You know, it honestly feels bad when people are like, “let’s celebrate Tomb Raider and Lara Croft!” and then it’s that Thing from Reboot Cash Grab Two of Totally Nondescript Generality.
(I have a headache and I’m too tired to make a proper post today.)
Another unproductive day, another Tomb Raider post. Well, today it wasn’t really my fault because I went to this… ghost tour with my sisters in this manor house. I’m pretty sure the guide-actor was embellishing or outright making stuff up which doesn’t seem really fair because these were still real people even if they’re hundreds of years dead. The basement was cool, though! It had this nice cool moist earth scent and they turned off all the lights and no matter how much I looked ahead I couldn’t see a thing.
But anyway, why Lara Croft is best girl. I only have three pictures this time because the pictures aren’t as interesting as the transcript of the scene.
The guy on the left is Larson, a fellow tomb raider who is doing it as a hired hand instead of a vocation. He’s also working for Natla, the main villainess of this game, and is trying to kill and screw Lara over. This is right after Lara has shot him down.
To be honest, no matter how many times I listen to these cutscenes their accents are still mostly incomprehensible to me, ha ha.
LARA: Well, you have my total attention now. I’m not quite sure if I’ve got yours, though… Hello?
Oh, c’mon, Lara. You did put a few rounds of bullets into the man. Give him a moment.
LARSON: I’ll heel and hide you to a barn door yet!
LARA: Of course.
LARSON: You and that driveling piece of the Scion. You want to keep it so bad? I’ll harness it right up your…
LARA: Wait. We’re talking about the artefact here?
LARSON: Damn straight we are. Right up…
LARA: Hold on! I’m sorry. This piece you say. Where’s the rest?
You know, Lara’s interruptions were pretty much done for censorship (contemporary games wouldn’t have any trouble coming right out and saying it; see Trash Reboot One and Two) but I find it so absolutely hilarious that Larson is trying to threaten and insult her, and Lara’s all, “I beg your pardon, let’s stick to business”. Like a true English aristocrat! That total dork. ♡
LARSON: Ms Natla put Pierre Dupont on that trail.
LARA: And where is that?
LARSON: Ha! You ain’t fast enough for him.
LARA: So you think all this talking is just holding me up?
LARSON: I don’t know where his jackrabbit frog legs are running him to. You’ll have to ask Ms Natla.
It’s at this point Larson tries to go for his gun and Lara roundhouse kicks him.
LARA: Thank you. I will.
You can’t say the girl doesn’t have impeccable manners, ha ha. ❤
This is one more thing Crystal Dynamics just straight up ripped from her mangled corpse of a character. You know, can I put Crystal Dynamics’ Trash Reboots into tv americanisation?
Another unproductive day and I almost fell asleep at my desk so… here’s another Tomb Raider post, ha ha.
You know, it’s a bit silly but I really like the detail of this passport; that it contains the new game, save and load. I think it’s a cute little detail and new games don’t really do stuff like this anymore.
To be honest, I’ve always disliked killing animals in video games (doesn’t mean I need the character I’m playing to dislike it too). So it actually helps that they don’t look photorealistic. There was even this one game, A Farewell to Dragons, I think, that wanted me to kill baby animals for exp and I was like, “I can’t do it, I can’t,” and I deleted that game off my computer and haven’t touched it since then, ha ha.
I find it really funny that these inbred dinosaurs have survived in the remote mountains of Peru for hundreds of millions of years and then, well, Lara came along. She also sold them to Vegas as curiosities, which will never stop being funny to me.
I even got a screenshot of her dainty little walk. ❤ And you know, this is actually one of the things that pissed me off in Crystal Dynamics’ Trash Reboot One; that instead of making Lara feminine, which she is, they just had to make her — well, rough and tomboy-ish just because she’s crazy athletic and does physical work.
Lara is not a tomboy. All of her movements, and behaviour, are feminine. She just happens to have a very physically demanding hobby. There’s a difference.
I swear, Crystal Dynamics can’t write to save their lives. Like, they literally turned Lara — with her class, resourcefulness, cleverness, tenacity, mean streak, cool-headed business and dumbass one-liners — into a completely bland stereotypical character that you can find in any media.
Her backpack of holding. It’s amazing, the stuff she can carry in that. And blasély carry across borders; shotguns, pistols, magnums, rocket launchers… priceless historical artefacts… The world is wild in the original (and only) Tomb Raiders.
Also, I still maintain that she magicked that backpack herself along with her pistols even though the fourth game “answered” where she got it. Can you answer something that was never even a question? Because I really don’t think the fans had a pressing need to know where she got her backpack.
A screenshot of her boobs. As you can see, while they’re lethal pyramids of destruction, they’re really not that unnaturally big that every ignorant idiot has to comment on them thirty years later.
Besides, why isn’t anyone talking about her hips? Because she has pretty fine hips too, at least in the second game.
Just a couple of random screenshots because I liked the colours. And I’ve said this in one of the previous posts but I don’t think new games really do colours anymore — unless they’re what I’ve dubbed “bubblegum graphics”. I went through my stash of screenshots from Trash Reboot Two (and I guess I should get back to that at some point, preferably before I have to restart it again because I’ve blessedly forgotten everything) and there’s… very little actual colour in them. Which might be because I haven’t really got to the daytime portion of the game yet. But, you know, from what I remember it doesn’t really get better.
And finally, let’s talk about the soundtrack before I forget. Tomb Raider has — how to put this — a very minimal soundtrack. There’s music in certain dramatic parts of the game but mostly it’s just… you know, things like the wind or other distant sounds. Because she is trawling through aeon-dead remote tombs where there’s nothing but her and the occasional wild animal.
And try to imagine what that says about her for a moment if you can. Because even if the game doesn’t show it, I don’t think she actually makes it through each tomb in a day which means that she has to camp in them. Try to imagine sleeping in a remote, dead-silent place with nothing but shadows and undead for company, when most people can barely sleep in the quiet of their own apartments. Try to imagine what that says about her mental resilience.
Crystal Dynamics literally couldn’t infer the first thing about Lara’s character which is why they’ve fucked it up for twelve years. It also creates some unintentional hilarity but I’ll get to this in the second part of Trash Reboot Two if I do.
Also, music was much better in video games when it was orchestral.
Well, writing or anything else for that matter isn’t really working so I figured might as well do another Lara Croft appreciation post. These aren’t really a “let’s play” posts because they’re totally disorganized and I’m too lazy and tired to do it properly anyway. But it’s my blog and the tags are for me.
Am I the only one who misses the nineties graphics? Because I kind of miss the nineties graphics. Also, how is it possible to like something so much and yet be like “wait, did I play something like this?” Because that’s what happens to me on many levels, ha ha. I call it a cunning strategy to keep the games fresh no matter how many times I replay them.
I like the little smirk she does at the camera, ha ha. (And yes, I’m too tired to brighten these up.)
So, I’d like to rectify something I wrote years ago. I described Lara Croft as a psychopath — and well, she kind of is because how else would you describe the blasé mass murdering she does across the world? — but to be fair, she did try to save Mister Peruvian guide from the wolves and even took a moment to pay her respects. And, you know, she only kills people who are trying to kill her.
