Tomb Raider

[castorp]

This game still looks good, interesting. It feels a little like the people making it actually at least want to try to make a Lara with character, with depth, but the publisher still feels the need sell it via old tropes - 'Yeah she is deep now, but in a sexy way'. That there are crass overlaps – being nearly raped makes her sexy – might rather be due to bad communication, some individual and a certain idea of market realities, than to authors intend. Maybe they think that the same people who pollute Youtube-comments and organize and harass other people are actually important and need to be pandered to.

--Wishful thinking--

[Tanukitsune]

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!

So, this time they are not only rebooting her history, but her whole character as well? That's just illogical. You don't make Kratos play with puppies in the next GoW game to attract a new audience, you make a game for that audience with a new character!

Hmm, now I'm wondering if this was going to be some other game in which they shoehorned Lara into, The game industry is so crazy, that I'd believe anything.

[youmeyou]

So is it a reboot in the Batman Begins sense? Any sources for that? Batman Begins would be a good reference for a reboot since Nolan changed aspects of the universe without changing essentially what Batman is.

Either way I don't think it's unfeasible that Lara would want to become a professional Tomb Raider after all this. What I wager is this experience toughened her up, made her the bad ass we see in all the other games. The whole grandfather VO in the trailers saying: 'you're a croft I believe in you etc.' signifies she started the story not thinking she could be a hero/adventurer and finishes feeling like a hero. It's the classic hero's journey.

[Nappi]

http://www.shacknews...d-rape-comments

EDIT: I guess I missed an edit.

[Gwardinen]

So is it a reboot in the Batman Begins sense? Any sources for that? Batman Begins would be a good reference for a reboot since Nolan changed aspects of the universe without changing essentially what Batman is.

Yep, and in fact Batman Begins is used as a reference!

[Sal Limones]

I invite you all to imagine a world in which Bruce Wayne and Indiana Jones are nearly raped and people are like "aww poor bb I will protect you"

[syntheticgerbil]

BREAKING NEWS they are finally wising up to the fact that Ron Rosenberg Needs To Shut Up: http://kotaku.com/59...pted-rape-scene

I don't know if most of you realize it but this link contains a video with the full scene in question. It's really not as bad as anything Rosenberg himself has said to make it sound creepy and strange. If anything I'm more concerned with the amount of screen time Lara spends as a bloody beaten mess instead of some dude briefly coming on to her before she kills him.

[Sal Limones]

Again, pretty sure what we're all objecting to here is Ron Rosenberg and everything he said, and the attitudes he represents and is perpetuating. The game can still be good.

[Nachimir]

I invite you all to imagine a world in which Bruce Wayne and Indiana Jones are nearly raped and people are like "aww poor bb I will protect you"

Again, pretty sure what we're all objecting to here is Ron Rosenberg and everything he said, and the attitudes he represents and is perpetuating. The game can still be good.

:tup:

I've shied away from talking about this all week. So many responses have been awry, and there have been some truly excruciating "I don't really see the problem" conversations going on amongst guys elsewhere.

Game: Might be good. Default rape tropes and Ron Rosenberg: Problems.

[Twig]

The scene clearly implies that something like that would have happened if Lara didn't fight back, but I didn't find it offensive in any way other than being stereotypical. Outside of the context of Rosenberg's comments, I don't think anyone aside from super extremists would have been bothered by its existence.

Now, I'm temporarily ignoring the rape thing! At the risk of sounding like a creep or sounding like I'm defending a creep, for some people, there is a certain allure in a dangerous, dirty, grim, oh-god-so-dark-it-hurts member of the opposite sex. It's not uncommon for both men and women to feel attracted to someone like that.

Okay but that said... The rest of his words are kind of weird. It occurred to me while writing the above paragraph that I rarely, if ever, get attached to my avatar in a video game, beyond a "hey this is me i made these choices i am so neat" capacity. People my avatar meets, sure, all the time. Like in The Walking Dead, which I love, I don't necessarily feel much emotional attachment to Lee, but all of the people around him evoke plenty of reactions from me. So, when Ron guy says they're trying to make Lara into this character that the player cares about and wants to protect... THAT'S the weird part for me. Just the idea of it.

But maybe I'm weird.

[Salacious Snake]

It occurred to me while writing the above paragraph that I rarely, if ever, get attached to my avatar in a video game, beyond a "hey this is me i made these choices i am so neat" capacity. People my avatar meets, sure, all the time.

