The new Tomb Raider - trying to have its cake and eat it?

[Conner42]

That was a problem I've had with the game(This is coming from someone who's played this game all the way through).

The game doesn't know what to do with the whole "dark and edgy" angle that it's taking. It feels like it wants to be dark, grim, gritty, serious, but it's also trying to be over the top, explosive, blood for the sake of blood fun at the same time.

I really like over the top blood and violence, so, yeah, I was pleased with how bloody all of the combat battles could get. But it downplays on how serious the game is trying to be as well. It doesn't know how to balance itself out. At one moment, I'm supposed to feel sorry about Lara being in so much pain and in the next moment, I see Lara drive her climbing axe through somebody's skull.

It feels like they wanted to make a grim, serious story while also wanting to make a fun, B-movie, grindhouse-esque experience, so they just opted for both without realizing how to manage either.

I'm going to blame it on the developers wanting to make a darker, grimmer game. It feels like nobody seems to know that you can make a fun experience while also having it emotionally impactful and meaningful.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

The enemies in the game make pretty clear right from the start that it`s kill or be killed and since Lara herself admits that it was easy to pull the trigger after her first kills i didnt have any trouble with all the shooting. I really liked the ingame lines like "you don`t have to do this, just let me through" or the ones where she was really pissed off or disgusted.

While playing i just skipped the whole violent finishers you can get by wasting experience points on them. Lara defended herself with arrows and her pickaxe but that was it. I thought that the finishers didn`t fit the whole newborn survivor theme. It was my first playthrough and this is the first game where i did something like this, normally it can`t be violent and gory enough.

Aside from that i used the instinct mode only to see where to go next and not to spoil the puzzle fun. Those finishers and the instinct mode are the most useless features in this game but it`s always your choice to use them.

 

[Artemicion]

At the beginning of the game Lara has very few, if any, execution moves. Her accuracy with weapons blows, the only thing you can do with your axe is swing at enemies wildly, and after she's killed her first, she openly remarks how terrifyingly easy it is. Throughout her extended duration in a hostile environment, her body becomes more attuned to the weight and feel of her weapons, and the various leveling up you do reflects this improvement. She has less and less hesitation about killing those who mean her harm as her psyche develops enough to understand that if she doesn't kill them, they'll kill her. She begins to recognize the strengths and weaknesses her own body has, and uses this knowledge to become more capable. She soon executes someone who had tried to kill her by gassing the room she was in, quietly telling him to go to hell.

Her evolution into a capable survivor allows her to even thrive: by the time she's gotten the shotgun, she is able to survive, hunt, and kill with relative success. This ability to thrive in an environment completely hostile to her permits the further development of her skills, providing the chance for more elaborate close-range kills and no shortage of long-range targets.

By the end of the game she's a true amazon, fully capable of killing to survive and without hesitation - however, it's important to note one thing: throughout all of this, she never cracks a smile during a fight, or makes a snide comment to lighten the mood. Make no mistake: she may be going through this, and she may become very good at killing people, but there's nothing about this situation that she's enjoying. Are some of these execution kills over-the-top? Certainly. But they definitely have their place in the game.

 

[lunavixen]

The executions are a late game thing, by then Lara has adjusted to the fact she has to kill, she admits how easy it was to pull the trigger, she kills because she has to, not because she wants to, if you listen and look during fights, she doesn't smile or crack jokes. Also, if you watch her swing the climbing axe, its weight throws her off balance when she swings, it's reasonable that by the time you get the execution moves, she has become more proficient with her weapons.

 

[WouldYouKindly]

she learns things like jamming an arrow from her quiver into an enemy's knee

So the guy used to be a bad guy then he took an Arrow to the Knee?

Get out.

OT: High stress situations can tend to send people into overkill mode. Perfect evidence is a short cutscene in Spec Ops the Line where Walker gets surprised by an enemy and pulverizes his face. Granted, he is a trained soldier, but they aren't trained to go berserk and overkill like that. By that point, he's been so stressed that he just reacted until he was certain there was no threat anymore. This can certainly happen to a normal person too.

 

[Falseprophet]

You know, no one ever mentions how in the original Star Wars movie, Luke goes from being a simple farm boy on a dullass planet to an action hero exchanging shots with Imperial Stormtroopers in a matter of hours. Sure, he was some kind of hotshot bush pilot, but there's no indication he was a hardened killer of men before taking R2 to Kenobi--in fact, he nearly gets killed in a bar fight for just sitting there. Doesn't stop it from being a great movie.

Lara's pretty motivated to murder dudes in the new game. These thugs have tried to kill her numerous times, and have definitely killed other innocent people. It's kill or be killed at that point.

 

[Lucane]

the executions are unlocked after you spend enough skill points to unlock tier 3 then you have to pay for them after wards and with the way the game works it's be a while before you get to tier 3 though the execution option was always there do it is only for bonus exp and more so for using one of the unlocked weapon kills. So as far as Lara "maturing" from struggling lone survivor to stalwart stand alone bad ass who tells everyone else to watch the ship or stay at camp because it's easier to sneak in alone when earlier they were telling Lara to wait behind instead is loosely consistent with the story as the limits of your game play options but the executions are almost always up to the player.