I remember playing Chronicles and seeing this comment in which someone complained that “this is why no one likes Lara, because she’s so mean” and I’m like, are you kidding me? That’s what makes her awesome.
But more seriously, did this person somehow miss the fact that Lara is only “mean” to people who are either trying to screw her over or murder her?
What she really should’ve done, obviously, is sociopathically whine and cry about it while mowing down other people like so much grass. That would’ve been so much better and compelling.
Not that I’m naming any names.
Also, I feel kind of compelled to ask this: but are people really so dumb these days that they are actually complaining about fictional characters being “mean” to other fictional characters who are trying to murder them?
Or why I shouldn’t read random comments on the internet about things I actually like.
SOME PEOPLE: Oh, I’m so glad Crystal Dynamics made Not-Lara less of a blatant sex object~
ALSO SOME PEOPLE: Oh, man. Not-Lara looks hot.
ALSO SOME PEOPLE: She looks especially delicious now.
ALSO SOME PEOPLE: For the first time in my life~ I want to fuck Lara Croft~
Like, here are just a few expressions that capture my feelings at that moment:
I have no other way to ask this but are these people fucking kidding me?
There seems to be this weird substantial group of creeps who can apparently only focus on female characters’ looks — namely, their breasts — instead of how they’re treated narratively and what they actually do.
Their underlying attitude seems to be that if they deem a female character’s breasts to be “too big” — which Lara’s aren’t but I’ll get to this in a bit — then she better put those away because ew, nobody wants to see those. They also seem to assume that Lara couldn’t possibly do the things she does because her “boobs are too big”.
Like, good job insulting every woman who has big boobs in real life.
Moreover, Original Lara’s breasts aren’t “too big”. In the first game, they were these lethal pyramids of destruction. In the second and third games, they were normal. Maybe slightly bigger than average — whatever that “average” is — but certainly not so “abnormally large” that every ignorant idiot should feel compelled to comment on them twenty-five years after the games released. In the fourth and fifth games, they did look a little ridiculous but I think that had more to do with the change of graphics and design and that — little reflection thing on her breasts.
But — and this might shock some people who evidently didn’t even play the original games — the games aren’t about Lara’s boobs.
The original games never reduced Lara into a pair of tits. It’s people like above who fucking do that and then actually dare to say how glad they are that Crystal Dynamics reduced Lara’s breast size, now she’s hot, now she’s delicious, now she’s fuckable, completely fucking missing the hypocritical irony of their own fucking words.
Look, I’m not going to pretend that Lara Croft wasn’t deliberately designed to be sexy. She was. She basically has the body shape that most men find ideal; ample breasts, tiny waist, wide hips (and long hair). But narratively in the games, she’s just this incidentally hot badass girl who’s doing treasure hunting for thrills and mystical trinkets.
Furthermore, what drives me up the walls is this false idea that just because they reduced the Thing’s breast size in Reboot Cash Grab Two, it somehow magically means that she isn’t a blatant sex object. (Which is essentially insulting women with smaller breasts by implying that they aren’t desirable.)
Did people somehow miss the Thing’s constant whimpering and gasping? Did they somehow miss the constant assaults while the Thing just stands there helpless? Did they somehow miss the creepy non-consensual fondling and attempted rape?
The Thing is absolutely a blatant sex object; she’s just supposed to appeal to a different fantasy.
Which is a lot creepier than just liking her for her body.
Just saying.
You know, after reading The Call of Cthulhu I was in the mood of making fun of this again. And again, I only made it five minutes because… just… this game. Or really, “game”.
Like, the progression of this game is basically:
a few minutes of gameplay
cutscene
a few minutes of gameplay
cutscene
Contrast that with Tomb Raiders — or really any old game — that dropped you in the middle of the map and then just let you have at it.
I was thinking this about Final Fantasy VII Remake too in which you just walk these hallways littered with mobs and the occasional boss to a cutscene ad nauseam, but it just seems like a special kind of hell.
Oh well. Last time on Reboot Two:
The Thing was smacked to the ground, on the side that has an open wound, and then she just gets up with her hands tied behind her back. Ah, that sweet Realism™!
The reason why I keep harping about that realism™, by the way, is because people keep defending this travesty with that. The Original Tomb Raiders weren’t any more “realistic™”, but they sure as hell were a lot more fun and compelling.
She says and then proceeds to make as much noise as she’s made thus far. To be honest, she sounds annoying even when she’s dying.
Totally necessary creepiness because gosh, I remember when I was a wee little girl playing Tomb Raiders for the first time and I thought to myself: man, you know what would make these games even better? If Lara was creepily fondled by some implied incestuous creep, strangled to death and then raped.
And in before someone says, but the Thing wasn’t raped! Yeah, but what else am I supposed to think about the preceding creepy fondling? And besides, from what I’ve read, they were seriously going to put the rape in but then thought that some players would totally get off to it and then decided to “tone it down”. As if that’s any better. As if the writers of this thing didn’t get off to it already.
Also, lest I forget! Quick time events! Because the gameplay is soooo much better than in the original games.
The Thing, after shooting the above creep to death.
And before I ask the following questions, I’ll reiterate that this is fiction. It’s not realistic™ and it’s not meant to be realistic™. That said,
do people actually find this compelling? This fake-crying and falling to one’s knees and gasping oh god?
Not to mention that, like, five seconds after this she goes right into mass-murdering people and looting their still warm wet corpses for items. Her behaviour doesn’t exactly tell me that she’s totally feeling something for killing her first person?
Also, I’ll reiterate: this is supposed to be the same Lara who had Pierre help her up a ledge then spooked him off the same ledge and walked off with a dumb one-liner?
Anyhow~ I didn’t get a screenshot of it but when the Thing’s getting assaulted by the creep — who totally incidentally happened to be Russian — she just slips right out of her bondage? Why didn’t she do it before then?
The Thing, getting shot on top of:
getting assaulted for the first time and knocked out
setting herself on fire
falling from a rather considerable height on a thing that went right through the side of her stomach
wading through pools of filthy stagnant water right afterwards
getting assaulted for the second time
getting assaulted for the third time
getting caught in a bear trap and attacked by wolves
getting assaulted for the fourth time and knocked down to the ground
getting totally necessarily fondled by a creep who just totally incidentally happened to be Russian okay
getting assaulted for the fifth time and knocked down to the ground
getting assaulted for the sixth time and totally necessarily fondled by a creep who just totally incidentally happened to be Russian okay
That Realism™ sure is a drug that keeps on giving.
So, let’s recap:
Previously on Reboot Two, Not-Lara has:
got assaulted for the first time and knocked out
set herself on fire
fell from a rather considerable height on a thing that went right through the side of her stomach
went right into wading through pools of filthy stagnant water afterwards
got assaulted for the second time
got assaulted for the third time
got caught in a bear trap and attacked by wolves
got assaulted for the fourth time and knocked down to the ground
got totally necessarily fondled by a creep who just totally incidentally happened to be Russian okay
got assaulted for the fifth time and knocked down to the ground
On the side that has that open wound.
And then she just gets up. With her hands tied behind her back.
And this all happened within the first thirty minutes of “gameplay”.
I actually saw a comment in which someone blithered how at least this thing has a “character”. You know, unlike Original Lara with her class, resourcefulness, cleverness, tenacity, mean streak, cool-headed business and dumbass one-liners.
