These angles are actually really bad for showcasing these characters.
So you see the indent in her form here? the way she narrows below the ribs and widens at the hip? The silhouette of her bust is much more pronounced than the static render you showcase above as well.
It's not really fair to compare in-game render to concept drawing but since we don't have real renders of the new character we'll have to use it. Notice the roundness of Lara's face on the left, versus the sharp angles on the right. Notice the round chin versus the square "pointed" chin.
In retrospect "Manliness" is not exactly the right word, but it's the easiest way to describe this hardness and removal of feminine identifiers that these artists are using.
Here is another example, though the netflix show is difficult because her character is so fucking inconsistent between shots. But again, square chin, hard angles in the jawline.
I guess hardness is another good word if you prefer over manliness. These ladies are becoming too hard and too amorphous between them and male characters that they've lost the identities of there gender. And i was asked about the inconsistency when I pointed out the male characters, and essentially I would have the same problem if they were suddenly designing male characters to be softer, rounder, more "girly" in much the same way I dislike the harder, manlier design of the ladies.
It serves as a very weird statement in that we've demonized female characters from being "girly", or "sexy", or putting them in situations in which they can ever be in danger of losing or need saving. Which means that stories in which the female is the lead and the hero has removed the stakes. Because the roles have not simply been reversed and it's the women saving the men, it's simply the removal of the role entirely.
I would love a game or a story in which a man becomes the "damsel in distress" and a woman becomes a hero in order to save her lover, husband, partner, whatever. But they don't ever tell these stories.
None of these harder character redesigns are ever going to reach iconic levels the way the original Lara has, because those iconic traits having been removed in favor of having nothing identifiable or special about the character at all.