(Late Early game spoiler and reference at a future event)

Spoiler

The first time Lara has to kill a person she's shaken for quite some time but is aware that her life is still in danger and has to find the others but later on after a certain other event she takes a more aggressive stance against her enemies.

 

[EdwardOrchard]

I havent played the game, but from the OP's video, the "brutal action violence-porn" seems completely IN place.

Imagine this: You're in a survival setting, fighting for your life. You're surrounded by a horde of things trying to kill you. You're tired, cold, wet, hungry, and forced to do things you would never do otherwise... You've been out there for days/weeks. You're already covered in mud, blood, sweat... you're not going to care about making a mess. You're pissed off at everything, and when the opportunity arises, you will let off some steam. In Lara's case, this means unloading several rounds into some guy's torso, point-blank... Just to make it count.

Have you ever seen the movie descent? With the group of women in a cave underground, with these creatures hunting them? Look at the transformation of the one girl that survives. I think that pretty much sums it up.

 

[5ilver]

The game lost all realism at about 25% completion for me. One moment, Lara is barely limping after a nasty fall and subsequent impalement. The next, she is killing, I kid you not, HUNDREDS of soldiers. All by herself, with a bow and axe. >.>

It feels particularly hilarious when one of her companions dies and she spends the next 2 minutes mourning his death.... while standing in the disemboweled and immolated corpses of a small army xD

 

[spartan231490]

I haven't played the new Tomb Raider, but whilst I was watching Gametrailers' review of it something popped up on my mind. They pointed it out in their review, and it's been bothering me ever since. And it's the violence in the game.

Since I haven't played the game, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but the level of violence in contrast to how the devs talked about the game just doesn't feel right. We're supposed to feel Lara is in a terrible, inescapable life-or death survival situation where every step could mean death, but when the action ramps up, it suddenly goes into full-on Gears of war violence porn mode. Case in point, the execution moves in the game


The one in particular where Lara shoots a guy several times in the stomach, chest and head stood out as completely out of place in the situation we're supposed to think Lara is in. Anyone who knows anything about firearms knows that the move in question would be incredibly stupid for a number of reasons. It just seems odd to me that they marketed the game as more survival than action, but still have the game revel in the violence, IMO not in a way that makes me go "Ew, nasty", but "Phwoaaarr, got that guy, yeah!"

I believe I had some more points, but I'm in a hurry, so I'll have to leave this now. Thoughts?

First: Realize that the second half of that vid is all from multiplayer, which is of course more action focused, and even the first half of the video is all footage from probably 3/4 of the way through the game and on, once Lara has mostly completed her transition to badass.
Second: I played the game, and the game makes it work. Yes, especially toward the end it is more of an action game than a horror game, but for reasons that I won't point out because of spoilers, as well as through numerous techniches I don't understand, the game still feels like a survival game. It's important to remember that violence is relative. Even as gruesome as those executions are, they are nothing compared to the atmosphere of danger and violence in the game. It does a great job of balancing the action and violence it needs to keep it's modern audience entertained with the feeling of being on the edge of death barely surviving by the skin of it's teeth. It is only my humble opinion, but I haven't been that gripped by the horror elements of a game since I played Dead Space 1 in the dark. I think it did a phenomenal job, they even managed to weave the violence in with the story to make it an integral part of the game, as opposed to feeling like a gimmicky tack-on.

 

[KeyMaster45]

I've never under stood the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" saying. If I have a piece of cake, then why can't I eat it? It's already been cut from the whole and given to me obviously with the intention that I eat it. If you're unable to eat cake for some reason, then what demented bastard would even give you a piece in the first place? Other than that situation it is very seldom that someone has cake and does not eat it. In fact, I think I'm going to go get one of those cheap Wal-Mart cakes and have a slice when I get it home. I will have my cake and I will eat it. Not all at once mind you, but over the next I will eat the rest.

OP should consider changing their thread title as having cake and not eating it simply doesn't make sense.

 

[Something Amyss]

Anyone who knows anything about firearms knows that the move in question would be incredibly stupid for a number of reasons.

So you're complaining about realism, or what? I'm not seeing anything out of place, and then there's this line, which seems to dictate more from real experience than anything that changes in the game.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Anyone who knows anything about firearms knows that the move in question would be incredibly stupid for a number of reasons.

So you're complaining about realism, or what? I'm not seeing anything out of place, and then there's this line, which seems to dictate more from real experience than anything that changes in the game.