I can tell you exactly who Original Lara is just from her behaviour. While I can’t tell the first fucking thing about this thing in Reboot Two — even though she can’t shut the fuck up for five minutes and keeps emoting at the camera.
But I digress. What I mean to say is, forget about this thing having a character. The writers aren’t even treating this thing like a human. Instead of calling this thing “Not-Lara”, I should be calling her “Not-Human”.
I’m not saying that Original Lara wasn’t a total fantasy, she was. There were several times in the original games where I laughed at the absurdity of it; such as when Original Lara hitched a ride on the side of a submarine to the bottom of the sea without any sort of gear. But at least her writers treated her as an actual character and with respect.
But this thing in Reboot Two? She is so far removed from any sort of believability that I can’t even take her seriously as a character let alone as Not-Lara. She’s just this unholy mess of nothing. She is literally just this human-shaped object that things happen to — ‘things’ mostly meaning relentless abuse. Which she just walks off.
So we seriously went from Original Lara doing treasure hunting as her own version of extreme sports to Not-Human basically doing — whatever Crystal Dynamics pretends she does as an excuse to chase and relive her trauma?
You know, I really shouldn’t be reading random comments on the internet because whenever I do, I seriously feel like I’m getting brain damage.
And since this is already kind of long, I’ll do screenshots in another post. But I think I’ll try to get back to Harry Potter tomorrow — or today, whichever — and this game… whenever I can stomach it again. Because, as I said previously, can I ever point out at excessive and obsessive length how much Crystal Dynamics’ Reboots fail. Those hacks are just selling their garbage fan fiction on the original Tomb Raiders‘ clout and reputation.
Or as I like to call it from my Harry Potter readings “a wasteland of missed opportunities”.
But first things first, I forgot a couple of things from the previous post. To be honest, the previous post was kind of low-energy anyway because this game is so stupid, boring and bad that it’s hard to maintain my holy hatred towards it. It’s like kicking something ugly but helpless.
Anyhow, I asked what’s Whitman’s purpose in this game aside from being the dubiously blonde white dude who betrays the group and dies. The justification for Whitman’s existence as a character is that he’s apparently funding this expedition.
Which is, you know, kind of a problem because that implies that Lara is no longer an independently wealthy aristocrat doing it on her own dime. Well, considering Not-Lara sounds and acts nothing like a British aristocrat it wouldn’t surprise me if this is just one more thing Crystal Dynamics ripped off from her already mangled corpse of a character.
Like, I don’t know whose “terrific origin story” this thing is but I know for a fact it’s not Lara Croft’s.
And this actually neatly brings me to the completely wasted concept of this game.
You see, there was a lot of leeway for imagination in the original Tomb Raiders — not just in regards to Lara’s character but also the world she’s in.
In the first cutscene of the first game, Lara is lounging in a hotel in India and reading a magazine. When Larson accosts her, she tosses the magazine on the table and we get a glimpse of the cover. It has a picture of Lara with Bigfoot on it and the words: “Lara Stamps Out Big Foot!”
Just this little throwaway bit tells us more about the world than anything in Reboot Two. What it tells us is:
Lara is famous for her shenanigans.
Cryptics, while not necessarily part of the everyday life of average people, are still evidently an “open secret” so to speak. Never mind that Lara also fell other cryptics and extinct beasts or sold them to Vegas as curiosities.
Because magic was so obviously a part of the original Tomb Raiders’ world-building, I had this headcanon that Lara’s pistols weren’t just a gameplay thing but also a lore thing.
Like,
Lara: Hm… If I’m getting into this whole treasure hunting — I mean, archaeology business — I’ll need a weapon. Pistols will do, I think. But what to do about the ammo? A girl can’t lug around endless quantities of that.
And then she got a brilliant idea, visited a witch shop in London, had her pistols magicked with unlimited ammo, was all “excellent”, and off she went. It was the only time she relied on magick — well, aside from maybe magicking her backpack of holding because, man, the stuff she can carry in that.
But instead of getting anything like that, what Crystal Dynamics gave us was this:
Like, young Lara being her badass inquisitive self and slowly driving her parents mad with all the trouble she gets up to would’ve been the most adorable thing ever.
But instead of owning up to the fact that Original Lara was a treasure hunter doing it for the mystical trinkets and thrills, Crystal Dynamics doubled down on the whole archaeologist bit. Which leads into some unintentional hilarity but I’ll get to this in the second game of Reboot Two if I do.
And because we can’t have nice things, Crystal Dynamics gave us this as well:
For, uuuh, *checks notes*, “character development”.
Aaaand this brings me to another point.
“Character development”.
Okay, so Original Lara didn’t really have a “character arc”. The story arc in the original Tomb Raiders was basically:
one) there’s a thing
two) Lara wants the thing
three) Lara goes to get the thing
Because sometimes a girl just wants mystical trinkets to pretty up her manor. You know how it is.
It’s simple but effective. Because — and this might surprise some people! — not every character needs an arc. I know, shocking.
Reboot Two pretends that Not-Lara has a character arc but what is it? I’m dead serious, how does she change? What is her “inner journey”? I sure fucking don’t know because I have no idea what her normal baseline was before she got shipwrecked into her first game and then relentlessly abused like a human effigy.
For all I know, her character arc is going from a sociopathic insecure wet blanket to a mass-murdering sociopathic insecure wet blanket. How compelling. What a terrific origin story. 10 out of 10. Great job, Crystal Dynamics.
And instead of doing anything at all with the bits of world-building that the original games gave, Crystal Dynamics does what every urban fantasy does: reduces the supernatural into a secret occult (redundant) that’s somehow managed to stay hidden for hundreds and thousands of years. Despite basically doing nothing to stay hidden.
This doesn’t mean that the original Tomb Raiders didn’t have secret monasteries guarding trinkets or Italian mafiosos seeking the means of immortality. It had those, but the occult and supernatural were still more or less out in the open as well.
Even as a game there’s not a shred of originality in Reboot Two. It’s like any of the survival actions with horror elements that came out around the same time; The Last of Us, Evil Within, etc. I’ve heard people compare it to Uncharted too but I’ve never played a single Uncharted so I can’t comment on this.
Furthermore, I’ve been reading The Complete Fiction of H. P. Lovecraft and there’s some definite overlap between Lovecraft’s stories and the original Tomb Raiders. The occult, the ruins of dead civilisations, gods and eldritch horrors, but instead of going mad or dying from it, Lara overcomes and gets what she’s after. In the hands of a good and creative writer leaning into this overlap could’ve been really cool.
But the creative arts ain’t so creative and all you’re left with is having to pay sixty-plus dollars for Crystal Dynamics’ garbage fan fiction.
You know, the gameplay sections without “narrative” or voice acting are a bit more tolerable. Well, aside from Not-Lara’s constant mouth-breathing and gasping.
Also, getting attacked by wolves is such a pain. I guess it’s partly my fault because I have everything on low, but the game is so dark and so full of itty-bitty debris of shite that by the time I even see the freaking wolves, they’ve already attacked me.
