Would Tomb Raider's story still be considered good if the main character was male? [Spoilers]

[godgravity]

I think the fighting/killing should have had a lot less of the focus. Lara Croft would be much more interesting to me if she was more reluctant to kill someone, yet after her initial grief after her first kill, we have her mowing down hundreds of bad guys with relative ease.

What i mean is... imagine if the combat sequences were almost designed like their own little puzzles. You COULD simply fight everyone to the death, but there might be a better, more clever way to neutralize the threat than just killing everyone outright. Maybe some of the areas could have had the traps famous in the older TR games... and setting off these traps to snare bad guys could have been part of it.

Did we play the same game? I was perplexed at this, then (being objective) figured I should think about why I was confused.

Yep. I was quickly able to come up with four or five different scenarios where I "used the environment" where it wasn't painfully obvious you could do so in each case.

Spoiler

Rolling barrels down the hillside, pulling down the support beams, cause the ceiling to collapse via an explosion

In each case, you *could* have "mowed them down" - but it was more fun to find the alternate available paths.

I just don't think everyone was hitting LB as often as I was, making it much more of a 'survival' game than a 'shooter.'

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

The support characters are all broad stereotypes with zero depth or impact on the story. Sure, most of them are likeable but that's not the same as good characterisation.

Agreed, but this isn't their story. The focus is squarely on Lara.

And Lara? Well, she does the best she can in a terrible situation. There's really not a lot of character [development?] actually going on with her.

Significant change necessitated by challenging circumstances is pretty much the definition of character growth.

The story itself was actually pretty cool but ultimately suffered from bad pacing.

You mean the plot? I thought it was quite bad really, with lots of fridge logic and more than a few actual holes. It only existed to advance Lara's character, but it did that nicely enough for me.

Obviously in an ideal world we'd have great support characters and a great plot, but that won't happen until gameplay comes second to story (if it ever does). Here and now I'm happy to just get a protagonist with actual growth instead of an angry and/or charismatic brick.

 

[godgravity]

Wait, Tomb Raider had a good story? When did this happen?

When was the new Tomb Raider story considered good?

Depends on whether you are someone who likes plot or character development. If you're the latter then TR2013 is infinitely superior to the likes of Deus Ex, Bioshock, Half-Life, Mass Effect, etc.

But Lara doesn't develop as a character. I'm not sure quite what it is about this game that has fooled people into believing that it's award winning literature.

I really think all these opinions are in the same vein of players who 'skip' all the journals or don't really try to find all the backstory elements scattered around.

Sure, it's not top-notch writing or character development, but it *is* there. At least, more than most of her series has been up to this point, or definitely above and beyond the lacking blowout titles these days. Crysis 3, anyone?

 

[godgravity]

Obviously in an ideal world we'd have great support characters and a great plot, but that won't happen until gameplay comes second to story (if it ever does). Here and now I'm happy to just get a protagonist with actual growth instead of an angry and/or charismatic brick.

'Gameplay coming second to story' - please see "The Walking Dead"

QTEs is not 'gameplay' or strategy. I'll tell you though - the STORY in that one... I don't think I've ever been 'scared' to choose a QTE outcome, or brought to serious teary-eyed emotion via empathy ever in a game before "TWD"

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Wait, Tomb Raider had a good story? When did this happen?

When was the new Tomb Raider story considered good?

Depends on whether you are someone who likes plot or character development. If you're the latter then TR2013 is infinitely superior to the likes of Deus Ex, Bioshock, Half-Life, Mass Effect, etc.

But Lara doesn't develop as a character. I'm not sure quite what it is about this game that has fooled people into believing that it's award winning literature.

Nice hyperbole. See above.

Lara isn't flawed to begin with.

"Flaws" is an odd choice of word, you don't need "flaws" to have development, but anyway: she's not sure if people should listen to her (explicitly stated in one of Sam's first videos) and she's afraid to leave the safety of her first camp fire and wants Roth to come and get her (explicitly stated in a cutscene). Then there are all the less explicit things - body language, fear of the unknown, etc.

Lara "develops" in her situation as any human would. The OP is right, you could replace Lara with anyone else, any gender, and you'd get the same exact storyline. That's the problem right there, this isn't a personal story about Lara, it's just an old time clichéd survival story about some chick on an island.

