The Idiosyncrasies of Lara Croft

[zinho73]

Let me put this way:

She is trained with bows and firearms but never killed before. When she realizes the only way to get out of the island is killing her hunters, she goes after them very efficiently.

She has some experience in climbing but clearly never climbed a rusty tower with her bare hands or a suspended ship or never thought it would be possible to make several death and gravity defying jumps in sequence.

The efficiency that she kills is the same efficiency that she jumps and climb - it is exaggerated and borderline impossible, like in any action movie - but I don't see anyone complaining about the climbing or action sequences.

That's because people like the climbing Lara and dislike the violent one. The disconnection is not within the game - it is between the game and the fans of the franchise.

 

[zinho73]

I thought the whole story emphasis was a bit of a red herring anyway. The original wasn't much of a narrative. You're one person alone for the majority of the game, and there's not a fat lot of dialogue. So if they've cocked up that side of it, I can only say more fool them for trying.

Speaking of which, there wasn't a fat lot of shooting in the original either. It's supposed to be about exploration and puzzle solving. I've read conflicting reviews about that side. Like some have said the whole tomb sections are a bit side-quest-ey with no real point to them, while others have said that's the best part of it. I'll give it a fair look anyway.

The Tomb parts of the game are really weird because they are kind of cool (albeit short), but the rewards for raiding them are worthless most of the time.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

From the look of some gameplay clips I've watched Lara seems to be killing people by the dozen just fine. It seems a bit of stretch, considering how hyped the "I took a human life!" cutscene is, and how unlikely it would be to go from your very first kill to a hundred-ish spree in so very little time. But hey, so long as Squeenix didn't make it into a cutscene fest I'm fine with it.

 

[jcfrommars9]

I'm going to post a variation of what I said on another topic.

Lara Croft in this game, is what I call a true survivor. What I mean by that is the end, she will do whatever she must to survive. Before Lara kills a person for the first time, she and Dr. Whitman are surrounded by two mercenaries and unknowingly a third. Dr. Whitman surrenders in the hopes that by doing so, they can live. "Just go along with them Lara." Lara's reaction is much different. Before Dr. Whitman surrenders, she tells him that he has the gun. And even when he surrenders, Lara tries to fight back before the third mercenary grabs her. What this scene reflects is what does one do to stay alive. In Lara's case, it's fight. Most of us would be like Dr. Whitman. Who would take their chances going up against three or even two mercenaries even if we have the gun? Not many people. But Lara Croft would. It's real call of the wild stuff. Roth says to her it couldn't have been easy to kill the people she did. She responds that it was scary just how easy it was. At that moment she starts to sense that her will to survive is far stronger than she realized. So strong that despite her horror at killing someone, she can do it again and she knows it.

 

[Sixcess]

I think it's hilarious.

After all the revisionist sneering that was done in the run up to this game -

"Oh the old Lara was a one dimensional psychopath who murdered people by the dozen and singlehandedly endangered entire species, but now she is human and relatable and..."

- it's nice to know that New Lara is exactly the fucking same, except for some visual changes and some cutscenes.

I hope when Yahtzee does his review in a week or two he uses the old Lara-wearing-dead-guy's-brains-for-a-hat again. Sounds like it'd be justified.

 

[jcfrommars9]

I think it's hilarious as well but in a different way. Whenever things stay the same, we want change. Whenever things change, we want them to stay the same. By the way Sixcess, where did you get that (in my opinion) nonsense from?

 

[Sixcess]

By the way Sixcess, where did you get that (in my opinion) nonsense from?

Which nonsense? I write so much of it...

If you mean the 'quote' in my previous post that wasn't drawn from a specific person, just intended as a summary of a lot of the criticisms of the previous games in the franchise. People attacked Old Lara for being... well, for being a video games character, really. New Lara was hailed as a big step forward as she would be more 'realistic'. There was an awful lot of that - some of it valid, some of not so much...

Whenever things stay the same, we want change. Whenever things change, we want them to stay the same.

The missed opportunity here is that CD have done neither. They'll never have another opportunity to really shake up the franchise like they had this time*, and by all accounts they've taken the easy way out. Character development solely via cutscenes? Don't devs get burned at the stake for doing that here in the hallowed halls of the Escapist?

They could have made every kill that Lara makes an event, at least every human kill. The original Tomb Raider had a very low human bodycount - 4 I think in the entire game. Indeed one of the criticisms of the next couple of games was that there was way too many human enemies, so they dialled it down for The Last Revelation. Putting the emphasis back on exploration, traps and puzzles (and the poor old wildlife) would've done the job.