So, here’s a brief list of things Crystal Dynamics has fucked up about Lara’s character in no particular order:
her looks
her personality
her voice
her dialogue
her body language
her expressions
her motivations
her agency
And then people actually tell me that this thing is going to be Lara Croft.
Like,
*side-eyes with extreme doubt and distaste*
Okay. Sure.
I took some screenshots of the documents, but I’ll just transcribe the text because it’d be too small to see anyway.
Again in no particular order:
Whitman is such a drama queen. I can’t believe the hissy fit he threw during the filler shoot.
Why is Whitman in this game? Aside from being the dubiously blonde white dude who betrays the group and dies? Why did these characters take him along? Like, what purpose does he serve? How does he make this garbage better? This might come as a shock to some, but ‘more characters’ does not actually mean ‘better quality’. Usually it just means you have more boring, garbage filler characters.
Lara, you remember her. My young protégée… she has real data to back up her theories, but she doesn’t have my savvy. It’s going to be my name on the discovery and my face in front of the cameras.
What does this add? Aside from making Not-Lara into more of an idiot than she already is.
Lara’s having a crisis of confidence . . .
That does, indeed, sound just like Lara! Good job, Crystal Dynamics, you really get her character.
Ever since I told Lara the story of Himiko years ago, she’s been hunting for its location.
Ah, further erasure of Lara’s agency — just the thing every great character needs! Besides, if Not-Lara has been hunting for this location for “years” — how many years does that even imply? she’s, like, in her early twenties? — then what’s her problem when she finally finds the place?
NOT-LARA: We’re not standing on a myth, Dr Whitman~
Now that’s out of the way~ Last time on Reboot Two Not-Lara got caught in a bear trap and attacked by wolves. After killing the wolves, she proceeds to limp and lean on her decrepit bow or Whitman for support. This is what she does about two minutes later:
Ah, that sweet sweet R E A L I S M™.
Also, most of these screenshots are so dark I have to brighten them.
G A M E P L A Y!
STRAWMAN: the gameplay is soooo much better than in the original games!
Like, seriously? Can we not?
RANDOM DEVELOPER: Now that games look, like, hyperrealistic and we have these fancy narratives, how are we going to increase the player’s im-mer-sion?
RANDOM DEVELOPER: I know! Let’s make the players tap a button. Repeatedly.
RANDOM DEVELOPER: Genius.
It’s about as good and necessary as quick-time events.
HA HA HA!
Well. That didn’t age well.
You know, Original Lara had already encountered supernatural creatures by the age of fourteen or fifteen. But I’ll talk more about this later.
Not-Lara, somehow magically forgetting she has a bow and a pickaxe that’s ever so great for bashing in the skulls of trained soldiers. Instead, she hides behind a dude.
Well,
right until the dude proves to be useless. And then she gets assaulted for the fourth time in thirty minutes. Discounting all the rest of the shite she gets inflicted with.
HIS HAND IS ACTUALLY ON HER ARSE.
HA HA HA!
JUST WHAT LARA’S CHARACTER NEEDED.
I can’t with this crap, seriously. Like, even my holy hatred towards this thing has waned and now all’s left is to just laugh at the utter fucking garbage.
TOTALLY NECESSARY. For, uuuh, *shuffles notes*, character development!
That uncomfortable feeling when you actually share a sentiment with said creep.
More totally necessary creepiness.
Getting assaulted for the fifth time in thirty minutes.
Like, be honest with me. How many people got off to this game?
And that’s that for today because I just… I don’t have the will to go on. Also, this post is already pretty long so I’ll talk about the original Tomb Raiders, Lara and the supernatural creatures in another post.
You know what Not-Lara’s character actually makes me think of? That she’s Katniss Everdeen cosplaying as Lara Croft. Except that Katniss actually had a braid.
I’ve heard people say that “it doesn’t matter what the character looks like! as long as they respect the character’s ‘essence'”. And it’s like, no, they’re thinking this entirely the wrong way.
You see, if the creators can’t respect something as “superficial” as the character’s looks then what on earth makes people think they’ll respect anything else?
And you know what this reminds me of? That moment in The Last of Us when Joel fell off the second floor and got impaled on a thing. But unlike Joel, who spent months afterwards bed-ridden with an infection, Not-Lara just walks it off and goes right into wading pools of filthy stagnant water and blood. R E A L I S M!™
Why didn’t Joel just walk it off? Oh, that’s right — because he wasn’t a twenty-something girl. That old wuss.
Honestly, the whole gaming industry and its sycophants are completely bankrupt.
But back to the petty territory, you know what else bothers me about Not-Lara’s voice aside from the fact that she can’t shut up for five minutes? Original Lara had this clear high-class British inflection — I can’t place the accent, if it even is an accent, because I’m not that familiar with British accents — but Not-Lara sounds like an American roleplaying as British. Which is really bizarre because apparently her voice actress is actually British.
Be that as it may, there was more personality in Original Lara’s little ‘aha’ whenever she found something than in, well, anything that this thing utters.
“Please come get me”.
Words Original Lara wouldn’t be caught dead saying. Even when she was a kid and got in trouble because of her own curiosity and temerity, she still never begged an adult to please come get her.
Survival action at its finest. Gods know I want to be emotionally handheld when I’m playing survival action in which I have to murder hundreds of enemy NPCs.
She reminds herself, as she bashes yet another skull of a trained soldier with a pickaxe.
I honest to god hope that this IP either dies or it’s wrenched from Crystal Dynamics’ incompetent hands or they just commit to their mediocre original fiction and stop trying to pass it off as Tomb Raider.
Even if this thing somehow magically became Lara Croft — which I seriously doubt because Crystal Dynamics has had six games and twelve years to write Lara and they’ve flubbed it every time — it’s not called “character development” when a character becomes completely contradictory of who they started as.
It’s called being a hack.
I hate the save system in this game. Do you know how hard it makes to get screenshots so I can point out at excessive and obsessive length how much this game fails to be Lara Croft?
That said, let me get this out of the way too: I hate Crystal Dynamics garbage fan fiction of Lara Croft. Although I guess it’s a bit incorrect to call it ‘fan fiction’ since it’s evident Crystal Dynamics never liked, appreciated or understood the original Tomb Raiders or Lara’s character.
On the other hand, that presupposes that people who call themselves ‘fans’ actually understand the stories and characters they’re writing about and frankly, that’s just not the case across any fandom. Most fan fiction is garbage, and most people’s interest in their “favourite stories” and “favourite characters” only extends as far as they can write bad and generic porn about them.
But I might do a separate post on fan fiction later.
Anyway,
Not-Lara, sitting around and feeling bad about killing a deer. You know, Original Lara regularly killed animals, even rare and extinct animals, and she certainly didn’t stop to sit around to feel bad about it. Or she sold them to Vegas. And I’m saying this as someone who really dislikes killing animals in video games herself.
Just because I would feel bad about it, it doesn’t mean that I require the character I’m playing as to feel bad about it too. But of course, Not-Lara is just a bland self-insert for certain specific types of people.
Please come get me?
Please come get me?
If we made a drinking game “take a shot every time this thing isn’t Lara Croft”, you’d be suing Crystal Dynamics for death from alcohol poisoning. I kinda want to sue them anyway for causing me psychical pain.
