Get Back Up
- Thread starter Susan Arendt
- Start date
Thank you Susan for pointing this out intelligently. I hadn't thought about the possibility that they could work it towards a positive survivor story... granted I'm still very cynical and skeptical. If they keep the gameplay elements of the original tomb raider I'm not sure how you make that work. How do you go from tense danger to fun platforming and still keep that idea of this scene being anything more than a throw away.
I'll keep an eye out for your review. You will be the one reviewing this, right? Right?
I'll keep an eye out for your review. You will be the one reviewing this, right? Right?
Remember "Testikill"?. That was an achievement where you injure a man's genitals until it kills him.
So I read this, and I wonder if Susan would have felt that equally scary. Sure Lara doesn't actually have her genitals injured, it doesn't even come close to happening, it's just implied and she escapes, which is obviously "difficult". Just wondering, when it came to shooting a man in his reproductive organs and killing him this way, were you likewise seeing a person that unfortunately didn't have the luck to escape "dramatic adversity, an adversity so extreme she [in this case "he"] couldn't possibly imagine it, let alone expect to find herself [himself] faced with it."?
Sure, the context is different, but so are the outcomes. She's not viciously attacked in her vagina until it kills her, unlocking an achievement for the player, she's threatened and in the end nothing actually happens to her genitalia at all.
I'm just really genuinely curious where the line is here. I realize this is the flavor the the month, I get that this is what people are talking about, but let's face it, in action games there's a radically lopsided slant against men; men are brutalized, murdered, maimed, and sexually assaulted by a far greater margin than women. How often have we seen men being the object of some obsessed female character's unwanted and harassing advances? How often have we seen male characters being put in vulnerable situations where they are violated by other men or by women? I can't even count how many games out there have some form of a testicle assault, but they're out there, and there's a lot of them.
It's your article, your word, I accept that. I applaud that you're willing to see Lara's escape from such a personal assault as an act of empowerment and triumph against a terrible threat against her. I just find it curious that when it's happened to men over all these many years in video games, that it's neither controversial or laudable.
Just my thoughts.
So I read this, and I wonder if Susan would have felt that equally scary. Sure Lara doesn't actually have her genitals injured, it doesn't even come close to happening, it's just implied and she escapes, which is obviously "difficult". Just wondering, when it came to shooting a man in his reproductive organs and killing him this way, were you likewise seeing a person that unfortunately didn't have the luck to escape "dramatic adversity, an adversity so extreme she [in this case "he"] couldn't possibly imagine it, let alone expect to find herself [himself] faced with it."?
Sure, the context is different, but so are the outcomes. She's not viciously attacked in her vagina until it kills her, unlocking an achievement for the player, she's threatened and in the end nothing actually happens to her genitalia at all.
I'm just really genuinely curious where the line is here. I realize this is the flavor the the month, I get that this is what people are talking about, but let's face it, in action games there's a radically lopsided slant against men; men are brutalized, murdered, maimed, and sexually assaulted by a far greater margin than women. How often have we seen men being the object of some obsessed female character's unwanted and harassing advances? How often have we seen male characters being put in vulnerable situations where they are violated by other men or by women? I can't even count how many games out there have some form of a testicle assault, but they're out there, and there's a lot of them.
It's your article, your word, I accept that. I applaud that you're willing to see Lara's escape from such a personal assault as an act of empowerment and triumph against a terrible threat against her. I just find it curious that when it's happened to men over all these many years in video games, that it's neither controversial or laudable.
Just my thoughts.
My main issue is the apparent disconnect that exists between the gameplay footage presented and the themes. Maybe I'm old school, but I like to think that the method by which the player interacts with the game through the mechanics should reflect the message that the game presents to the player. In essence, the medium is the method is the massage.
What this Tomb Raider reboot seems to present is the classic case of Cutscene Vulnerability, where the character undergoes terrible ordeals as presented in cutscene, but in gameplay is a total badass that can take on all comers.
For example, Metroid: Other M. The problem is not that Samus is vulnerable (her blind obediance and reliance on Adam Malkovich being one case, the notorious battle against Ridley being the other). THe problem is that outside of cutscenes, she kicks ass and takes names like the might galactic bounty hunter that she is.
