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Every single quote from Ron Rosenberg in this article is objectionable as hell. I think the game still has a little bit of a chance of not being unendingly insulting, but for the love of fuck somebody tell that guy to SHUT UP.

Changes mine.

What exactly are you trying to do here?

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Make a funny. Point out that no one would ever talk about a game or design choices like that if it was about a dude.

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Make a funny. Point out that no one would ever talk about a game or design choices like that if it was about a dude.

Actually if a dude was "subjected to an attempted rape" I think a lot of eyebrows would be raised, especially if that vulnerability is fetishized in the very next sentence.

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I'm not sure if this is rationnal thinking, but I'd truly be interested in the exact same game featuring a male character who goes through the same ordeal with similar emotional response than what they design for a female lead.

THEN those choices would be ballsy creatively and they would probably carry more meaning; i.e. in the same way that having mostly 'softened' suburban white male protagonists in Delivrance made the film more meaningful.

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Oh good it's been deconstructed and addressed so we don't have to: http://www.themarysu...croft-misogyny/

i.e. in the same way that having mostly 'softened' suburban white male protagonists in Delivrance made the film more meaningful.

Well, it makes it more meaningful to white suburban males. I've always found it interesting how Deliverance is sort of feared among my male friends as a scarring movie, while movies where a woman is raped don't seem to leave as lasting an impression. Same goes for Pulp Fiction and Hard Candy, which has a

castration scene

.

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I find rape scenes in general very tough to watch. One of the most scarring movies, one that I never have to see again, was Kids. I just... hate that lead character so much. It is vile. I wish I never saw that movie.

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I find rape scenes in general very tough to watch. One of the most scarring movies, one that I never have to see again, was Kids. I just... hate that lead character so much. It is vile. I wish I never saw that movie.

Oh god, yes, that one scarred me forever. They made us watch that movie in high school. Also Clockwork Orange.

BREAKING NEWS they are finally wising up to the fact that Ron Rosenberg Needs To Shut Up: http://kotaku.com/5918193/tomb-raider-creators-are-no-longer-referring-to-games-attempted-rape-scene-as-an-attempted-rape-scene

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We had to watch Lord of the Flies in the elementary school.

Thanks for the heads up on Kids. I will never watch that movie.

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I'd like to see more of this game before making as much a judgement call as the Mary Sue author did. Lots of assumptions are being made in that article such as: "fail state=watching a woman get raped."

While there are some problematic aspects of the premise thus far, I don't think making a character vulnerable is automatically belittling them. That's pretty much what survival horror is all about: feeling vulnerable in a dangerous world. And they appear to be mixing survival horror elements into this game. Now: if it comes out that she needs a strong male protagonist to help her succeed then yeah that'll be super sexist. But she may well not. Either way, we don't know yet.

The lesson learned here is don't let that guy do interviews anymore I guess.

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My issue is with the idea that rape is a good way to develop female characters. According to the interviews surrounding this game, Lara becomes either a hardened badass (like the previous games, right?) or a sympathetic character who just endures through (like how people always think of John McClane) because she is, or is almost raped. Girl with a Dragon Tattoo did the same thing. That's not how rape or other sexual abuse works.

Also, this article pertains even more with Tomb Raider than it did with Hitman.

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I'd like to see more of this game before making as much a judgement call as the Mary Sue author did. Lots of assumptions are being made in that article such as: "fail state=watching a woman get raped."

While there are some problematic aspects of the premise thus far, I don't think making a character vulnerable is automatically belittling them. That's pretty much what survival horror is all about: feeling vulnerable in a dangerous world. And they appear to be mixing survival horror elements into this game. Now: if it comes out that she needs a strong male protagonist to help her succeed then yeah that'll be super sexist. But she may well not. Either way, we don't know yet.

The lesson learned here is don't let that guy do interviews anymore I guess.

What assumptions? Obviously if there is an attempted rape and you fail at getting out of it, logically one would think that means that you get successfully raped. The article never says you watch it happen.

But anyway, the main problems everyone is having is the way that Ron Rosenberg talked about it, saying that you don't relate to Lara but instead you protect her, implying that nobody really relates to women characters in video games, and that women in dangerous situations, even strong badass women like Lara "I Shoot Dinosaurs" Croft, need to be protected. This takes away her agency entirely.