Well nobody said it should win awards. It's a videogame, and I for one am rating it against its contemporaries, most of which feature characters that couldn't even spell "development".

 

[jcfrommars9]

Lara was right about the dragon's triangle being the home of the Yamatai but she was initially wrong about it's supernatural nature and by connection, her father who she doubted for years about such things. She was also wrong about the pilot. She wanted to save him and Roth told her that he was beyond her help, that she sometimes has to make sacrifices. She responds that she knows about sacrifice. Roth says that no, she knows about loss and explains the difference between the two. Lara still doesn't listen and because of that, she nearly gets killed because the pilot was deliberately used as bait. Mathias knew she would try to help him. The only thing that saved her indirectly was the Oni and the Stormguard who ended up capturing her.

 

[Gatx]

You'd have to reverse all genders in the story. A young, sexy man trying to survive on an island and getting captured and raped by amazons.

I'd play that game, wanna headshot me some amazons~

That'd stir up a whole different set of controversy, not unlike the whole Hitman trailer I'd imagine.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Obviously in an ideal world we'd have great support characters and a great plot, but that won't happen until gameplay comes second to story (if it ever does). Here and now I'm happy to just get a protagonist with actual growth instead of an angry and/or charismatic brick.

'Gameplay coming second to story' - please see "The Walking Dead"

I own it on iPad and want to play it but I can't find the damn thing!!! It's been missing for weeks. I'm starting to think someone stole the damn thing.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

Shit, now that you mention it. If they had made the new Tomb Raider a game other than Tomb Raider with a male lead character but the game was otherwise in tact including the other characters and stories... I think it would have ended up in Tropes VS Women episode two and we'd probably be arguing over it in those threads for the next few months.

Why is it okay for a damsel in distress to be rescued by a girl but not a guy? Given equal treatment, shouldn't this be just as bad?

Because when you write a game entirely about an empowering female figure it seems a bit odd to call you out on a trope who's worst quality is the possible unfortunate implications that may arise from it if you look at in a particular way? Generally, the concept of a damsel in distress is called out not simply because it exists, but because it is so prevalent and because you so rarely have a helpless male in distress, because such a character is regularly shoe-horned into the passive love interest role and is given no depth beyond being eye candy and a reward for the protagonist, and because it is almost always male power fantasies doing the rescuing. I'm assuming none other than the first apply here.

It is prevalent? how so? besides Mario and Zelda games, how prevalent it is? how prevalent is the DiD trope of male rescuing female, compared to the trope of "Incompetent, paranoid, idiot, straight white male protagonist" that keeps appearing even MORE frecuently than ever in the movie media? If you havent noticed, one is more harmful than the otehr because of the close proximity that they present those people with those tropes frecuently.

You're seriously questioning how many games have a damsel in distress? Really? You think it's just those two? Wrong. Let's go with just about every Final Fantasy game for example. How about Gears with Dom's wife? Kairi from Kingdom Hearts. Here, let's play a fun game. Name a developer, and I'll give you a damsel in distress they have written. Maybe you can stump me by picking somebody who only made one game, but we all know this will be more fun if you stick to big names. I'll even try to avoid using obscure titles when I can.

I like how you switched mediums in order to make your argument here. Did you perhaps have to do that because the trope you are mentioning is used by morons in the movie industry to try and appeal to women, in a manner games virtually never do? For fun we could have you be forced to point out one of these idiot men for every one of my damsels, but I honestly think that would incredibly irrelevant. You see, I don't like bumbling dads either. I rail against those as well. Those are also a part of the ridiculous gender roles we all have to deal with. I don't want to be forced to be more testosterone than common sense, and I don't want to be forced to make sex and feats of masculinity the sole focus of my existence. Simultaneously, I do not want women to be defined solely by how they fit into a world of masculine posturing and woman hunting. They are not objects of conquest, or rewards for my feats of masculinity. They are human beings.

 

[redvenm]

I don't know, did you think Farcry 3 was any good? Basically the same story....

 

[Woodsey]

If the male character was as well-conceived as Lara, then yes. She's what holds the rest of the writing together, and so I don't see why an equivalently well-written male character couldn't do the same.

