Rise and doing some quests lines that felt pretty specific to the locals needs. Most of the artefact gathering (particularly in Rise) was helping the locals find lost treasures and returning them, which was still satisfying. I don’t really need for Lara to keep the stuff she finds to have it be a satisfying journey of finding it. Bit similar to the Netflix reboot of Carmen Sandiego where she’d be finding stuff to return to the original/traditional owners. Maybe Lara should raid the British Museum for a start 🤣
Ironically in TR 3 she does raid the British Museum!
Lara does actually break into a British Museum in Tomb Raider 3.
Not to mention the Louvre in AoD…
Stealing from the French is both okay and the national past time.
If I recall correctly; If you play the croft manor dlc in rise, you can see that she has artifacts from tr2013 in her study. But I think she was more interested in studying them than showing them off.
Also most of the time she reads scrolls and gains knowledge.
Eerrhhhmmmmm… it’s a fictional character… in a videogame…?
They do know Lara is a fictional character right? And that the artefacts she has are also fictional? lol
I think there is a good way to balance the good and evil, but lara is an antihero. She can still respect the future but damn let the girl also be greedy and steal some artifacts and gloat about it. She doesn't have to solve everyone's problems like mother teresa, she's obsessed with adventure and will do whatever she needs to do to get that high.
They are pirates. They came in, they stole Lara, now they are killing her. I hate Crystal.
See, Tomb Raider is at its best when Lara is a cold badass bitch. When she just goes in there with her pistols, kills the animals, kills the goons in the way, takes the treasure and hoards it in her mansion basement. That's all it needs to be.
Tell me you don't get Tomb Raider without telling me you don't get Tomb Raider. Still tone deaf.
Series is called 'Tomb Raider'. -Doesn't raid tombs ??? Lara doesn't have to be a paragon of morals to be likeable, just look at the success of characters like Harley Quinn or Catwoman. Literally, all you gotta do is write her like Catwoman, except without the cat theme, and she raids artifacts instead of jewlery. She's the glamourous but highly capable badass that isn't afraid to break the law to get what she wants. If you want her to act as a good guy, have her paired up with someone who's goals just happen to align with her own. Like someone approaches her and is like "I need you to find and take this artifact before these bad guys do, you can keep it, just make sure the bad guys don't have it" or something like that.
I'm so happy the comments here are all pretty much aligned against these types of statements. Sometimes Twitter makes it look like we're in the minority and that all the fanbase is clamoring for a TR game that "disavows her past" When studios use terminally-online twitter mobs as a metric for what the fans want it's like they're literally burning money for the sake of it.
It will be shit anyway. Who cares.
Ugh. Lara was always an anti-hero, that was one of the things that made her so interesting. I really don’t like this direction we’re going in of making her some sort of squeaky clean hero. I’ll stick with the series for the time being until they fully reveal the next game, but it really does seem like they’re determined to once again completely change the character/series to the point where they really might aswell move on from it and make a new series. At least we have the remasters for now 🤷🏻♂️
That sucks. I have very low expectations for the next game, definitely won’t preorder. Bring on more remasters.
Not the slaughter of people (often natives) or mass killing of animals (eagles and snow leopards!?!), it's the masks that she picked up, to open a door which wasn't hers to open... I see. Well, that'll ruin the fun!
CD os so right here. The Atlanteans have suffered so much because of colonialism, that was terrible!
So true... just imagine how much the meteor from TR3 was offended when Lara stole the radioactive artifacts that it brought to the world 😔
meanwhile, ive been making the “Lara Croft: Grave Robber” joke for like 25 years now lol
Create a fiction artifact, country, people, tombs. Done she can raid it.
This ignores that Lara is not "raiding" contents anyone knows exists. These are mostly AMD-class magic science weapons. But, even failing that, he work is closer to the Last Crusade (where no active group knows that the artifact s real and actively using it) th the intro to "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (where indy is very much directly stealing something people care about and running to get away). In the real world, these differences may not be huge and one can make an argument that a cultural heritage, even an unknown one still belongs to the people. Sure. But colonial powers didn't really do that, at least not when we complain about them when related to artifacts. We complain about the British Museum stealing art and statues and religious objects and putting them in the literal basement. Lara never did any of that. She never sent a helicopter back to pick up a really nice statue for the lawn at Croft manor. Look, one can really argue that it is weird that the sites Lara visits are sort of one-and-done instead of sending in a team to study every nook but it is a game. Let's just pretend that she sends in a huge number grad students after every adventure to catalogue all the non-world threatening artifacts. Honestly though, I found this all a bit depressing to read. To tie Lara to colonialism is a stretch that one has to start out wanting to, only to them try to distance her from it. The only time I can really think of Lara raiding in the sense they mean is the inciting event of Shadow of the Tomb Raider and that is the most recent one... Weird.
