You'll "want to protect" the new Lara Croft

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XANDER CAGE

Member
Not a big fan of Kotaku, but there are some choice quotes from the Tomb Raider 2012 producer here. Lock if old.

"When people play Lara, they don't really project themselves into the character," Rosenberg told me at E3 last week when I asked if it was difficult to develop for a female protagonist.

"They're more like 'I want to protect her.' There's this sort of dynamic of 'I'm going to this adventure with her and trying to protect her.'" So is she still the hero? I asked Rosenberg if we should expect to look at Lara a little bit differently than we have in the past. "She's definitely the hero but— you're kind of like her helper," he said. "When you see her have to face these challenges, you start to root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character." The new Lara Croft isn't just less battle-hardened; she's less voluptuous. Gone are her ridiculous proportions and skimpy clothing. This Lara feels more human, more real. That's intentional, Rosenberg says. "The ability to see her as a human is even more enticing to me than the more sexualized version of yesteryear," he said. "She literally goes from zero to hero... we're sort of building her up and just when she gets confident, we break her down again."

In the new Tomb Raider, Lara Croft will suffer. Her best friend will be kidnapped. She'll get taken prisoner by island scavengers. And then, Rosenberg says, those scavengers will try to rape her.

"She is literally turned into a cornered animal," Rosenberg said. "It's a huge step in her evolution: she's forced to either fight back or die."
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Full article

Not really sure how I feel about this, to be honest. On the one hand, I admire that they're trying to turn Lara into more of an actual character, but the dynamic of throwing all these awful things at a female protagonist to make you feel bad for her "differently than you would about a male protagonist" seems... misguided at best, especially with the sexuality angle in play. I'm all for well-written dark games, but I certainly wasn't thrilled with the goofy rape-defense QTE we saw in the E3 trailer.
 
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I agree that not every female protagonist has to be Ellen Ripley, but Lara Croft isn't one of the world's most renowned females in video games because everyone wants to protect her. She's a globetrotting badass. I get that we're supposed to see how she was before she was that person, but I feel they may be overdoing it a lot by just making this game a series of traumas. I hope that the game has a complete arc with her becoming more strong willed and confident by the conclusion.
 
the guy in the quotes says he wants Lara to be more human without the 38D tits so she's not sexualized, yet at the same time wants to invoke nerds' natural white knight inclination by "protecting" Lara.
 
So Tomb Raider: Other Moe?

Crap, beaten.

On an off note, was the demo playable by other people at E3, and did one enterprising person decide to not do anything when the 'scene' came up? I imagine that would be quite the awkward situation...
 
we're sort of building her up and just when she gets confident, we break her down again.
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...I'm...not really okay with this...? It's fine if heroes have their darkest hour and everything, but it does little to liberate a female character if she goes from hyper-sexual caricature to damsel in distress.
 
Gentleman Jack said:
...I'm...not really okay with this...? It's fine if heroes have their darkest hour and everything, but it does little to liberate a female character if she goes from hyper-sexual caricature to damsel in distress.
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That's the part I found weirdest too. "We keep building her up just to knock her down!" sounds oddly exploitative.
 
RealDeadOne said:
I agree that not every female protagonist has to be Ellen Ripley, but Lara Croft isn't one of the world's most renowned females in video games because everyone wants to protect her. She's a globetrotting badass. I get that we're supposed to see how she was before she was that person, but I feel they may be overdoing it a lot by just making this game a series of traumas. I hope that the game has a complete arc with her becoming more strong willed and confident by the conclusion.
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I don't need my protagonist to be Ellen Ripley, just competent given the game's setting. Tossing Lara into Break the Cutie situation after Break the Cutie situation does not create a character I'd consider competent. Nor is it something I'd want to protect.
 
The more the developers talk about this game, the less I want to play it.


Lyphen said:
Feminists will have a field day with this upon release. The only female-led multi million franchise, turned into a protection from rape and tetanus game.
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The worst part is that at one point it sounded like the game was going to just be about a strong female character. I guess I should've expected childish ass game culture to fuck this up. This ally is certainly full of disappointment.
 
Feminists will have a field day with this upon release. The only female-led multi million franchise, turned into a protection from rape and tetanus game.

Sadist undertones.
 
BigJiantRobut said:
That's the part I found weirdest too. "We keep building her up just to knock her down!" sounds oddly exploitative.
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Maybe it's how he words it. Or maybe it's just in conjunction with the other exposure this game is getting.

I'm actually excited at the prospect of having a protagonist that fails and gets broken down throughout the course of the game. I think it might be refreshing. But the context and phrasing of it here makes it seem really unsettling.
 
I don't know why this article makes me feel uncomfortable. I guess I just believe it's more than possible to make a projectable female lead, and the idea a female lead needs us to, 'help her,' strokes me the wrong way. Now given I sort of understand what he means, but why just single out females? There's male leads I've played where I didn't project myself into the hero and I liked the character all the same (immediately the first two that come to my head are Garcia from Shadows of the Damned and Mario). I can't speak for everyone, but there are definitely female characters I have projected myself into. Jill from Resident Evil, Samus is most of the Metroid games (Other M withstanding), Alexandra from Eternal Darkness, etc.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with wanting to protect a character, the one that immediately comes to my mind is Fiona from Haunting Ground and in a strange way I'm sort of realizing right now there was Murphy from Silent Hill Downpour, because I liked their characters and cared what happened to them. They had good acting (in my opinion) and expressed emotions that I could relate to which made me in turn want to help protect them from the twisted dangers and inner conflicts they had to face. But in this case, it sounds more like they want to make Lara vulnerable for the sake of her being female and people can't 'emote' to her since they want to fuck her or something, so instead we have to be her 'helper'.

I might be reading too deeply into this.
 
Example of new heroine lately that make me go dawwww and want to protect her is Kat from gravity rush. I dont get that same feeling from new Lara
 
That quote just freaks me out. I remember how I felt really self conscious about playing Pokemon so I never played Ruby/Sapphire as I got older(still came back to Pokemanz in gen 3). This is how I feel about a bunch of AAA games these days.
jonny_boi said:
Are there even any badass heroines left?
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Faith from Mirror's Edge, but it'll only stay that way if ME stays dead and buried.
 
Lyphen said:
Feminists will have a field day with this upon release. The only female-led multi million franchise, turned into a protection from rape and tetanus game.
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If that is true, it's really just trading one male fantasy for another..... she was a sexualized super-heroine before.

But I dunno... it's not as if they are talking about a male character protecting her. The one that "protects" is the player. Lara is actually protecting herself.
 
legendnthamaking said:
I really hope this isn't turning into another Other M situation where a strong female character is turned into a helpless, weak shell of what she was.
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Yeah, Samus sure was helpless completely kicking the ass of everything on the Bottleship.

I find it funny that Samus kept her badassery while going through a midlife crisis and got so much hate but most people think torture porn Tomb Raider is the fresh direction the series needed.
 
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