I experience the same thing. I almost never feel for my poor avatar who keeps falling into pits and getting shot, but when his plucky companion or whatever gets it, I can be affected. I think it may be because of the self-identification part. It's an interesting thing to think about.

[Tanukitsune]

I just saw a pre-order for I thought was Tomb Raider, but it was the Hunger Games. I haven't read the book or seen the movie, what are the chances that they are trying to attract the Hunger Games crowd? (I miss my scratching head smiley)

[ThunderPeel2001]

Changes mine.

Well done, sir!

[syntheticgerbil]

http://www.gamesindu...=european-daily

So it is now revealed Rhianna Pratchett was/is lead writer on the game. No direct quotes from here of any meat on this article but I find it interesting. Makes me think maybe the game has been portrayed in a poor light and won't really end up the way the hype make it to be. But I haven't played any game Rhianna has written for outside of Prince of Persia 2008 where I'm assuming she only handled the side dialogue you could have with Elika. It wasn't that good or interesting, just a ton of sarcasm, so I don't know if I like her writing.

[youmeyou]

I enjoyed the writing in PoP 2008. Yeah the dialogue was sarcastic, but it was well written and non-intrusive (and in fact, complementary) to the gameplay.

My favorite part of that game and what I wish it had more of was when you were fighting the concubine for the umpteenth time and she

kidnaps Elika and hides her behind a dozen identical copies. There is no immediately evident way to find her until you think about the mechanic that you've been using throughout the game. The one mechanic that you've come to depend on. And then your brain clicks and you're like "oh fuck, will that work??" and you throw yourself off of the tower and the true Elika saves you. I was standing up clapping for that part.

Though I have no clue whether RP worked on any of that.

[syntheticgerbil]

She's credited for additional dialogue so that's why I guessed she only worked on the aside stuff with Elika. I should say the sarcastic dialogue wasn't awful, it's just the whole time I was playing 2008, I wanted some kind of sincerity balanced out between both of the bickering characters in a way similar to Sands of Time.

I did love the concubine part in the game you are speaking of though, but my hunch is that was probably the main writer, Andrew Walsh.

[toblix]

This Eurogamer preview makes it sound like Tomb Raider will be almost a Far Cry 3 like AAA thing. This interview makes me hopeful that it'll be more mature than previous reports may have indicated (within reason – it is a AAA mainstream video game after all LOL)

[Gwardinen]

It really does seem like Square Enix's marketing department is a horror show. Given all the things we've been talking about regarding Hitman's marketing as well, I have to wonder what the hell is going on there.

I'm glad Tomb Raider seems to be shaping up as a potentially worthwhile game in its own right, as I think the idea of a Tomb Raider game with more character development could be appealing to me.

[Thrik]

Everything I've read about this game (albeit mostly limited to Edge) has given me the impression that the people behind it really know what their vision is and seem to be doing a great job of realising it. It's kind of incredible how Tomb Raider has transformed from originally being pretty much the worst kind of male fantasy-orientated shit imaginable to something that's coming from almost the precise opposite direction and could be a great step for better depictions of women in games. Also this new Lara is well hot.

[toblix]

I still hope there'll be lots of traversal and plenty of ridiculously contrived and elaborate traversal-based puzzles; my favourite parts of these games. Nathan Drake can handle the gunplay.

[miffy495]

Oh man, what if they tagged out for it? Imagine Lara flipping over ledges and solving this huge elaborate puzzle, then a dude with a gun pops out so she fist-bumps Drake and he takes over for the next 20 minutes. Toblix, the world needs you to make this fan game.

[I_smell]

If PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale wasn't a hot bag of shit, Tomb Rader and Nathan Drake would be the Ice Climbers of that game.

[melmer]

Nathan & Lara at the Winter Olympic Games?

Would it be sexist to put Lara in charge of the broom during Curling?

[toblix]

Oh man, what if they tagged out for it? Imagine Lara flipping over ledges and solving this huge elaborate puzzle, then a dude with a gun pops out so she fist-bumps Drake and he takes over for the next 20 minutes. Toblix, the world needs you to make this fan game.

Hey, I'm still busy with Lamp Marine. I don't have the capacity to develop to titles in parallel (parallelop).

[toblix]

Ten minutes of gameplay:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2NjZtEiosgA#at=467

I didn't find it very exciting. Looks like a linear Unchart-em-up. Wasn't this supposed to be an open-world survival game? Maybe these ten minutes don't exhaustively catalog the entire spectrum of available game-play experiences Tomb Raider™ will have to offer Lara Croft fans, old and new, when it comes out PC and consoles this spring.