Conan O'Brien Loses It Over Lara

[Chris Batson]

Conan, Andrew, and the audience basically had the same reaction as me when I saw that "spike through the head" death a couple of weeks ago. Almost TOO brutal for my tastes.

Yeah, I usually don't care at all about game violence, but that seemed unnecessary. Like, things in ultra-violent games like MadWorld, Manhunt, Postal, etc. aren't an issue for me, yet that made me uncomfortable. I really have to wonder who thought that was a good idea and why the rest of the dev team listened to them.

Exactly! The aesthetic of those environments makes me feel that the graphic violence is justified, if not necessarily "easy" to watch. In this instance though, it just seems - like you said - unnecessary and out of tone with the rest of the game.

I know from the promotional material that the development team wanted to make the world of Tomb Raider more realistic with an emphasis on danger, but this looks downright exploitative. I mean they have her struggle for a few seconds after she gets impaled! Too harsh of a "punishment" for an inexperienced college student.

People struggle when they're impaled. I've seen a man get his throat and neck impaled by a screwdriver. He fucking struggled. He also survived, since it mostly only went through his throat and soft tissue. Anyway, it's not an instant death, and you will absolutely move around if it happens to you, unless it goes through your spinal chord.

I didn't mean to imply that someone couldn't survive something like that. I've read a lot of stories of people who've survived self-inflicted shotgun blasts to the head! *shudders* Really, I just found the visceral nature of the death a little too harsh considering the context of a naive, wide-eyed college student putting herself in danger trying to save her friends. In fact, her struggling made it seem all the worse to me. However, this is all the opinion of a fellow naive, wide-eyed college student, so I may have some bias.

By the way, I'm really sorry you had to see something like that. I hope everything turned out alright.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Why was no outcry for Issac Clarke?

That poor man is far to precious and incapable to be even depicted like that

Well, that doesn't mesh with the people claiming it doesn't fit well with the narrative. Dead Space is all about violence and gore. Tomb Raider...not so much.

However...I will say that it doesn't bother me to watch Dead Space's deaths. But when Lara suddenly got impaled, I winced. Dunno why, but there ya go.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

I'm sorry but I remember that people wanted their games and women to be as realistic as possible and ya know what? People die in very gruesome ways and you don't get to complain when a developer gives you a realistic character and makes said character die the same way as you see extras die in movies

....

Okay, I had no problem with the game deaths (and found funny how disturbed Conan was) but your griping has made me partly reconsider (also someone bringing up the Lara rape stuff again).

The random spike-shaped tree branch? Not realistic. Rather silly, actually. Firstly that it was quite so long and pointy, and secondly that every fallen tree had exactly the same branch. Thirdly that it went through her neck and - apparently spine or head, somehow.

A real tree branch wouldn't be that long and spike-shaped. It would be shorter and wider (if no less sharp). If it hit Lara in the neck at that speed, it would likely slice open her neck, but she wouldn't impale on it like that, she'd be swept downstream with a bleeding neck. If she was impaled, it would be through the torso - main body mass - otherwise she'd just rip off and keep going downstream. Actually, she might be ripped off even if she hit torso first, depending on where she was impaled, resulting in her being disemboweled.

Are those less gruesome? Possibly. More realistic? Certainly. So why the giant tree spike neck impalement?

I just suggested in another thread that a character firing arrows at a demonic woman's face was a metaphor for oral sex. This, honestly, seem similar. If you mess up, Lara gets face-fucked. By a tree. And we're back to saving her from being raped (to death).