 

[DioWallachia]

You're seriously questioning how many games have a damsel in distress? Really? You think it's just those two? Wrong. Let's go with just about every Final Fantasy game for example. How about Gears with Dom's wife? Kairi from Kingdom Hearts. Here, let's play a fun game. Name a developer, and I'll give you a damsel in distress they have written. Maybe you can stump me by picking somebody who only made one game, but we all know this will be more fun if you stick to big names. I'll even try to avoid using obscure titles when I can.

No. Mario and Zelda are the most well know examples that even the mainstream media, the people that dont play videogames, know about. Thus, are the common targets for the DiD trope and accusation of sexism since its the only thing that people know of gaming (just like how games are seen as "violent" because people outside gaming only know CoD, like it was the ONLY thing that gamers play)

How can Final Fantasy games end up in the same basket as other games when there are females in your party that are badass and can rescue OTHER females that are not as badass and need rescue? I thought the criticism was around the MALES being always the only ones in charge of saving the useless females that cant do shit without getting captured inmediately. And yet you put games like Final Fantasy as one of the offenders? how about FFX where you rescue Juna several times but have Lulu the black mage and Rikou helping out? Hell, Yuna is the real protagonist regadless of how many time she gets captured and what Tidus says, since it makes more sense for her to literaly DIE for our "sins" and save the world. Even the most recent FF games has Lightning (a female) rescuing another female that happens to be her sister.

Since you mention that females are human beings, then this should make sense to you, since a real human being doesnt always have the power to control its own life, but there are others who can, regardless if they are female or not.

Then again, if people dont define what is "sexist" to begin with, then i guess we are going in circles. Protip: some people think sexism is having women with skimpy clothes, and others say that sexism is a pattern on a work of fiction where the woman are CONSTANTLY being innefectual and incapable of controlling their own lives because someone else does it for her (i like to call that the "Metroid: Other M Effect")

I like how you switched mediums in order to make your argument here. Did you perhaps have to do that because the trope you are mentioning is used by morons in the movie industry to try and appeal to women, in a manner games virtually never do?

I am sorry, but what? are we talking or the same thing that was shown in the videos? because i hardly see how the rabing paranoid was made to appeal to women, or how a "Sam Witwicky" was made to appeal to women AT ALL.

Women are atraccted to people that can provide for them, and Sam and other idiots on the media cant even get a job or dress in a way that evokes financial power and social influence. They dont need to be the Hulk, they need to be a respectable member of society.

For fun we could have you be forced to point out one of these idiot men for every one of my damsels, but I honestly think that would incredibly irrelevant. You see, I don't like bumbling dads either. I rail against those as well. Those are also a part of the ridiculous gender roles we all have to deal with. I don't want to be forced to be more testosterone than common sense,

I think you are confusing a bumbling dad parody like Homer Simpson (who ends up being likable in the end), to the trope being played straight but without any character developepment (and those are more prevalent)

and I don't want to be forced to make sex and feats of masculinity the sole focus of my existence. Simultaneously, I do not want women to be defined solely by how they fit into a world of masculine posturing and woman hunting. They are not objects of conquest, or rewards for my feats of masculinity. They are human beings.

And what has that to do with anything i said?

Yes they are human beings, and there are plenty of females in the videogame industry. My point by bringing up Mario and Zelda games is because we only critice the ones that are the most well know, but ultimately just like each genre of gameplay has its fans that are ignored by the mayority (because genres like RTS, full Western RPG ALA The Elder Scrolls before Oblivion, Stealth like the Thief series, dont make money apparently) that doesnt mean they dont exist. Fans clearly want more people like Harry Mason or James Suntherland from Silent Hill 1 and 2 respectively, but they are just being ignored for some reason. Its not the people playing being sexist, its the developers that cant risk loosing money and make shit like the ***** from "X Blades" to play it safe.

