Well I won't be buying the new Tomb Raider...

[Wintermoot]

I kinda thought that Lara was meant as a strong role model not a weakling.

 

[Zeles]

http://eschergirls.tumblr.com/post/25077618211/the-attempted-rape-of-lara-croft-misogyny-and-rape

If it hasn't already been linked. I think the problem is that the motivation for playing as a character shouldn't be that we should want to protect her. We should want to play as her because we care about her. Those are two different things.

Also, any time the word "rape" is said or written, alarms are raised. Rape is a sensitive topic, and shouldn't be used unless necessary in a story. If it IS used, the subject must be treated with respect and sensitivity.

Also, women shouldn't need to be protected any more than a man needs to be.

 

[Bad Jim]

As NinjaDeath Slap suggested earlier; back to white mid-thirties males it is. This medium's audience is making it clear that it is not mature enough to handle diversity. In this case, not because of homophobic 12 year olds on X Box Live, but because of over-zealous feminists waiting for something to come along and enrage them.

Fuck this thread!

That's what I was thinking. You can throw any kind of abuse at a 35 year old male protagonist without fuss. Solid Snake gets tortured. Max Payne has his family murdered in front of him and gets terrible constipation. Carl Johnson gets a psychotic girlfriend who's into sado masochism, played for laughs I should point out. And OG Loc's offscreen prison rape is also played for laughs.

But heaven forbid anything bad happen to a female protagonist. Oh no. Women are precious. Women need the scriptwriter to treat them gently. While we're at it, why not make female NPCs invincible, just like the children?

And then the feminists will complain about the lack of decent female characters, oblivious to the fact that they're creating the problem themselves.

 

[Sixcess]

People don't know who samus and alyx are but know who Lara croft is....yeah no. Some of the biggest games of Nintendo and valve are not less popular than indinania jones with boobs.

Yes they are. She was a bona fide mainstream sex symbol in the late nineties. I believe she even appeared on a gossip magazine cover or two.

This. Perhaps it's a difference in UK/US perspective, but over here at least she had a very high profile, appearing on the cover of non-gaming magazines and even ads for energy drinks:

Spoiler: Lucozade Ad

That wasn't even a game tie-in, and that's the level of recognition I'm talking about - when you can have a videogame character fronting an ad and you don't even have to say who it is, because people already know who it is.

Oh yeah, because people never make mistakes or have different personal meanings for certain phrases, did you ever stop and think that those five seconds implied rape translated to "rape scene" for this guy? And he should be fired for it? Keep dreaming, from what I can see he just misspoke, try being a mass effect fan then come back to me about poor communication and try to complain about it, you'll be called an entitled fanboy. In other words, you are seriously over reacting.

I don't believe he did misspeak, I believe CD's new statement contradicting it is them pretending it was unintentional. Seeing as he said it in at least two separate interviews, If he did go 'off message' then he's a liability.

 

[immortalfrieza]

Feminism. Women just want to be treated the same as men. So to be truly equal i could hit a woman just like i'd hit a guy if they were annoying me?

If Feminism was really about being equal then you'd be correct. However, Feminism (along with any other so called "equality" movement) isn't about equality, never has been, despite what they'll tell you. Equality movements have always been about making sure that one side has all the advantages and benefits of being equal while keeping the benefits they already had prior to their equality at the same time, while making sure the other side's benefits are low as they can manage. Like anything else, it's about being better off than others, not equal, in other words.

Sex sells, deal with it.

Exactly.

 

[Elamdri]

http://eschergirls.tumblr.com/post/25077618211/the-attempted-rape-of-lara-croft-misogyny-and-rape

That link is 10 kinds of terrible and the exact reason that I hate sensationalist crap like this. She read one word in a poorly written article and made several assumptions based on an exaggerated reporting. She makes the game sound like it will be some sort of Lara Croft Rape Simulator, when the reality is that a bad guys runs his hand down her hip before getting kneed in the crotch. Because that has NEVER happened before in a game or movie.

I hate that Kotaku has created this blow out over something as stupid as a Tomb Raider reboot.

 

[Lugbzurg]

"In recent news, both Laura Croft and Juliet from the upcoming title, Lolipop Chainsaw are not, I repeat, not going to be overly-sexualized!
Yet, somehow, people are claiming 'sexism' over this."

"In other news, Trayarch makes another game about killing foreign people with a bunch of guns. This time... in the future!"

 

[lowhat]

Would people be getting upset if it was a guy?

Uh, if the latest Duke Nukem game revealed that a near-rape experience was why the Duke became who he is, you'd be able to hear the jimmies rustling from miles away.

Well, you'd hear me laughing from miles away.

...

Okay, seriously now, would folks be less upset if it was a new IP? Are people upset because it's Lara Croft specifically? 'Cause it seems to me that the developers have been very clear that they're going for a different tone to the old games. They use the word "mature" like it's going out of fashion.

Also, and this is speculation, I don't think the near-rapage is supposed to be "why she becomes who she is", but rather just the first time she has to kill a dude.

...