More emotional pep talk. Because dear gods, emotional handholding is exactly what the player needs when they’re trying to play an action game where they’ll be murdering waves upon waves of enemies.
Aaaand of course Not-Lara was taught everything she knows by a man instead of it being something she learned and trained by herself. Because removing every last vestige of your character’s agency is top-tier writing. Good job, Crystal Dynamics. You really nailed her character — right to the fucking ground.
Have I mentioned I hate this Reboot Two trilogy? Because I absolutely hate this Reboot Two trilogy.
Wading through a filthy pool of stagnant water with an open wound and burns?
But sure, Realism™.
And you know what’s another thing that annoys me? Not-Lara is so sloooow. And sure, she has that open wound but seriously, the game stopped treating her like she has a wound as soon as she got it.
You know, this place has been basically abandoned since the days of “Himiko”. So who the hell put up this poster? The Germans? The Russians?
Holy shit this girl has even less of a survival instinct than Not-Lara. The dude even sounds generically evil.
And you know what I actually hate the most in this game? This girl. Like, gods in heaven and all their celestial bodies, I hate. this. girl.
Her exact purpose in the game is to be just like Princess Peach or Zelda but unlike the latter she isn’t even cute or funny. Her exact purpose is to be Lara’s chronically kidnapped “princess” because evidently this is just fucking splendid when it’s about two girls. Progress™!
Not-Lara gets concussed, assaulted, burned, almost raped, stabbed, shot, caught in a bear trap, and repeatedly falls from high places.
This girl? Gets kidnapped.
And then Not-Lara has to carry her down a mountain princess-style. I wanted to toss her into the damn sea.
Well, at least Sam’s character gets erased in the sequels and is never mentioned again so there’s always that.
But I just realised I’m terrified to check out the Tomb Raider fan fiction because I’m convinced it’s full of nothing but Sam/Not-Lara coffee shop au porn, Not-Lara/Jonah porn, Not-Lara/insert some other uninteresting character porn. Instead of, y’know, fan fics of actual Lara doing actual adventures.
This girl is honest to god too fucking stupid to live.
So pretty much what Original Lara used to be and Not-Lara decidedly isn’t?
And you know what this little segment reminds me of for some reason? Dragon Age: Origins.
Not-Lara: And this is where she loses me~
Generic Evil Dude Whose Name I Can’t For the Life of Me Remember or Care to Remember: Well, there’s always some truth to myths~
It’s honestly starting to feel like Crystal Dynamics is constantly insulting me while stabbing an ice pick into my brain.
You see, Original Lara took old myths and legends seriously ever since she was a kid even if she didn’t much care about magic itself. And by seriously I mean “handle with care”. If you don’t believe me, check games four and five.
But here Not-Lara is supposed be, like, scientific! She’s a real archaeologist, see! Look how she dismisses the mystical mumbo jumbo which — totally incidentally I assure you — her dad believed in. This was a source of contention between them until Not-Lara learned that daddy dearest was, in fact, right all along about the mystical mumbo jumbo, and now she’s ever so sorry, how could she have ever doubted him. Now she’ll embark on a journey to show the WHOLE WORLD that her daddy was right all along, take that you mean old men in academia!
Because daddy issues, that’s exactly what Lara Croft’s character needed. She’s so realistic and relatable, oh my god.
Like, one of the few female characters who was clever, resourceful and self-reliant, doing things because she wants to for the fun of it, and Crystal Dynamics turned her into this? This sociopathic insecure wet blanket doing things because of daddy issues. Who’s nothing but an effigy for relentless abuse while she whimpers and gasps and makes other high-pitched sounds and crawls in the mud with her tits and arse in your face.
And people actually think this thing is better? This thing is fine? Seriously, what is wrong with people?
But sure, Original Lara “was just sex”. Unlike Little Miss Relatable and Realistic Reboot™ who was almost fucking raped within thirty minutes of her first game. Because you know what Lara’s character really needed? What was really lacking in the original games? Attempted rape. Because apparently these fucking writers cannot look at a good-looking woman without imagining that she’s been sexually assaulted at some point.
PRI-OR-I-TIES, none of which included writing the actual Lara Croft. Also, a word of advice: get off the porn. Seriously.
Show me one screenshot where Original Lara was sexualised in the games, I fucking dare you. If someone thinks she was sexualised just because she had big tits, then the problem is very much that someone instead of Lara’s fucking tits.
Besides, as if Little Miss Reboot doesn’t have tits that the camera is shoving in your face. Does she even have a sports bra to keep them in that perpetually perky state? Really doesn’t look like it.
And having Not-Lara scream ‘Sam’ every five seconds certainly didn’t endear that character to me. Especially when Not-Lara’s voice alone is driving me up the walls.
For fuck’s sake, game.
You know, Original Lara could get hurt in a lot of different ways but that had more to do with the player’s lack of skill and attention than something the game imposed on her via cutscenes. I’m just saying, but Crystal Dynamics’ treatment of Not-Lara is creepy.
And that’s that for this day because I seriously cannot bear this game for more than five minutes at a time. At this rate, I’ll finish this replay by next century.
Oh my god, I just realised: Not-Lara is basically Alister from Reboot One. No wonder I hate her.
Even her body language is nothing like Original Lara’s. Seriously, how does someone fuck up this badly writing an established character?
…..oh wait.
*side-eyes the Harry Potter fandom*
But anyway, this game just gets on my nerves. It’s like they wanted Not-Lara to be this… weak little girl who needs constant pep talk and care so the player will feel sorry and protective of her. While at the same time they wanted her to be this indestructible “badass” who can mow down dozens or hundreds of trained soldiers with a pickaxe. And take relentless abuse like a pro (concussions, high falls, stabbings, sprained ankles, burns, attempted rapes, etc.). Not to mention infections.
Even if she wasn’t supposed to be Lara Croft — who was the exact opposite of Not-Lara — it’s still creepy. It’s gross. Like, what the fuck? So I have this very unfortunate and dark suspicion that someone got off to this game.
You can add constant mouth-breathing to the list of noises Not-Lara can’t help but make.
Also, I noticed another thing that annoys me; her pieces of jewellery. Not-Lara has two earrings in one ear, one in the other and a leather-cord necklace. Original Lara didn’t wear jewellery. You know how I know? Because she didn’t wear any.
Furthermore, the way Not-Lara needs constant emotional pep talk even from herself grates on me something fierce. Original Lara didn’t need pep talks; she laughed at pep talks. “You’re not worried about me?” She had the ability, talent and resourcefulness to make it, and she knew it. Not to mention! that she was an independently wealthy aristocrat so she would’ve even been schooled in those things.
Not-Lara isn’t an aristocrat. She isn’t anything. She’s an average, mediocre, generic female student, tossed in situations she never intended to end up in and which were beyond her power and control. She’s an aspirational fantasy, realistic and bland enough that you can believe she’s you but unrealistic enough to be indestructible so the writers can heap relentless abuse on her and make her into an “empowered victim”. On the other hand, Original Lara was, for all intents and purposes, a superhero.
The thing is, okay, that we had young Lara. In the original games. And guess what, she was nothing like this emotionally fragile abuse-effigy in Reboot Two.
There’s something incredibly sick that the writers of this game looked at Original Lara, who was clever, resourceful and self-reliant, and thought “let’s victimize her”.