If we only consider "games" as the ones that are most well know and not the total ammount of games, then that is falling into a trap of reducing the medium to a stereotype. Again, kinda like reducing an entire genre of First Person Shooters as being the same as COD (even Bob Chipman "MovieBob" falled into this trap by labeling the Metroid Prime series as being another one of those)

But even if there was a mayority of games that make use of the DiD, i ask: Do they make money? given that writting is a bussiness like any other, if all games had the same thing then they would be indistinguible from one another and the people will stop buying them because one is enough, right? sort off like what is happening right now with the gameplay being either a copy of CoD or GoW. The only reason we see DiD is because it is done in random intervals during the years rather than a constant flux of titles one after another (like the "failure male" trope we see much often on movies and are more harmful because they are more mainstream than games)

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_266/7959-We-Are-Not-Mainstream

Otherwise, people would revile it in the same way that people hate QTE, unskipable cutscenes and each time EA fucks up. If those games made money against all odds, and are popular BECAUSE the kids cant get an erection without having a woman to save, then....that would actually be a problem.

But thankfully, there is variety on the gaming world (for the time being at least).

EDIT: You want me to name a developer so you can prove that they rely on the DiD more than once? ok here is one just fun: Daniel Remar, an actual gamer and not a developer of AAA. Lets see how sick and filthy are the juvenily fantasies of this developer.

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

You're seriously questioning how many games have a damsel in distress? Really? You think it's just those two? Wrong. Let's go with just about every Final Fantasy game for example. How about Gears with Dom's wife? Kairi from Kingdom Hearts. Here, let's play a fun game. Name a developer, and I'll give you a damsel in distress they have written. Maybe you can stump me by picking somebody who only made one game, but we all know this will be more fun if you stick to big names. I'll even try to avoid using obscure titles when I can.

No. Mario and Zelda are the most well know examples that even the mainstream media, the people that dont play videogames, know about. Thus, are the common targets for the DiD trope and accusation of sexism since its the only thing that people know of gaming (just like how games are seen as "violent" because people outside gaming only know CoD, like it was the ONLY thing that gamers play)

How can Final Fantasy games end up in the same basket as other games when there are females in your party that are badass and can rescue OTHER females that are not as badass and need rescue? I thought the criticism was around the MALES being always the only ones in charge of saving the useless females that cant do shit without getting captured inmediately. And yet you put games like Final Fantasy as one of the offenders? how about FFX where you rescue Juna several times but have Lulu the black mage and Rikou helping out? Hell, Yuna is the real protagonist regadless of what Tidus says since it makes more sense for her to literaly DIE for our "sins" and save the world. Even the most recent FF games has Lightning (a female) rescuing another female that happens to be her sister.

Then again, if people dont define what is "sexist" is to them to begin with, then i guess we are going in circles. Protip: some people think sexism is having women with skimpy clothes, and others say that sexism is a pattern on a work of fiction where the woman are CONSTANTLY being innefectual and incapable of controlling their own lives because someone else does it for her (i like to call that the "Metroid: Other M Effect")

Except I didn't say that it was universally sexist. In fact, my first comment on the issue made it quite clear that it wasn't universally sexist, just that it was universally women. Thanks for assuming that I hate FFX for being sexist, which is actually my favorite final fantasy and has some of my favorite characters in the series. And is also arguably a game I would hold up as showing how female characters can be written quite well and that gamers will buy and enjoy games with a female protagonist. That being said, females in the series do tend to be shoe horned into certain roles and their portrayals are quite clearly sexist to a certain degree, especially to those with a mild understanding of Japanese culture. Not that they're universally bad at all, quite the opposite really, but more so that Final Fantasy isn't really the best series to look to for non-sexist character design. Better than most, certainly, but obviously not perfect.

Protip: I know your protip, I have read your protip a million times, I think both of those things are sexist, and I think most people who complain about sexism in games would agree.

I like how you switched mediums in order to make your argument here. Did you perhaps have to do that because the trope you are mentioning is used by morons in the movie industry to try and appeal to women, in a manner games virtually never do?

I am sorry, but what? are we talking or the same thing that was shown in the videos? because i hardly see how the rabing paranoid was made to appeal to women, or how a "Sam Witwicky" was made to appeal to women AT ALL.

Women are atraccted to people that can provide for them, and Sam and other idiots on the media cant even get a job or dress in a way that evokes financial power and social influence. They dont need to be the Hulk, they need to be a respectable member of society.

