The Violence against Lara Croft in Tomb Raider 2013

[Ihateregistering1]

I think comparing the new Tomb Raider and the Uncharted games is a little unfair. The new Tomb Raider was aiming for more of a Heart of Darkness/Lord of the Flies type of vibe, of ordinary people stuck in terrible situations who lose some of their humanity to survive. In other words, it aimed to be serious. Uncharted, on the other hand, aims for more of an Indiana Jones feel: a somewhat hapless adventurer with a lighthearted attitude who, even though he endures beatings and getting shot at, at the end gets the treasure and the girl. It's intended to be lighthearted and fun, while Tomb Raider intended to be gritty and somewhat hard to watch.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

I mean, to be fair you can get impaled from the throat to the top of your head and equally horrific things if you fuck up certain parts so they brutalized her a little harder than they do in uncharted, where usually nate will just flop over or fall off something when he dies. I don't think there's ever any cutscene or setpiece deaths in uncharted so of course you're going to feel shittier when you see lara twitching around with a mouthful of blood or something.

 

[Someone Depressing]

Because, Lara isn't played for humour as much as Nathan is. Nathan is a wise cracking, go-get 'em guy with a stupid haircut and insanely positive demeanor. He's much more cartoonish than Lara, who is put through uncomortable sexual situations in the game realistic violence. Of course, in gameplay, she's a fucking murder machine who ruthlessly kills men twice her size and doesn't flinch. Good job, devs.

If Nathan Drake was a girl, snarky Indiana Jones-type personality intact, then (s)he would probably still be played for slaptick laughs like she would if she was male. But Tomb Raider's tone is different; it's not a popcorn B-movie all around the world adventure story, it's some woman in a place she doesn't want to be and she needs to get out or she will die a gruesome QTE death.

Even so, Lara shrugs her various injuries off like any other action protagonist, and personally I thought seeing her getting killed and beaten up by nature, animals, wildlife, more animals, and cartoonishly scary men with guns hilarious in a black comedy way, which sucked a lot of seriousness out of the cutscenes.

So, Lara is basically like Nathan Drake, but with boobies, and in a much more serious story, yet she suffers the same intentionally cartoony characterisation, ridiculous injuries shrugged off because we wouldn't have a game if she died of cholera halfway through, and the writers really couldn't handle an Indiana Jones expy in a realistic story, but could you blame them? A lot was hanging on this game. Slip ups were made, implications were made, and we got a decent-ish game.

Besides, I don't think you've been listening.

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[Auron225]

Good question.

It's difficult for me to say one way or the other. It's probably a combination between her simply being a female, but also because the emphasis was used. If a storyteller chooses that angle to approach a story, then it's the angle I'm going to look at it from. Nathan Drakes injuries were at times, as others have put, played for laughs. I still felt sorry for him but the storytelling didn't choose to focus on his pain - it focused on the action and the mystery.

It may also be that Lara is alone for most of that game and faces all of her obstacles and enemies alone, whereas Nathan frequently has back-up of some kind.

EDIT: Oh, almost forgot another difference. Nathan almost always chooses to seek fame and glory by choosing to go on these escapades. He runs straight into it knowing the risks. Lara on the other hand is forced onto that island and just wants to leave. It's a lot easier to empathize with her situation.

 

[Monsterfurby]

To me, the most terrifying part is not the characters getting hurt and reacting to it per se - it's the short moment of dying that Tomb Raider plays out to the max. The instant where the character is practically already dead, but still struggles, panics, screams. That creeps me the hell out, and that is also what makes Tomb Raider so brutal.

Few other games do it (Dead Space being a noteworthy example), and all those that do have plenty of popular death compilations on YouTube. Maybe there's a voyeuristic vein in us that causes these scenes to be just as intriguing as they are appalling - and on another tangent, maybe the victim being a woman either triggers some sort of natural reaction (i.e. "females must be protected") or is part of that voyeuristic appeal.

Either way, I already hate this train of thought, so I'll leave it at that.