Video games where the protagonist fights have difficulty expressing weakness in their hero. After all, if the player can rip through a hundred enemies with barely a scratch (completely possible with many FPS and 3PS games), portraying that character as anything other than badass in cutscene creates a narrative disconnect between the game and the player.
A good example of reinforcing character weakness in games in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The player feels helpless because Daniel himself is helpless to fight the monsters that fill Alexander's castle. His only methods of defense are to hide or flee, he has no weapons and no methods of defending himself otherwise. There exist no mechanics to attack enemies.
On the other hand, this Tomb Raider game clearly allows Lara Croft to wield bows, a bladed weapon (from the concept art, probably a machete), and at least one handgun, if not her signature dual-wielding. She can clearly use these weapons to competently defend herself from enemies. Yet she is shown in multiple instances as being relatively unable to defend herself from attackers.
Many games have situations where protagonists are stronger in cutscene than in gameplay. Bayonetta is a very powerful and competent main character, but I personally struggle to survive even moderately powerful enemies on Normal difficulty; I've only beaten the game on Easy. However, this serves to encourage the player to perform better - to become skilled enough in regular gameplay as to feel like the badass their character is intended to be. This gives the player a feeling of accomplishment, of satisfaction that they have become skilled at defeating new and greater challenges that the game presents.
A game where the character's competency is LOWERED in cutscene does the opposite, it forces the player to question whether the skills they have learned to beat the game are actually useful or not. If Bayonetta acts like a simpering child in cutscenes, failing at every turn and barely surviving, and then I take control and mop up the enemies with my real-life skills, how can I connect with her character?
Thank you for reading all of this. I tend to go on quite a bit, but I feel that this is an important issue.
What this Tomb Raider reboot seems to present is the classic case of Cutscene Vulnerability, where the character undergoes terrible ordeals as presented in cutscene, but in gameplay is a total badass that can take on all comers.
For example, Metroid: Other M. The problem is not that Samus is vulnerable (her blind obediance and reliance on Adam Malkovich being one case, the notorious battle against Ridley being the other). THe problem is that outside of cutscenes, she kicks ass and takes names like the might galactic bounty hunter that she is.
Video games where the protagonist fights have difficulty expressing weakness in their hero. After all, if the player can rip through a hundred enemies with barely a scratch (completely possible with many FPS and 3PS games), portraying that character as anything other than badass in cutscene creates a narrative disconnect between the game and the player.
A good example of reinforcing character weakness in games in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The player feels helpless because Daniel himself is helpless to fight the monsters that fill Alexander's castle. His only methods of defense are to hide or flee, he has no weapons and no methods of defending himself otherwise. There exist no mechanics to attack enemies.
On the other hand, this Tomb Raider game clearly allows Lara Croft to wield bows, a bladed weapon (from the concept art, probably a machete), and at least one handgun, if not her signature dual-wielding. She can clearly use these weapons to competently defend herself from enemies. Yet she is shown in multiple instances as being relatively unable to defend herself from attackers.
Many games have situations where protagonists are stronger in cutscene than in gameplay. Bayonetta is a very powerful and competent main character, but I personally struggle to survive even moderately powerful enemies on Normal difficulty; I've only beaten the game on Easy. However, this serves to encourage the player to perform better - to become skilled enough in regular gameplay as to feel like the badass their character is intended to be. This gives the player a feeling of accomplishment, of satisfaction that they have become skilled at defeating new and greater challenges that the game presents.
A game where the character's competency is LOWERED in cutscene does the opposite, it forces the player to question whether the skills they have learned to beat the game are actually useful or not. If Bayonetta acts like a simpering child in cutscenes, failing at every turn and barely surviving, and then I take control and mop up the enemies with my real-life skills, how can I connect with her character?
Thank you for reading all of this. I tend to go on quite a bit, but I feel that this is an important issue.
No.Farther than stars said:
Every creepy crawly idea that people normally shun gets explored in entertainment every day. This scene in the trailer reveals intent- nothing more. Yet, the very idea makes people grab their torches? Get over it.
Yeah I pretty much agree with this though I worry that CD are going to overplay it, especially after that trailer and kind of wish they had done this with a new IP.
Still her reactions seem like...well normal human reactions, especially given that?s she is straight out of university, not a hardened adventurer. This is an origin story so I expect that over the course of the game and if they make a sequel she will get tougher and more like the Lara we know.