If this were a survival horror game about a new character then sure. It wouldn't be an original premise at all, and making rape a character development point is misguided and a tired trope, but to take Lara Croft, who is already an established self-sufficient, strong woman, and literally say "we're sort of building her up and just when she gets confident, we break her down again" is really fucked up.

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To be clear: I'm reacting only to the marketing for the game for so far. It's perfectly possible that the game itself is handling a "vulnerable" Lara in a reasonable way, and there's nothing inherently wrong with "vulnerability." (Although, as per Rodi's gender-swapped quote earlier, if a male protagonist were marketed as "vulnerable" it would probably be laughable.) We'll see.

But the comments being made by at least some of the employees at CD boil down to: "She's beaten up, degraded, weak, and boy doesn't that make her sexy in a whole new way!" If they want to make a survival horror game out of Lara Croft, I can't begrudge them that, but trying to sell it back to us as "sexy" is downright creepy, rape scene or not.

to take Lara Croft, who is already an established self-sufficient, strong woman, and literally say "we're sort of building her up and just when she gets confident, we break her down again" is really fucked up.

Also this.

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About Zanthia, I just remember going through the voice files on the Hand of Fate CD right after playing it, and I hit upon an almost pornographic sequence of utterances. I tried searching for references, but it seems I'm the only one that noticed.

Just saw this again, and WHAT?

I might look in the CD folders.

Changes mine.

That quote is still super weird even involving a guy. Why is someone who was nearly raped or in the middle of trying to get away from a rape sexy?

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Yep, I'm not disagreeing with the fact that Rosenburg's comments are misguided and extremely creepy. But he's not a writer he's an exec producer. I'm not making a judgement until we see more information.

Squid, I think the hitman nun bit is a lot more clear cut because we're not talking about the game in that case we're talking about a fucked up trailer that's fucked up on its own merits. I don't think the Tomb Raider trailer is on the same level at all. Rosenburg's comments are but I have no idea how integral to the writing process he was. That's why I'm withholding judgement.

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Rape scene or not I'm pretty sure this entire game can be summed up at 51 seconds in (Yeah, I coped at time location, but embed does't want to work): [media=]

[/media]

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What assumptions? Obviously if there is an attempted rape and you fail at getting out of it, logically one would think that means that you get successfully raped. The article never says you watch it happen.

I bet it's an uninteractive cutscene. Just a hunch.

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Apart from how unconformable and creepy the whole "Let's make Lara vulnerable with an attempted rape scene!" thing is that either way, this completely ruins the franchise.

Lara always was a thrill seeker and had wanderlust, but if her first "adventure" was so traumatic, that the "future" Lara is now impossible. Unless she's going to become a pyscho and goes an adventures and kills everything because she sees the faces of the people in this adventure.

I'm no psychologist, but how can "the female Indy" be born after all they claim will happen to her? Am I the only one who think that it's completely messed up if Lara became an "explorer" after what we've seen? That like telling me a guy wanted to be a sailor after nearly drowning on his last trip were the ship sank, then he saw his family eaten by sharks and was then enslaved and raped by pirates.

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I uh don't think it's completely out of the question for someone to overcome some Serious Shit and decide that they want to keep doing that Serious Shit (rape notwithstanding) for Reasons.

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Lara always was a thrill seeker and had wanderlust, but if her first "adventure" was so traumatic, that the "future" Lara is now impossible. Unless she's going to become a pyscho and goes an adventures and kills everything because she sees the faces of the people in this adventure.

That's pretty simple, it's been stated that this is a reboot, not a prequel. She does not go from this character to the Lara of the original Tomb Raider. If she becomes more like that in the end it will (hopefully) be through character progression, this is not meant to be a "how Lara became Lara" story.

That said bad things happen to people and it doesn't necessarily make them super serious for the rest of their lives. There's nothing about the original Lara that suggests to me that she had to have an idyllic life all the way up until the time of the games - actually her aggressive cheer and inability to react appropriately to danger could easily be argued to imply that she is overcompensating for having felt scared and unhappy in the past!

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