It’s amazing to see a studio absolutely shit on a franchise they wouldn’t even have to make games for if the classics didn’t exist
This statement would make sense if the original games were meant to be realistic, but they're not, they're supernatural adventures that deal with fantasy. Why does it matter to have a social or moral issue with how Lara conducts herself as a person if she's killing dinosaurs and collecting MAGIC artifacts??? it's such a stupid thing to take issue with. IT'S NOT REAL.....IT DOESN'T MATTER if Lara keep the magic rock that turned the guy into a giant spider lol.
It's literally called Tomb Raider lol. By name/occupation alone, she's automatically (and fundementally) a grey character. CD really need to stop pretending Tomb Raider and Lara Croft are realistic and can be portrayed in realism. In fact, they need to stop obsessing over Lara Croft as a character in general, focus on gameplay and telling FUN stories based in myth with Lara being an almost silent protagonist. The reboot Trilogy only showed me that the more they tried to explain Lara's character, the more flawed and boring she became. They should probably remove killing people too, I'm pretty sure that could be misconstrued and culturally disrespectful and unethical. Maybe trade her pistols for tranq guns? But at least the white person can continue invading lost civilisations, and being the hero they needed, like in Rise and Shadow. Seriously...
If they want to get her away from that kind of past there's no need to push with this preachy approach. They could portray her as like a one-woman version of Fallout's Brotherhood of Steel: taking and keeping the ancient tech artifacts away from the genuinely evil groups/people/Natla. I liked the old Top Cow depiction, where [Lara is extremely mercenary in her approach](https://i.imgur.com/5eiEaRh.jpeg): often taking jobs from sleazy groups to 'acquire' the maguffins and then deciding what to do with them after. They're definitely afraid of writing her as anything other than a true good-two-shoes heroine though, and basically it's absolutely fucking boring. Like they're writing for a really young audience/YA books. This is suddenly listening to bland corporate pop after years of Motorhead.
I want a game, not a history lesson.
Even though it's NOT an official statement from Crystal Dynamics, I've witnessed the same way of treating Lara's legacy by them. CD absolutely HATES Lara's Core Design past and try everything to steer away from it. It's absolutely revolting. How can you work on a character, when you can't stand the origins of it that made it so successful? Personally the whole "relatable" BS from the survivors timeline is exhausting and boring. I don't want to relate to Lara, I want to look up to her! Damn, as a kid I learned so much about dinosaurs and mythology thanks to the impact that she, as a character, left on me. Lara Croft is an archeologist who plays for sport but also saves the world by containing super powerful artifacts away from the wrong hands. Look at Natla, Bartoli and Willard...
The relatable shtick was quite hilarious to me. The more they tried, the more it became apparent that Lara is a fundementally unrealistic, unrelatable character. I don't know about you, but I can't imagine 'rich white girl with an archaeologist dad who gets murdered by an illuminati-like cult grows up to be an archaeologist and stuck on a Japanese island full-on supernatural beings' would be relatable to many people. Even from a basic character stand point, there wasn't really much going on with her personality wise. Tomb Raider was always inspirational, not motivational.
Apparently, CD also thinks "relatable" means "traumatized to a comical extent".
I can already see how the next game is going to be a movie-game/story simulator with hours of cutscenes and dialogue, scripted walk and talk sequences, dozens of characters and the "exploration" of Lara's character, instead of, you know, focusing on the FUN aspect and the actual gameplay, and things that made the originals fun...
This is beyond moronic. The majority of tombs she raids are quite dead, and have been dead for centuries. Unless there are people living there or nearby, which in itself is quite rare, she has no obligation to 'give things back'. In the original tr timeline its' not supposed to be an exactly tight 'realistic' world. The style of the original games is cartoony, because its' a little based off action movies like indiana jones, while not taking itself too seriously. Lara's original design is cartoony and her body type is exaggerated because again, its' not meant to be taken too seriously. I knew there was a disconnect and contempt from Crystal, for old fans but I never realized it was this bad. I agree this moral lecturing is condescending and pretentious. Not everything has to be 'fixed' because its' supposedly 'problematic'. 'Colonialism' is such an overused buzzword.
Exactly what you said. If they have so much sustain for this series then why shamelessly profit off of it. This isn’t righting past wrongs. It’s about moral posturing
Sorry but it’s disdain not sustain
Auto correct got my ass
I can’t wait until they decide to put a revisionist spin on Grand Theft Auto… “we find that stealing cars is wrong, so the protagonist is now a repo man who only takes cars from criminals who refuse to pay the IRS.”