As for the rape threat, I admit the amount of rape I keep coming across in media is starting to bother me a bit. I don?t think it?s a no go area but it seems like every time something tries to be dark and gritty they have to have some rape thrown in. Tho taken on its own I don?t have a problem with that scene and to be fair it is what I would expect to happen in that situation and it wasn't drawn out.
Rosenberg?s comments were stupid but fuck it, this game looks interesting anyway I?m not going to not get because of the idioticcomments of one person and I think I get what he meant anyway. The game is third person, Lara is a full character who reacts to what?s going on and from the looks of things is going to be commenting on what?s happening quite a bit. So not really the sort of character you project on to while playing. Your more watching her story than being in it.
Still her reactions seem like...well normal human reactions, especially given that?s she is straight out of university, not a hardened adventurer. This is an origin story so I expect that over the course of the game and if they make a sequel she will get tougher and more like the Lara we know.
As for the rape threat, I admit the amount of rape I keep coming across in media is starting to bother me a bit. I don?t think it?s a no go area but it seems like every time something tries to be dark and gritty they have to have some rape thrown in. Tho taken on its own I don?t have a problem with that scene and to be fair it is what I would expect to happen in that situation and it wasn't drawn out.
Rosenberg?s comments were stupid but fuck it, this game looks interesting anyway I?m not going to not get because of the idioticcomments of one person and I think I get what he meant anyway. The game is third person, Lara is a full character who reacts to what?s going on and from the looks of things is going to be commenting on what?s happening quite a bit. So not really the sort of character you project on to while playing. Your more watching her story than being in it.
Like many people, I think Susan Arendt blows 90% of the commentary on this game right out of the water. What she says is not a reactionary evaluation, or an inflamed knee-jerk reaction. I like that a lot.
Reading what she said helped me iron out my thinking on the Tomb Raider reboot. While we aren?t saying the same things, you won?t be able to understand my points until you understand hers. Further, in the discussions populated everywhere else people seem hyperfocused/stuck on the implication of rape/sexual violence. While it?s an important point to address, the rape issue stands out so much that everyone else has talked it to death, so I think you have to see what else is there or you?re just scratching the surface.
Three things about Tomb Raider so far stand out for me:
1. Lara is being hardened. Like in a kiln. Many fiction authors use a formula to get you to care about their characters and it goes like this: Make a character, then do terrible awful things to them so that your audience will know their virtues and strengths because of how they handle them. Once they see their mettle, the audience will love your character and follow them with a song in their heart, quiver at every pain they endure, and cry for their losses. We have never had anything bad happen to Lara Croft, she's been in control, overachieving, and multi-talented since inception.
2. Gaming is a difficult way to communicate internal narratives, unlike books you can't read her thoughts on the page. The way Crystal Dynamics seem to have chosen to communicate Lara's thoughts/feelings is through her responses. You can tell she's scared, or in pain, because she cries out.
3. It is not clear that her "narrative" is meritorious. I am always skeptical of attempts to show vulnerability in women's stories because we live in a world that tells very limited women's stories and in general people don't think outside of a few stereotypes when it comes to women. So in order to appeal to a mass audience either you have to address those stereotypes and turn them on their head (without the right finesse you either do the story injustice or alienate your audience), or emulate those stereotypes as puppetry for the masses. I sincerely hope it will be the latter that is produced, but this isn't my first rodeo.
Overall, with these thoughts in mind, I'm not really looking forward to this game. I don't think it's necessary to torture a character this much for us to see how hardcore they are, I think showing someone's strength is done better in careful moments rather than blitzing them profusely. Instead, I see the suspension of disbelief challenged here. Based on what I've seen, Lara Croft is not going to be hardened like the developer intends, realistically she'll be crippled by PTSD from all this overstimulation and would require years of hardcore therapy. I mean, therapy IRL can make a person terrifically hardcore, but I can't see that being converted into a game. I'd believe this story a lot more if it weren't being presented in such an over-the-top extreme way.
Note: This got a little longer than I expected, so I took all this text and replicated it on my own blog because for some reason there are people who read me who don't click links. Thanks again to Susan for continuing to write great op-eds even though right now it's kinda dangerous to write game opinions while being female.