Because there’s no way I’ll call this Tomb Raider.
So. Since I replayed the original games and Reboot One, I thought might as well try replaying and finish playing Reboot Two. ‘Twas a bad decision. I made it five minutes and already it felt like I was losing my freaking mind.
Should’ve expected the quality of the writing from these shots alone. Subtlety of a sledge-hammer.
And yet here you are, coattailing on the reputation of an established character.
No.
Tomb Raider: The Snuff Film
SHE HAS AN OPEN WOUND. SHE LIT HERSELF ON FIRE. You have no excuses, game. Make up your mind whether you want this thing to be Realistic™ or a snuff film.
LARA: *walks through a small waterfall a second time with a torch*
TORCH: *goes out*
LARA: Oh, no. Not again.
Like? Girl, what did you think would happen? So on top of Not Being Lara Croft, she’s a moron? Gotcha.
Getting assaulted for the third time within five minutes. While Lara gasps and makes other high-pitched sounds. The people who made this game had pri-or-i-ties. Unfortunately, none of those priorities were writing the Original Lara Croft.
Also, cussing. Original Lara was too much of a lady to cuss. You know how I know? Because she didn’t do it.
You know, I don’t want to come across as unsympathetic because, sure, it’s horrible what happens to her. But she’s fictional and that’s just cheap emotional manipulation where the writers make you feel bad for a character instead of writing an actual character.
And this thing, this thing just isn’t Lara Croft. So I also mean it when I say, screw this girl, honestly. Ha ha.
No.
Shouldn’t have skipped those poise lessons.
I know this honestly sounds petty because she just got an open wound, but she moves exactly like this for the entire game so all I have to ask is: WHERE IS HER ATHLETICISM? WHERE IS HER GRACE? Nowhere, that’s where, because this thing isn’t Lara Croft.
(And yes, I know she’s still more athletic than me or the majority of people but the point is that she isn’t Lara Croft.)
The subtitles are too small to see but she says “Sam!” Not the first Sam we got but holy shit we started this in five minutes.
Furthermore, I forgot how much her voice drives me up the fucking walls. She’s constantly, constantly, gasping and making high-pitched sounds and talking to herself in this perpetually breathless voice, and I’m like, shut the fuck up for five minutes for the love of gods.
She also startles at every sound while making this little gasp, and everything about her just screams This Thing is Not Lara Croft.
So if you want a lesson how not to write an established character, play these games. They’re great.
A while ago I bought the original Tomb Raiders for a guy I know as a lark. Because I have a soul of mischief and I knew he wouldn’t like them. He can dress it up in all the valid points he wants — such as “the gameplay is soooo bad”, as if he would recognise good gameplay even if it hit him in the face — but c’mon, it’s the graphics.
Funny enough, someone else made the same point recently to me. He wanted a Final Fantasy VII remake for better graphics and equated this to animal courtship. And it’s like, dude, it’s a video game. You’re not trying to mate with it. Besides, video game graphics should be stylised for the specific game in the first place instead of every game trying to be this hyperrealistic film. Just saying, but the prettier the graphics, the less there is actual gameplay.
I mean, everyone else seems to salivate over these hyperrealistic graphics while I’m over here admiring how far pixel graphics have come and feeling nostalgic for the nineties’ graphics.
Anyhow, we ended up talking about the original games a couple of days ago. He was complaining about the gameplay, the graphics and the textures and what have you. Which is actually pretty funny because I was surprised how well those still hold up twenty years later. You can do more in the original Tomb Raider than you can in many modern games.
I tried explaining to him that the Reboot Two is bad and Miss Reboot isn’t Lara. And here’s where we get to the point of this post because this honestly irritated me so badly.
SOME GUY I KNOW: You’re just mad because they shrunk her tits, you pervert.
Uh-huh, sure. I’ve totally complained about her tits all this time:
Tomb Raider: Reboot
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest
Nightmare in Vegas
Lara Croft, the Original
Tomb Raider: Legend
SOME GUY I KNOW: Uh, yeah. It’s an origin story.
If someone actually thinks that the thing in Reboot Two is going to become Lara Croft, I’m sad to say they’re either stupid or delusional or both.
At least in Reboot One she’s somewhat recognisable as Lara Croft, in this fan fiction way that she’s someone’s idea of Lara Croft.
But in Reboot Two, Miss Reboot is a generic, mediocre original character wearing the thin skin of Lara Croft. Probably because it’s easier to cash in on an existing IP and, for better or worse, Lara Croft is an iconic character. And let me tell you a secret: it’s not because of the reboots.
If the original Lara had been like the thing in Reboot Two, she would’ve quickly been forgotten in the dustbin of history.
Reboot Two took original Lara’s personality, her motivations, and her agency, and replaced them with fuck all. Reboot One did this too, although to a lesser degree. This is why I can’t stand either of them, regardless of how “pretty” the graphics look or how “good” the gameplay is.
So really, if that guy I know is going to be strawmanning me at least he could have the decency to make up something even slightly intelligent.
Moreover, he’s the kind of guy who can’t hear a single word of criticism of something he likes. For example, he doesn’t want to hear me trashing Harry Potter lest he’ll stop liking them and all I can think of is: imagine having that weak sense of self.
He’s also the kind of guy who goes trawling through videos and comments to hear someone else articulate his dislike for something — such as The Wheel of Time recently. And yet ironically he doesn’t have the self-awareness or empathy to realise that what was done to The Wheel of Time is exactly what was done to Tomb Raider years earlier.
“Origin story”, indeed.
To quote the immortal words of Heraclitus:
Stupidity is better
kept a secret
than displayed.
It’s not that I mind that he was wrong and strawmanning me. I’ve been wrong about plenty of things. But the least he could’ve done was admit he’s never played or liked the original games, and stopped there.
Whew. I feel much better after getting that off my chest.
Also, I’m not sure how many people this interests but I shall try to continue Harry Potter tomorrow. Er… or later today. I totally failed to finish the book this year, ha ha.
I finally managed to replay the first four games. I’m currently on the fifth; I like it so far even though it took me a while to get it to work. It feels more like classic Tomb Raider than the fourth game.
I figured I’d do a post on them — and by that I mean I’ll complain about The Last Revelation (1999) and the Reboot Trilogy a bit, ha ha.
The first thing I realised during my replay was that the Reboot Trilogy actually rehashed a lot of things from the original games. And what I mean is that they took the trappings of the original games and then they made everything worse. As modern reboots tend to do.
The second thing I realised was that Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation was… strange. It rather felt like it was going to be the last game of the series even if they did end up making two games after it.
For one thing, the tone was different. It was darker and Lara seemed to be having less fun with her escapades. Of course, inadvertently starting the apocalypse probably wouldn’t give a girl a lot to enjoy about.
But that added with lines like “Jean, I’m tired. Give a girl a break” and “My dear, when all this is over you can retire” felt like death flags. So it wasn’t really a surprise when Lara was implied to have died at the end.
Which is actually another complaint I have; I can understand getting tired of writing the same character but instead of just killing them off, why not give them a definite ending?
Curiously, though, Lara also felt younger in The Last Revelation. Almost as if the game took place before the previous three games. But eh, might’ve just been her voice.