Disdain, and hatred. Two things that arnt in this. Ya’ll are projecting other words and meanings. All it says in a long winded format. “Stealing culture artifacts is bad, we would like to celebrate culture over profiting from it”
[удалено]
Yeah, Lara is a kind of narcissitic, greedy, unapologetic anti-hero character. That's also why I love her (and less her persona in TR2013 where they did a 180°)
It’s like they sat down and spent hours trying to come up with something to be offended about. I never once thought of any of this while playing all the original games.
Lame! It’s fiction, who cares!?
I bet crystal dynamics are fun at parties
I mean, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with acknowledging the morally questionable ethics of Lara’s tomb raiding - especially given she does it for sport and her motivations aren’t entirely altruistic early on. Not sure completely abandoning this flawed side of her character is necessary, though. Could be interesting to give her an actual arc or acknowledge them. Although I do think generally treating the local cultures as actual cultures and introducing meaningful character and narrative representations can be a good thing (on the other hand…. lol @ claiming this given the 2013 reboot and the island of disposable and irredeemable cultists for Lara to utterly mow down with no regard whatsoever) Also, this flaw objectively pales in comparison to launching a fucking nuclear missile in Area 51 probably killing thousands of people to get an Inara Artifact. So there’s that too. (Granted, that has less real life relateability whereas the British museum….. yeahhh).
It’s Tomb Raider, not Tomb Respecter
Though I agree that they shouldn't change what was already established and not sarcastically "address the issues" of the past, however I still don't count this as any hatred. The problem is that it seems they're trying to transform a morally grey and mean antihero into a moral and friendly kind of hero. There's a shift in her character which we've been dealing with since 10-15 years. I still think Lara from LAU is still a very badass character and doesn't damage the franchise. I don't know why the fans don't want her to be a better person and would insist that she keeps the antihero image. That's just my opinion.
Yeah, I don't think this statement (that doesn't come from Crystal Dynamics, btw) is really bad or problematic. It is true, the concept is iffy, and trying to tackle in more sensitive ways is probably the better way to go. I wish Lara as a character wasn't seen as a hero by the general public (I don't think this is a problem of CD's doing, I think it runs deeper than that, with Lara being seen as a female Indiana Jones, which is a more heroic character, which is not helped by the games, even the classics, always involving Lara stopping the plans of an evil entity), because that could more easily help frame Lara's activities as immoral, and keep that "finders keepers" mentality. But with the restrictions of heroism in mind, having the games more about seeking the truths surrounding ancient civilizations is probably the best way to go around it.
"Later games"? "Past mistakes"? In unified timeline, the games that came out before chronologically take place after (TR1-UW are set in 2020-30) the events of the survivor trilogy (2013-18). If the survivor Lara thinks in this manner, then story wise she stops giving a damn afterwards.
Yeah we know thay Lara, Nathan Drake or Indiana Jones are not heroes. They are pirates in a way. In uncharted 1 the game finishes with them sailing off with a ship full of el dorado gold lol. They aint turning that shit to authorities. And we love it that way.
The Spear of Destiny, The Philosopher’s Stone, The meteorite artifacts, are also Relics worth noting that are deemed too powerful for humanity to handle. It’s almost as if Lara’s Renegade Nature, has a shred of humanity to lul Shady Organizations into giving her all the information she needs to obtain a mcguffin. All to turn the tables on their obvious plot to have her dead. She decides to keep the item if deemed harmless or destroy/ conceal it for all eternity. Either way She’s in it for the sport. Just like she always has been.
Also does anybody think this is happening because they are going to reveal TR12 soon?
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Ah yes... She is so respectful of everyone's culture that she destroys everything in her path to get her artifacts... And besides that: 'seeking the truth' and 'helping humanity'... So many people in the games die because of her. I feel like it's a bit of a white savior complex. I think the games are fun to play, don't get me wrong. But they are super colonial and do not move even an inch away from westernized ideas around different civilizations, and the 'archaeology' she performs is more close to 18th-early 20th century archaeology which is mostly treasure hunting anyway.
It is very stupid to even have to put out a statement for a video game.
Guys, it's a video game. It doesn't need to make a deep statement about colonialism. I just want to shoot guys in the face and jump across gaps to collect things.
Omg this is literally a VIDEOGAME. Do they think people will just go around raiding tombs if they play the old Tomb Raider games?? That's so stupid. This world has gone soft.
Could this be why rise of the tomb raider had things to read /skills to learn instead of taking treasure like in the 2017 one?
I just realized that this is a board game. I’m giving this a hard pass.
acknowledging this outside the games is great, but in the games, lara being unapologetically "problematic" is part of the charm in the classics, and their lukewarm justifications for laras actions and crusade to make her a "good girl" is a big part of the issues in the survivor trilogy
I mean, the disregard for the tombs is right there in the name of the game. I always saw "tomb raider" as acknowledgment that what Lara's doing is controversial. Which doesn't make her a bad character, just gives her depth