*[sub]well, not until the next reboot, I guess.[/sub]

 

[Lilani]

No, gameplay and story segregation is a thing, and it's been a thing for ages. More importantly, gameplay and story integration has also been a thing for a while now.

Yeah, that's the main argument I have a problem with this whole situation. Just because other games have had a day-and-night difference between their characters in cutscenes and their characters in gameplay doesn't mean it's something that doesn't deserve criticism, and nor does it mean that it's actually a good thing. Hell Alyx Vance first came on the scene seven years ago and her behavior was consistent between gameplay and cutscenes. There really is no excuse for it. They could have pulled it off with the right planning and pacing, and the fact that they opted not to is something that we should look into and ask why.

 

[jcfrommars9]

By the way Sixcess, where did you get that (in my opinion) nonsense from?

Which nonsense? I write so much of it...

If you mean the 'quote' in my previous post that wasn't drawn from a specific person, just intended as a summary of a lot of the criticisms of the previous games in the franchise. People attacked Old Lara for being... well, for being a video games character, really. New Lara was hailed as a big step forward as she would be more 'realistic'. There was an awful lot of that - some of it valid, some of not so much...

Whenever things stay the same, we want change. Whenever things change, we want them to stay the same.

The missed opportunity here is that CD have done neither. They'll never have another opportunity to really shake up the franchise like they had this time*, and by all accounts they've taken the easy way out. Character development solely via cutscenes? Don't devs get burned at the stake for doing that here in the hallowed halls of the Escapist?

They could have made every kill that Lara makes an event, at least every human kill. The original Tomb Raider had a very low human bodycount - 4 I think in the entire game. Indeed one of the criticisms of the next couple of games was that there was way too many human enemies, so they dialled it down for The Last Revelation. Putting the emphasis back on exploration, traps and puzzles (and the poor old wildlife) would've done the job.

*[sub]well, not until the next reboot, I guess.[/sub]

People get too hung up on that word. "Realistic." I've always trusted the term grounded more. In any case, the game in my opinion did what it was set out to do. Make Lara Croft relevant again and it does in spades. Also in my opinion, character development was a matter of both gameplay and cutscenes. Cutscenes only tell part of the story. Play them alone and it would just confuse others. I know this because some of the questions and/or comments people made in their reviews. They didn't seem to know that Roth had taught Lara how to shoot for instance as well as climb or that Lara herself was scared about how easy it was for her to kill. In the sequel which I'm positive they will make, I'm sure they will delve into more exploration, traps and puzzles given the ending.

 

[jcfrommars9]

No, gameplay and story segregation is a thing, and it's been a thing for ages. More importantly, gameplay and story integration has also been a thing for a while now.

Yeah, that's the main argument I have a problem with this whole situation. Just because other games have had a day-and-night difference between their characters in cutscenes and their characters in gameplay doesn't mean it's something that doesn't deserve criticism, and nor does it mean that it's actually a good thing. Hell Alyx Vance first came on the scene seven years ago and her behavior was consistent between gameplay and cutscenes. There really is no excuse for it. They could have pulled it off with the right planning and pacing, and the fact that they opted not to is something that we should look into and ask why.

In my opinion, I thought the gameplay and the cutscenes was pulled off quite well in this game. I understood where Lara was coming from when she started killing. People asking how can she start killing "wholesale" when for me, it was clear and much more subtle than people think. I don't think people realized how she responded to that russian she killed is part of how she can kill as easily as she did.

 

[XMark]

I've heard this phenomenon referred to as "Ludonarrative Dissonance", the conflict between storytelling and gameplay which just becomes more obvious now that games have realistic graphics and professional voice acting and stuff.

Kind of reminds me of Max Payne 3, where cutscene Max is a drunk fuckup while gameplay Max is the world's best killer. Or how Gordon Freeman is supposedly just a science geek but he's freakishly good at combat for some reason. Or Isaac Clarke, humble space engineer, is somehow a master slayer of zombie space alien mutant things. Or the player character in Medal of Battlefield: Modern Warfighter who has the magical ability to absorb bullets and heal himself after a couple of seconds behind a chest-high wall. Or that italian-american plumber who can smash his head into solid bricks hundreds of times without getting brain damage.