I actually couldn't watch past the first minute of that video as it kept freezing on me, so I have no clue about the Sam Witwicky video. That being said, ineffectual males are meant to appeal to a woman's desire to "fix" a man, or to make them feel better about having to take care of them. They can laugh at how terrible they are at doing anything right and talk about how their husband or boyfriend is just like that. At least that's the intention. It doesn't actually work out that way, but very few of Hollywood's attempts to appeal to women do. Also, such characters exist almost exclusively for comedic purposes. They aren't meant to be attractive, quite the opposite actually, they're meant to be repulsive. It's the same reason why a in a comedy you'll have women end up being fat or the old ball and chain, negative portrayals meant to be mocked rather than seen as attractive.

For fun we could have you be forced to point out one of these idiot men for every one of my damsels, but I honestly think that would incredibly irrelevant. You see, I don't like bumbling dads either. I rail against those as well. Those are also a part of the ridiculous gender roles we all have to deal with. I don't want to be forced to be more testosterone than common sense,

I think you are confusing a bumbling dad parody like Homer Simpson (who ends up being likable in the end), to the trope being played straight but without any character developepment (and those are more prevalent)

Homer Simpson was designed as a parody of sitcom dads from an era of father knowing best. He is not a parody of this type of character, and in fact, very few of these characters are meant to be seen as straight examples at all. They are almost exclusively found in comedies.

and I don't want to be forced to make sex and feats of masculinity the sole focus of my existence. Simultaneously, I do not want women to be defined solely by how they fit into a world of masculine posturing and woman hunting. They are not objects of conquest, or rewards for my feats of masculinity. They are human beings.

And what has that to do with anything i said?

You appeared to be derailing my point into a "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE MENZ" argument, so I wrote a paragraph on how fighting gender roles is a universally helpful rather than just helpful to women.

Yes they are human beings, and there are plenty of females in the videogame industry. My point by bringing up Mario and Zelda games is because we only critice the ones that are the most well know, but ultimately just like each genre of gameplay has its fans that are ignored by the mayority (because genres like RTS, full Western RPG ALA The Elder Scrolls before Oblivion, Stealth like the Thief series, dont make money apparently) that doesnt mean they dont exist. Fans clearly want more people like Harry Mason or James Suntherland from Silent Hill 1 and 2 respectively, but they are just being ignored for some reason. Its not the people playing being sexist, its the developers that cant risk loosing money and make shit like the ***** from "X Blades" to play it safe.

And how is this relevant at all? So far you've argued that DiD is not very prevalent, which is blatantly wrong, and now you're trying to defend the video game audience by saying that it's all the developer's fault. Which it isn't. It everybody's fault. If we chose to complain louder about the lack of good female character design and about the prevalence of sexism in games we would find these things to stop being so prevalent. Simultaneously, if developers and publishers would pull their heads out of their asses and realize that gamers are quite fine with playing as a female if they would simply put some effort into the game then we would also have a solution arising. While I sertainly am willing to put a bit more focus on the developers, as I consider myself a creative person as well and feel they have no excuse for designing such terrible characters, that doesn't mean I'm not willing to yell at everybody else for not calling them out on their bullshit.

If we only consider "games" as the ones that are most well know and not the total ammount of games, then that is falling into a trap of reducing the medium to a stereotype. Again, kinda like reducing an entire genre of First Person Shooters as being the same as COD (even Bob Chipman "MovieBob" falled into this trap by labeling the Metroid Prime series as being another one of those)

Except DiD doesn't just show up in the big titles. It shows up in the little ones as well. It shows up everywhere. And it should stop.

But even if there was a mayority of games that make use of the DiD, i ask: Do they make money? given that writting is a bussiness like any other, if all games had the same thing then they would be indistinguible from one another and the people will stop buying them because one is enough, right? sort off like what is happening right now with the gameplay being either a copy of CoD or GoW. The only reason we see DiD is because it is done in random intervals during the years rather than a constant flux of titles one after another (like the "failure male" trope we see much often on movies and are more harmful because they are more mainstream than games)

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/issues/issue_266/7959-We-Are-Not-Mainstream

They certainly do make money, because the damsel in distress can be used in a very wide variety of plots, and people are quite willing to ignore variety in story design in favor of variety in game design. Look at it this way, a while back virtually all games had extra lives. That in no way made them indistinguishable from one another. The same is true of having a large number of games have DiD. And it hasn't been done at random intervals. It has been extremely prevalent throughout the history of games.
Also, as for your last point, DiD show up in movies too, so the argument that failure males are worse continues to be irrelevant and untrue.

