There was little exploration of this contradiction, and the result was a very breezy collection of superb platform puzzle games.Īnd then comes 2013. And then had her act in pretty much exactly the same way, stealing or shooting everything she encountered. Giving her friendships with mostly off-screen characters Alistair and Zip, a human antagonist in the form of Amanda Evert, and a purpose in her desire to understand the disappearance of her mother after she touched some magical doodah.
When CD got their hands on the franchise, they humanised Lara to a superb degree. (Geddit?) And I think, on reflection, this made the most sense. Lara was a self-employed mercenary, amoral to the core. It's a cliche even to make that point! You knew as you sat in front of your PlayStation that what you were doing simply wasn't OK, and gosh it was fun doing it.
Her polygonal face never cracked a smile, as she darted about grabbing Nazi gold or whatever and shooting any endangered species that might be unfortunate enough to cross her path. Lara wasn't ever a goodie, and that's quite interesting.Ĭore handled this by having her be terrifyingly indifferent. We all know it, and I think for the longest time, rather a lot of us rather liked it. Sure, she normally has an excuse, something about stopping some malevolent gang of men with guns from getting it first, and you know, while she's there she may as well fill her boots with anything else not nailed down to the temple floors. A super-rich, super-posh British woman who swings her way into absolutely anywhere in the world and steals all their most precious things. Lara, in any of her incarnations, has always been a bit of a prize dick. So something's always felt a bit wrong about Tomb Raider, and we all know it. Lara says "fuck" now! Gritty stuff! Totally different from before. And so, with varying degrees of success, the games, um, did the same as before but with more cutscenes and QTEs, and the innovation of swears. What we actually got was a reluctant sociopath Lara, resigning herself to becoming a mass murderer because otherwise how was she going to get the McGuffin Of Time from the Temple Of Indigeneity? Her dad wanted it, and that MAKES HER CRY. This of course ignored the fantastically well-rounded and congenial character she'd become in Crystal Dynamic's (CD) previous run from 2006-2008, not so much a reinvention as an evolution of the drier all-business Lara that had previously so firmly told us all "No." throughout the '90s. We were told at the time that this was to be a reinvention, Lara as a far more human person, rather than the stoic and stern character of the Olden Days. Of course, the most recent trilogy of games, beginning with the groundbreakingly imaginative name of "Tomb Raider" in 2013, was supposed to see Lara change. I'm here to argue it's time for Lara to go.
She's twelve main games old, twenty-ish if you count the mobile and off-brand ones, and 22 years old if you count in linear time. This would be the second set of three games from Crystal Dynamics (with help from other parts of Eidos), following on from the six titles created by Core (if you don't count the Game Boy ones).