The whole game took place in Egypt. The areas were unique enough — I liked the one on the train — but at the same time it was basically sand, sand and more sand. It was rather dull compared to the previous games that went from snowy places to jungles to urban centres to caves to the bottom of the sea. One of my favourite levels is the sunken ship in the second game.
Another thing I didn’t like was Von Croy. Honestly, just his name sounds so bloody pretentious and fake. It didn’t help that he was introduced in the game as if I was already supposed to know who he was and I swear if he was explained in some comic book or other supplementary material… This is the exact same reason why I didn’t like Vega in Mass Effect. Because screw your supplementary materials, that’s why.
And — this is admittedly petty of me — I didn’t like his accent. The constant ja ja ja certainly didn’t endear him to me. Neither did his weird flirtatious attitude in the tutorial because, dude, Lara’s like fifteen.
I also really wished they hadn’t put sound effects when Lara crawls or slides down poles. Because it makes this kind of shish shish sound and all I could think of was that her skin is totally getting scraped off which gave me intense sympathy pains.
But I guess my biggest complaint is the ending.
You see, whether they meant to kill Lara off for good or not, they did end up continuing the series. The Angel of Darkness was supposed to pick up from where The Last Revelation ended. It was supposed to be a trilogy but it flopped with the first part because the shareholders reportedly rushed the release. And, well, obviously that didn’t end well.
And what even is that? Why would you deliberately rush the release of an unfinished product and basically nuke your entire IP and credibility? Even if it did rake in short-term profits, what’s it going to do for the long-term profits? Like, people do realise that slash-and-burn tactics only work with agriculture, right?
*looks at the gaming industry*
Or I don’t know, I guess it works in the gaming industry too?
Anyhow~ So, either Lara was going to die off for good in The Last Revelation or the story was supposed to continue in The Angel of Darkness but ended up unfinished.
Either way, it means the ending of The Last Revelation, and consequently the series, feels unsatisfying.
So I thought it’d be pretty cool if we actually got a remake of The Angel of Darkness and its two sequels that were never made, and the series was finished like it was supposed to. But I suspect that won’t happen because there have been two reboots already, and the second reboot butchered Lara’s character.
Last but not least, there was one thing in particular that amused me endlessly in The Last Revelation.
This. She’s digging a hole. And yet, who digs like this? How do you use a shovel like this? Obviously I can’t say for sure but the long handle is there for a reason.
And Only.
I thought it’s time to do another post on things I actually like.
I started replaying the original games a couple of weeks ago. Somehow I’d managed to forget ninety per cent of what went on in them and the whole time I was playing I thought: “wait, there was something like this too?”
I guess cunningly forgetting what happens in the games keeps them fresh, ha ha.
This will probably be a bit incoherent, as my posts usually are. And I’ll mostly focus on the general misconceptions about Lara’s character. Mainly that she supposedly doesn’t have “much of a personality”. This is usually said by people who like the 2013 Reboot and it makes me think: “What are you talking about? Original Lara is made of pure awesome.”
Even though the original games aren’t “character-centric” interactive films disguised as games, there are several things you can infer of Original Lara’s character.
She lives in a mansion and travels all around the world in search of obscure mythical trinkets so she’s rich and aristocratic. This is further reinforced by her poise. And sure, she probably couldn’t be depicted as anything other than ramrod straight because of technical limitations but even when she walks she does it in this really dainty way which I find endlessly amusing.
Miss Reboot doesn’t have poise. Miss Reboot slouches, and looks and acts like she’s constantly overwhelmed. Miss Reboot doesn’t inspire confidence or the belief that she can actually survive whatever comes her way. She’s a very generic brunette protagonist that was or still is popular in YA fiction, and people actually think this gives her a personality. Also, I just don’t like her voice. You know that cadence — that slightly breathless constantly on the verge of tears cadence which they give to every generic female character. It drives me up the walls.
But anyway~ This post was supposed to be about things I like so back to Original Lara.
Even though she constantly pulls these superhuman feats in the games, I like how she’s still a complete girl. What I mean is that the way she swims, pulls and pushes heavy boxes is distinctly feminine, and I speak from experience as a girl. Her long swinging braid also gives her this youthful exuberance which I find really cute. Her little “aha” whenever she found something was adorable as well.
She has a home gym which means she regularly trains when she isn’t out travelling. In the second game she gets an outdoor obstacle course as well. And I knew before she even said it that she built it because of the events of the first game so she could further train herself to face anything. So she’s diligent.
She most empathetically is not an archeologist. As much as I adore her, the woman hasn’t done a day of archeology in her life. She’s a grave robber — or a treasure hunter, if you prefer a nicer word for it — who does it for thrills and shiny trinkets. And in the process blows up sections of the Great Wall of China and somehow doesn’t get executed as a terrorist, ha ha. And wait, is that why her treasure vault was missing in the third game? She paid for the repairs?
In the introductory cinematic to the first game, Natla flaunts her money to make Lara do a thing for her and she gets up and goes “I’m sorry. I only play for sport.” At the end of the second game, we see her admiring her new dagger of Xian on the bed before she’s about to sleep.
She also has skin of steel. In the third game she was crawling all over the place with her shorts and I felt such intense sympathy pain for her bare legs. Like, imagine what her knees and shins would look like after crawling on rock. Just thinking about it hurts.
But this brings me to another point. This is a woman who travels all around the world in search of mythical trinkets, a woman who spends her time crawling, jumping, climbing and swimming in dubious places, a woman who faces cryptids, other extinct and mythical beasts, and dangerous cults — and she does it all for fun. So evidently she isn’t much fussed about propriety or etiquette, and quite likely she found the aristocratic life boring.
Unlike Miss Reboot who either stumbles into it by accident or because she feels ever so sorry for doubting her dead dad about the mystical nonsense and something something Christian cults. Just typing that out was physically painful.
Also, Original Lara either mounts those beasts in her home or sells them to Vegas which will never stop being funny to me. She’s the funniest fictional woman I know.
She’s capable of making the best of every situation. Want to break into a super secret USA government facility? Steal a military bike and jump over the fence. Get arrested in said facility? Break out of your cell, launch a missile and probably start a war, and then take the top secret ufo for a joyride. That, or the military police got so sick of her killing their men that they tossed her out and told her to go, ha ha. So she’s resourceful and clever.
Original Lara’s personality is in what she does. Not in her whining her “emotions” at a camera.
People’s inability to infer anything from fiction makes me despair.
The Reboot pretends that Miss Reboot will “grow up” into the Original Lara. But the thing is, you kind of really don’t “grow up” to be great. You’re born great.
It is ever the events that are born of the man, and not the man of the events.
The Reboot presents that same tiresome fantasy of empowerment from trauma that most contemporary “underdog” stories do. I say this sincerely: Stop it. No, seriously. Stop it.
Trauma doesn’t make you strong. It doesn’t make you brave. It doesn’t make you good or somehow more worthy. In fact, it’s more likely to do the exact opposite. Unprocessed trauma manifests in two different ways: you either start hurting yourself or you start hurting others. And considering Miss Reboot finds new inventive ways to murder people and then narcissistically defends it with “I only kill to survive~”… well, I’m sure the results speak for themselves.