No, what I'm complaining about is that finishing a guy off by rapid firing into him several times at point blank range makes absolutely no sense in almost any situation. In Lara's situation she would
1) waste ammo by firing more than one shot, which seems particularly suspicious in her survivor situation
2) rapid firing firearms is hardly ever used when trying to actually kill enemies in real life, and using it to shoot a guy at point blank range is simply stupid
3) guns get dirty awfully fast, and rapid firing a weapon fastens the process even more. In normal games this would be okay, but since survival is a central point of the game, it stands out more. I don't think Lara has much weapon cleaning equipment just lying around
4) choosing to shoot an assault rifle with one arm is stupid because a) the accuracy suffers massively and the sway of the weapon makes it even harder to aim and b) the recoil would render everything after the first 1-2 shots practically useless

Geez, I sound like some Arma elitist complaining "eETZ NOT REALISTIC!!!1". The point I was trying to make that the moves (and that one in particular) makes Lara look more like Marcus Fenix rather than a desperate survivor.

But many have already mentioned that the executions are only a part of the late game where Lara is past her darkest hour as a survivor so I'm willing to forgive them... mostly.

 

[SecondPrize]

I've never under stood the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" saying. If I have a piece of cake, then why can't I eat it? It's already been cut from the whole and given to me obviously with the intention that I eat it. If you're unable to eat cake for some reason, then what demented bastard would even give you a piece in the first place? Other than that situation it is very seldom that someone has cake and does not eat it. In fact, I think I'm going to go get one of those cheap Wal-Mart cakes and have a slice when I get it home. I will have my cake and I will eat it. Not all at once mind you, but over the next I will eat the rest.

OP should consider changing their thread title as having cake and not eating it simply doesn't make sense.

On the off chance you genuinely do not understand this, when you finish eating your cake, will you still have it? No.

 

[KeyMaster45]

I've never under stood the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" saying. If I have a piece of cake, then why can't I eat it? It's already been cut from the whole and given to me obviously with the intention that I eat it. If you're unable to eat cake for some reason, then what demented bastard would even give you a piece in the first place? Other than that situation it is very seldom that someone has cake and does not eat it. In fact, I think I'm going to go get one of those cheap Wal-Mart cakes and have a slice when I get it home. I will have my cake and I will eat it. Not all at once mind you, but over the next I will eat the rest.

OP should consider changing their thread title as having cake and not eating it simply doesn't make sense.

On the off chance you genuinely do not understand this, when you finish eating your cake, will you still have it? No.

Nothing lasts forever. I still had my cake, and then I got to eat it; therefore I had my cake and ate it too. That it's gone after I've eaten it is only the natural progression of things.

 

[SecondPrize]

I've never under stood the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" saying. If I have a piece of cake, then why can't I eat it? It's already been cut from the whole and given to me obviously with the intention that I eat it. If you're unable to eat cake for some reason, then what demented bastard would even give you a piece in the first place? Other than that situation it is very seldom that someone has cake and does not eat it. In fact, I think I'm going to go get one of those cheap Wal-Mart cakes and have a slice when I get it home. I will have my cake and I will eat it. Not all at once mind you, but over the next I will eat the rest.

OP should consider changing their thread title as having cake and not eating it simply doesn't make sense.

On the off chance you genuinely do not understand this, when you finish eating your cake, will you still have it? No.

Nothing lasts forever. I still had my cake, and then I got to eat it; therefore I had my cake and ate it too. That it's gone after I've eaten it is only the natural progression of things.

That is very true. However, the saying is not had your cake and ate it too. The tense is the important bit here.

 

[Something Amyss]

Geez, I sound like some Arma elitist complaining "eETZ NOT REALISTIC!!!1". The point I was trying to make that the moves (and that one in particular) makes Lara look more like Marcus Fenix rather than a desperate survivor.

If you were desperate, you might be willing to waste that ammo simply because of the fear factor.

 

[KeyMaster45]

I've never under stood the "you can't have your cake and eat it too" saying. If I have a piece of cake, then why can't I eat it? It's already been cut from the whole and given to me obviously with the intention that I eat it. If you're unable to eat cake for some reason, then what demented bastard would even give you a piece in the first place? Other than that situation it is very seldom that someone has cake and does not eat it. In fact, I think I'm going to go get one of those cheap Wal-Mart cakes and have a slice when I get it home. I will have my cake and I will eat it. Not all at once mind you, but over the next I will eat the rest.

OP should consider changing their thread title as having cake and not eating it simply doesn't make sense.

On the off chance you genuinely do not understand this, when you finish eating your cake, will you still have it? No.

Nothing lasts forever. I still had my cake, and then I got to eat it; therefore I had my cake and ate it too. That it's gone after I've eaten it is only the natural progression of things.

That is very true. However, the saying is not had your cake and ate it too. The tense is the important bit here.

Exactly, the tense is important. If I have a cake sitting in front of me, then there is very little that can stop me from having a piece. After that piece I still have more cake. In all the tenses; past, present, and future, I can have my cake and eat it too.

I will have cake and I will eat it.
I have cake and now I get too eat it.
I had cake and got too eat it.

The logic is rock solid; the phrase simply makes no sense.