Otherwise, people would revile it in the same way that people hate QTE, unskipable cutscenes and each time EA fucks up. If those games made money against all odds, and are popular BECAUSE the kids cant get an erection without having a woman to save, then....that would actually be a problem.

But thankfully, there is variety on the gaming world (for the time being at least).

 

[DioWallachia]

Thanks for assuming that I hate FFX for being sexist, which is actually my favorite final fantasy and has some of my favorite characters in the series

I dont say you hate it, but if it was true then you should have mentioned it as an exception to the whole series.

They certainly do make money, because the damsel in distress can be used in a very wide variety of plots, and people are quite willing to ignore variety in story design in favor of variety in game design. Look at it this way, a while back virtually all games had extra lives. That in no way made them indistinguishable from one another. The same is true of having a large number of games have DiD. And it hasn't been done at random intervals. It has been extremely prevalent throughout the history of games.
Also, as for your last point, DiD show up in movies too, so the argument that failure males are worse continues to be irrelevant and untrue.

You just said that people dont care about the story, and that is true because back then the mere idea of a story in a game is just ridiculous. Hell, i dont know why people care if the 8 bit thing that is supposed to LOOK a male is ACTUALLY a male. We just know so little about these characters that we may as well assume they are either robots or transexuals for all we care. Why not? Poison from Final Fight resulted to be a transexual and that somehow turned out to be a big deal, even that, for all we know, it could be a female just as well and nothing would change.

And that is the problem: Why do we define Mario as "Male" and Peach as "Female" when back then there was no information other than the bodies and the names? in this day and age, a person can be a transexual if he/she wants, meaning that people no longer are defined by their bodies but by their selfs, and lets not even get started on what other methods the fictional world may contain. Are you going to tell me that you could be considered a female or male just by your body alone? do even a name makes what you are? does that mean that a female like Ariel, who uses a male name, is considered a male?

What "masculine" traits has Mario and what "femenine" traits has Peach when there was no characterization? How can females consider Chell from Portal a character when there is none? (she may as well be a robot for all the hints that Glados give us the first turret section. You know, when she mentions Android Hell?). If we take into account the opinion of, for example, Anita Sarkesiam in what she considers as a female, it is clearly not Mattie Ross from True Grit.

The idea behind her argument that Mattie Ross is not a feminist character (because she promotes more socially-accepted "masculine values" of revenge and violence as opposed to "feminine values" of cooperation and peace) is actually a much more contentious one in feminist circles than Sarkeesian makes it seem. While certainly, the idea that promoting "feminine values" is an essential feminist goal has its supporters (most notably, Harvard sociologist Carol Gilligan in her book In A Different Voice), there are other feminists who disagree, with one of the big reasons being this trope. For starters, many would consider Sarkeesian to be denying Mattie's agency by assuming that she a) only has these values to get along in a "man's world" and b) has never questioned them (questioning =/= abandoning). Additionally, many feminists would also say there is a downside to the more "feminine," cooperative values - such as meekness and submission - which result in women who adopt them having less power and influence, which ultimately hurts women more than it helps them. So perhaps it's better for both genders that we simply uncouple values from gender roles entirely.

So, to some people, if you exhibit "male traits" then you are not a proper female?? and the reverse is true too? see how confusing that is? you may have thinked that i was exagerating but honestly there is almost no way to be sure at this point. I wouldnt even be surpriced if someone considers Lulu from FFX to be a "not female" because she has a deep voice like a man, or because she is looks like a sex toy (thus making her character invalid because its just there to be eye candy)

By the way, i didnt say that DiD doesnt appear in movies, i say that the "retarded male" is more prevalent and done one after another in almost no stopping compared to DiD that happens once in a while. See "Good Luck Chuck", "The Ugly Truth", "She's Out of Control" and of course the Sam Witwicky from Bayformers (and that is just the movies).