Original Lara did what she had to. She never tried to justify herself (because, you know, it’s just gameplay). If someone got in her way, they could consider themselves dead and she never made a fuss about it.
Also, even though Original Lara is pretty, she’s never sexualised in the games. She never even tries to use her looks to get what she wants. Unlike Miss Reboot who was almost raped within thirty minutes of her first game.
I actually know someone who thinks the Reboot Trilogy (upcoming tetralogy?) are better games. I keep telling him he makes me sad.
I didn’t quite make it to the end of this game before my sister came to visit and I gave the console to her. So this review will be about the game up until chapter twenty-two.
I’d like to start by saying how very impressed I am at the way Nintendo managed to milk this game. Not only are there three separate paths that you have to pay for, there are also DLC and amiibo — these figurines you can use to download cameo characters from the previous games. Obviously these aren’t necessary purchases but I still find it impressive compared to the old games.
Speaking of cameos, Fates already has three characters from Awakening (2012) making a reappearance. I didn’t quite understand why because it isn’t like these characters are integral to the storyline — mostly they just seemed to hang around and mumble about a mission and make a few winks to Awakening. Not to mention I’d already married them off in Awakening so I kept having this unfortunate feeling that I was making them cheat. As such, I didn’t really care for their presence.
I did like the castle in Fates and Lilith — I thought she was an adorable fish squirrel dragon — but for the most part the story just seemed very lacklustre. Fire Emblems were always pretty generic but they had their own charm that this one seemed to lack.
At first, the story actually seemed to try to make Corrin’s origins a mystery — which is just silly since in real life she’d only need to look in the mirror to realise One of These Things is Not Like the Others.
Then we had to deal with her stupidity in regard to her adoptive father who, by the way, killed her biological father in front of her when she was just a little child. Basically, her adoptive father is a genocidal maniac. It didn’t bother me that his kids didn’t do anything about him in spite of disagreeing with just about all of his methods because people don’t actually do all that much about despots.
No, what bothered me was how Corrin managed to be shocked and surprised every time her genocidal maniac adoptive father did something genocidal and maniacal. Every. Single. Time. Like, Corrin, either stab him in the throat with your sword or get on with things but at least stop being so surprised.
One of the things I’ve always liked about Fire Emblems was the characters and the support conversations, my favourite being all of Morgan’s support conversations in Awakening because he was really such an adorable sweetheart.
But in Fates they just seemed either boring and uninspired or short and ended abruptly in the middle. It’s not that I disliked any of the characters — aside from maybe Nina — but they just seemed very stiff and dull.
You know how North American entertainment seems to have these Diversity™ boxes that they tick off — one egregious example being Tomb Raider (2013)? There was the black woman engineer, the Polynesian cook, the half-Japanese lesbian, and all the white dudes were either evil or ended up dead. They even managed to squeeze in Nazis and evil Russians because apparently American Entertainment never got past WWII or the Cold War. Tomb Raider reboot was hilarious.
As a side note: to be fair, I don’t know if Sam was a lesbian and I don’t really care. It’s just she was Lara’s useless, chronically kidnapped princess — because apparently this is okay when they are both women — and Lara spent most of her already dull lines uttering Sam in various distraught ways. And at the end of the game Lara carried her bridal style down the mountain. The audience swooned while all I could think of was where is my x button so I can toss her in the damn sea. I did not like Sam.
Anyhow, in Fates it seemed a little as if they were ticking off fetish boxes. There was the Doting Big Sister of the Big Boobs, the Loli Little Sister, the Trap, the Fujoshi and the Female Prince. It almost felt as if they were trying to expand their appeal — by scraping the bottom of the barrel. You see, the thing about appeal is that when you try to appeal to everyone you usually end up appealing no one.
Also, one of the things I couldn’t stand was the bonding time between Corrin and her spouse. I don’t mind giving my avatar a romance — I did play the Dragon Age and Mass Effect — but I really do not appreciate the feeling of being romanced back by a game character. It’s extremely creepy.
Speaking of creepy support options, in Fates you can marry a girl or a boy who is approximately twelve if I’m being generous. They ended up taking off the same-sex marriages in the North American release because of “controversy” but apparently straight-up paedophilia is okay. Oh, and unless Azura’s support options spoil some things about her storyline and origins, you can also marry half-siblings together in this game.
Fates was just bizarre, almost like a collection of Japanese fetishes, and not all that well thought-out. Even the skill inheritance was rather pointless — a feature they introduced in Awakening, I think, unless I missed a game somewhere. In Awakening the kids at least had totally different classes from their parents but in Fates they had the same classes as their dads.
So if anyone is interested in the Fire Emblem games, I wouldn’t recommend starting with this one. I’d recommend Blazing Blade (2003) and Sacred Stones (2004) and Awakening. I still have Shadows of Valentia to play whenever I and my sister get the money to buy it and I really hope it doesn’t have the same trends as in Fates.
I’ve liked Lara Croft since I was a wee little girl and played these games with my sister. I was the brains and she was the minion who moved the character until she mutinied and our glorious partnership broke apart. ‘Twas a sad day.
That said, the (newest) Tomb Raider reboots are ridiculous.
I like the graphics, the environments are pretty, and I like the puzzles.
Tomb Raider (1996)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015)
It has come so far: I’m proud of it. But the stories are still ridiculous.
You see, incongruously what I liked about Lara Croft was that she was essentially a psychopath. She went where she wanted, did what she wanted, and it didn’t matter if you were a human or an exotic and extinct animal she would shoot you down if you got in her way and then she’d shoot you anyway. And she did it all with style and grace and fun.
Lara Croft was awesome, pointed boobs that could kill you and all.
Her newest reincarnation? Not so much.
The thing is, I can’t figure out whom she’s supposed to appeal to. She’s a total earsore: she whines her way through the games and I suppose the writers tried to make her “realistic” but she isn’t realistic. Your realistic inexperienced archeology student isn’t going to craft a gun from disintegrating junk she’s found around the wilderness and mow down hundreds of trained soldiers and immortal Japanese samurai by her lonesome. Your realistic woman — or a man — is going to curl up somewhere and die.
She still comes off as a total psychopath but in that grating way that makes you wonder what the writers were thinking — or not thinking, as it were. One moment she’d be whining about her friends and then she’d be distracted by oh! shiny! Next moment she’d be whining about how she doesn’t want to kill people and then she’d be mowing down hundreds of human soldiers, most of them in a similar situation as her, like so much grass.
She also, hilariously, says she only kills to survive. But the thing is, when your gameplay encourages you to maim, shoot, poison, roofie, drown, behead, burn, explode, cleave and deroof those enemies then you are going way beyond survival and there is a serious problem between your gameplay and your storyline.
All of her motivations as well trace back to her dad — trying to connect to a dead man or trying to understand a dead man or endlessly apologising to said dead man during her dull monologues by the campfire. Daddy issues aren’t a new trope — or exclusive to women, Muse only knows that half the male characters have daddy issues in droves — but I do find it a regression from the Lara who did things just because she wanted to.
They took all the awesome out of Lara Croft and then replaced her with an obnoxious twenty-something college student who’s soft and graceless and weak. All for the sake of making her “realistic” and “strong” and “empowered”.
Here’s a protip: those three things never end well.
Hiraeth 