The big problem of narrative between games and other narrative formats, I'm thinking, is mostly in the number of enemies. To be a game, you need levels full of enemies. It's just a game thing, unavoidable at the moment, and the unfortunate thing about that is how it basically turns every game hero into a mass-murderer IF you consider gameplay realistically. I think it's all right to suspend disbelief a bit, and consider the gameplay segments to have a different narrative weight than the cutscenes. If something happens in a cutscene it's more "real" than it happened in gameplay, and we're all aware of this, which is why we know that a certain FF7 character can't be revived with a fenix down after they die in a cutscene.

As for tomb Raider, I think simply dividing the number of enemies in the game by twenty in your head will result in something closer to the cutscene narrative. Heh, interesting concept - an exchange rate between cutscene and gameplay

 

[Beryl77]

Eh, sure it's nice if it's more coherent but I really don't care much about that when I play a game.
Was the same when I played Far Cry 3 recently. This pampered boy gets thrown into the jungle and freaks out when he kills someone for the first time, a bit later and he mows down people and animals. I've simply never had a problem with that stuff and won't start now.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

You know what would have worked better?

Make the game set in a vast and hostile foreign environment. Make it unexplored and dangerous, filled with all sorts of potential pitfall for an unwary explorer. Something that would test Lara's strength and will without her having to murder hundreds of nameless people in order to do it and break the narrative coherence. It would also be a breath of fresh air I think to have a modern game not about murdering hundreds of people.

Maybe they could add in a series of clever puzzles and even keep human interaction at a minimum to emphasize Lara's relative isolation. Make it about exploration and puzzle solving with a splash of danger in the form of environmental threats or even strange and exotic animals. That way when and if you do encounter another person and they turn out to be hostile, the moment is all the more impactful and threatening.

Man, that sounds awesome although I can't help but feel that's been done... oh, what was that game called again?

Oh yeah, it was Tomb Raider. Y'know, before it became about big tits & action sequences, and now gore and shooting people.

Actually I'm pretty sure you just described the first levels of Tomb Raider Revelations.
They have the 2 or 3 tutorial missions where she is about 16 going out on her first ever archaeological dig in Indonesia (yeah they really dicked up the previous timeline canon with this new game) Then you have the first few missions in which you run around a tomb and the only threats are jackals and scorpions, but the challenge comes from the platforming and puzzles (how many people got stuck in the room with the shapes on the floor and the hourglass in the far side stuck behind a metal grate?)
Human enemies don't appear until the sixth or seventh level, and even then the focus always remains on the difficult platforming puzzles.

If this game just went straight into Lara shooting dudes then hilariously enough it's probably one of the Tomb Raider games that gives her the least lead in before showing her comfortable taking other people's lives.

 

[5ilver]

It's really painful to watch. You see this girl put in a bad situation, in obvious pain and fighting for her life. And then the next moment the gameplay starts and the whole atmosphere is completely RUINED. It pisses me off greatly because it could have been a good game.

Let me give a couple examples. You see lara fall down, a sharp object pierces her lower abdomen, she's in obvious pain, there's blood on her shirt (clearly her own blood). Logically, her first instinct should be to clean the wound, get a dressing on it, yes? No, she completely IGNORES the wound and even worse- so does the game. It doesn't get infected, she limps for the first couple hours but that's it.

Later on, you have a LONE GIRL, about 16-20 years of age against DOZENS (if not hundreds) of armed, trained men. She kills them all- without even getting injured. This is fine in Duke Nukem because that game is obviously a joke. But this time, they tried being serious and realistic- and the failure was so much more colossal because of it.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Second, Tomb Raider is not a ?realistic? take on Lara Croft.

It's a gritty reboot origin story... I figured it was supposed to be. I mean they redesigned her to look more realistic, the demos they showed seemed to be going for realism.

It's not impossible to actually have the gameplay reflect the character arc, and if you're not going to do it why bother with that particular character arc to begin with?

Well, they tried I guess. At the beginning of the game, Lara was limited to choking dudes out with a bow for stealth kills and hitting people in the head with a stone for finishers. Now I can smash their skull in with a pick axe or kick a guy on the floor, then fire five rounds into his chest/head. Those moves don't come with the weapons they're assigned to though, you get them later.

She's also been screaming about vengeance in the last half hour that I've been playing, blow up everything with a grenade launcher in hand as opposed to nearly vomiting from killing one guy in the beginning.

If this game just went straight into Lara shooting dudes then hilariously enough it's probably one of the Tomb Raider games that gives her the least lead in before showing her comfortable taking other people's lives.

Eh, well. Lara does actually make a comment when told that taking a life is hard, she said that she was scared because of how easy it was. So...Croft went meta?