They complain about it all the time. I'm complaining about it right here. This concept of women being a prize is not something that is new, it is not something that is rare, and it is not something that only I am taking the time out of my day to complain about.

They complain all the time? then why does this thread exist? why the OP shows confusion to something that, by your own words, has been talked over to the point of Ad Nauseum? apparently it wasnt enough. In the same way nobody cares about the scruffy straight brown haired male (now with beard as DLC!) nobody cared about who was being rescued as long they had fun. They only care about this when someone tells them it is wrong.

 

[DioWallachia]

I actually couldn't watch past the first minute of that video as it kept freezing on me, so I have no clue about the Sam Witwicky video. That being said, ineffectual males are meant to appeal to a woman's desire to "fix" a man, or to make them feel better about having to take care of them. They can laugh at how terrible they are at doing anything right and talk about how their husband or boyfriend is just like that. At least that's the intention. It doesn't actually work out that way, but very few of Hollywood's attempts to appeal to women do. Also, such characters exist almost exclusively for comedic purposes. They aren't meant to be attractive, quite the opposite actually, they're meant to be repulsive. It's the same reason why a in a comedy you'll have women end up being fat or the old ball and chain, negative portrayals meant to be mocked rather than seen as attractive.

Nononononono, it ISNT the "innefectual loner with a tragic past", now THAT appeals to women (Cloud and Sephirot come to mind). The one i describe here, only exist.....

wait, let me rephrase that

Only LIVES because of Hollywood script magic. This kind of idiot will be dead in the real world. It will most likely win the Darwin Awards in record time. Its the kind of person that, the only way it wins at anything in life, is because the writers are twisting the world so he can have this character live for more than 2 hours. They get the woman without even trying, when in the real world a woman will just punch this creep in the face.

That is Sam Witwicky deconstructed.

So women can laught at that and males are supposed to be ok with that? how come that people cant do the same for the braindead GURL GAMERS that need rescue? (not to be confused with Girl Gamer)

 

[Maximum Bert]

If the male character was as well-conceived as Lara, then yes. She's what holds the rest of the writing together, and so I don't see why an equivalently well-written male character couldn't do the same.

Good god someone who answered the original question succinctly while mirroring my own views thankyou sir.

After scanning the few the reviews in the link the OP gave me and adding the few reviews I have read elsewhere it seems most praise it as a good game overall few praise the story and quite a lot praise the character of Lara I would say this is because she is likeable in this game before this game I disliked Lara hated her even back in the PS1 era so to change my mind they must have done something right, a good character is a good character.

I dont think the OP agrees he seems to think story been done before = story bad, character not 100% believable = bad, game well received because Lara = woman, game not amazingly original = bad.

And then goes on to make suppositions about what would have made the game amazing but in reality is preferable for him and supposed for others.

Hes entitled to his opinion but it does seem like he has an agenda asking a question and then attacking or complaining to those who disagree with him.

Anyway OP my for my answer to your question...again see above quoted.

 

[Sean Hayden]

• 
  [li]A normal person ends up on their own, struggling to survive in the wilderness;[/li]
  [li]The island is inhabited by a dodgy cult that worship an ancient evil spirit;[/li]
  [li]An unusual force (in this case a perpetual storm) prevents them from leaving;[/li]
  [li]The main character's mentor dies and they're forced to assume the role of the hero;[/li]
  [li]A helpless damsel-in-distress gets kidnapped (repeatedly);[/li]
  [li]The cultists are trying to sacrifice a young woman in order to release an ancient evil;[/li]
  [li]One of the "good guys" betrays the group (and you can see it coming miles away);[/li]
  [li]The hero saves the day by shooting everyone and blowing everything up;[/li]
  [li]The hero then carries the damsel to safety in his/her arms, and they escape on a boat as the sun sets;[/li]

Sounds a lot like a less fantastic Last of Us.

I think the Last of Us is everything you want and I knew Tomb Raider was going to be a bad game ever since I saw the gameplay of the river in a tank top and sliding down the mountain side, falling through the helicopter pilot windshield, parachuting into trees and still being 'okay'.

 

[Erttheking]

Well, Far Cry 3 got some praise for it's story, so I'm gonna say yes.