Is the "gaming community" just not ready for a game where the protagonist nearly gets raped?

(Although I'm sure it's happened before. I remember the guy in Mafia II nearly finding himself on the receiving end of a prison shower scene.)

I hope you aren't one of those people who thinks that video games are a medium that going to be able of dealing with Nabokov-level artistic themes in the near future, because if so, you're going to be very disappointed. Vidya games aren't a medium that's ready for serious treatments of serious themes, people get their panties in a bunch and netrage over a shitty ending to a crappy RPG FFS.

 

[Don Savik]

Eh, I'd rather not play Uncharted that takes itself too seriously that replaces Drake (ok, so he's not the best protagonist but still) with what these people are calling "laura croft". I've always liked the old games and how they had crazy magic and more Indiana Jones style lore and villains. I feel like this whole reboot is just silly. If they're going to change the character, theme, mood, world, and gameplay beyond recognition, then why even keep the same IP? They wouldn't have to deal with any of this fan backlash if they did, and we might be able to take it more seriously. Just doesn't look that exciting of a game.

Though I'm pretty sure it only got green lighted because of the franchise name to be honest.

Are we ready for a protagonist to get attacked by rapists? It feels....unnecessary to be honest, I'm pretty sure they could've done numerous other things with the story. It feels like its forcing itself to be too edgy and dark for the sake of being edgy and dark. We'll just have to see how it actually is in the game.

"In recent news, both Laura Croft and Juliet from the upcoming title, Lolipop Chainsaw are not, I repeat, not going to be overly-sexualized!
Yet, somehow, people are claiming 'sexism' over this."

"In other news, Trayarch makes another game about killing foreign people with a bunch of guns. This time... in the future!"

Gosh, sexism is CLEARLY a more important issue than racism. Where have you been the last month?

*raises flame shield*

[sub]its called sarcasm people[/sub]

 

[Don Savik]

This whole retardedly overly sensitive, 'womans aren't teh secks' thing that's going on at the minute is really starting to get on my udders.

Eh, flavor of the f-ing month here on the Escapist. Just have to wait for another big game release for people to stop giving a damn. I'm getting sick of it to be honest, because we aren't solving anything, we just throw around insults like "sexist" and "misogynist" and nobody changes their mind. I don't mind a good debate, but these aren't debates, its a Youtube comments section.

 

[GangstaPony]

Would you people be happy if the game ends with Lara killing a tiger with her bare-hands and eats it's flesh to gain it's strength? It's called character development. Plus in the E3 2012 demo she was going all CRYSIS on the mercs. Ph33r teh c0mp0und b0w

 

[Tomster595]

You know what's sexist? The fact that this is a point of controversy. People need to stop reading way too much into this. To be fair, this guy that Kotaku interviewed handled questions like real ass, but the rest of the dev team have made comments on this by now and its really just not even an issue. It's been confirmed that there's no actual rape (http://www.gametrailers.com/side-mission/2012/06/13/tomb-raiders-studio-says-theres-no-attempted-rape-scene-after-they-say-it-does/). Without the whole rape thing, its really just not a big deal. She gets beaten down and that makes her into a tougher character. To me, it sounds like the SAME EXACT THING would work for a male character, so I really see no problem.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

The game looks quite good. I'll be playing it.

The sheer number of assumptions flying around this thread is sort of neat in its own right. It's sort of like a singularity of "ass out of you and me".

 

[Aesir23]

It all depends on how it is handled. If the character and her arch is well written and believable then I really don't see an issue. As far as I can tell they aren't suggesting women are weak and need protection, but rather that Lara is young an inexperience with absolutely no concept of what kind of hardship this adventure will bring her. I am wondering how they will handle the rape attempt though. I would be pleasantly surprised if they managed to actually make a non-offensive and compelling scenario, this being the game industry and all. Rape is hard enough to handle in other media, especially when being written primarily by men for men.

Also, I am surprised more people aren't upset over the depiction of natives as crazy rapists. Reminds me of when Race Bannon would murderer a bunch of them screaming, "SAVAGES!"

You actually see the scene in the E3 2012 trailer so it's not nearly as bad as people are making it out to be.

 

[OtherSideofSky]

I don't know if it will be good or bad, but I do know that the framing of the attempted rape we've seen is an example of some really poor directing.

What really bugs me about this is that rape or attempted rape as a catalyst for female characters to become "badasses" is such a common trope. It's already so annoyingly omnipresent in, for example, American comic books, that I really don't want to see it stapled on to another character unless they manage to do something really meaningful with it, which I honestly doubt they will. Besides, unlike surviving in the wilderness, rape is not an experience particularly known for toughening people up in real life.

The way the developers have framed a lot of this in their statements is also worrying.

 

[svenjl]

Well done Internet. Another satisfying overreaction in the books.

Now I'm going back to Dragon's Dogma to protect my all female Pawn crew from being ravaged by lustful Ogres.

 

[Nouw]

How to be called sexist in the videogame industry:

1. Have a female character in your videogame.

THE END

Fucking this. No matter what you do, people will always find a way to complain.