Dat blog post here: http://cake-pie.com/tomb-raider-reboot-e3-trailer-raises-eyebrows/756/
Reading what she said helped me iron out my thinking on the Tomb Raider reboot. While we aren?t saying the same things, you won?t be able to understand my points until you understand hers. Further, in the discussions populated everywhere else people seem hyperfocused/stuck on the implication of rape/sexual violence. While it?s an important point to address, the rape issue stands out so much that everyone else has talked it to death, so I think you have to see what else is there or you?re just scratching the surface.
Three things about Tomb Raider so far stand out for me:
1. Lara is being hardened. Like in a kiln. Many fiction authors use a formula to get you to care about their characters and it goes like this: Make a character, then do terrible awful things to them so that your audience will know their virtues and strengths because of how they handle them. Once they see their mettle, the audience will love your character and follow them with a song in their heart, quiver at every pain they endure, and cry for their losses. We have never had anything bad happen to Lara Croft, she's been in control, overachieving, and multi-talented since inception.
2. Gaming is a difficult way to communicate internal narratives, unlike books you can't read her thoughts on the page. The way Crystal Dynamics seem to have chosen to communicate Lara's thoughts/feelings is through her responses. You can tell she's scared, or in pain, because she cries out.
3. It is not clear that her "narrative" is meritorious. I am always skeptical of attempts to show vulnerability in women's stories because we live in a world that tells very limited women's stories and in general people don't think outside of a few stereotypes when it comes to women. So in order to appeal to a mass audience either you have to address those stereotypes and turn them on their head (without the right finesse you either do the story injustice or alienate your audience), or emulate those stereotypes as puppetry for the masses. I sincerely hope it will be the latter that is produced, but this isn't my first rodeo.
Overall, with these thoughts in mind, I'm not really looking forward to this game. I don't think it's necessary to torture a character this much for us to see how hardcore they are, I think showing someone's strength is done better in careful moments rather than blitzing them profusely. Instead, I see the suspension of disbelief challenged here. Based on what I've seen, Lara Croft is not going to be hardened like the developer intends, realistically she'll be crippled by PTSD from all this overstimulation and would require years of hardcore therapy. I mean, therapy IRL can make a person terrifically hardcore, but I can't see that being converted into a game. I'd believe this story a lot more if it weren't being presented in such an over-the-top extreme way.
Note: This got a little longer than I expected, so I took all this text and replicated it on my own blog because for some reason there are people who read me who don't click links. Thanks again to Susan for continuing to write great op-eds even though right now it's kinda dangerous to write game opinions while being female.
Dat blog post here: http://cake-pie.com/tomb-raider-reboot-e3-trailer-raises-eyebrows/756/
thats the idea of the game to make lara more human and blievable. so far they really seem to nail it.DementedSheep said:
rosenberg surely screwed it up for what he said but still doesnt change a thing in the game what the intention was for lara to do at this situation.
".
They've already addressed this - the attempt is entirely automated, you take control again at the part where she knees him and it turns into life-or-death.itsthesheppy said:
Uh... she doesn't get raped.The Random One said:
...As in, never. Not in the entire game. Crystal Dynamics have made this very clear. She DOES NOT get raped.
WHY DO PEOPLE NOT CATCH THIS?
"Oh, but they try!" Yeah, he touches her thigh and promptly gets his genitals crushed. Compare this to, say, the Japanese Metro, where dirty gropings are a daily occurrence for many women, but they aren't traumatized by it. Is it terrible? Yes. Will it cause breakdowns years later? No. There's a huge, huge difference between a failed attempt at assault and an actual assault. Please don't blur that line.
Sorry I didn't get back to this sooner- I think the new Escapist format still has some bugs, (i.e. not letting me know when I've been quoted back.) And I'm not quite sure what part of my statement you don't understand, so pardons if I over/mis-explain.Susan Arendt said:
So... Tomb Raider was the media darling for an extended period of time. Lara was appearing in non-industry magazines, advertising unrelated products, even modelling real-world fashions, not to mention the two movies.
Of late, the franchise has been under-performing. Things improved, by most accounts, when the property was moved away from Core and put in the hands of Crystal Dynamics. But it's never returned to the kind of headline-making, cross-cultural-saturation it once enjoyed.
So now we have the reboot. And it's definitely garnering some attention, even if whether said attention is positive or negative (or even if that will matter in the "all press is good press" sense) remains to be seen. But it does seem to have that attention, including the attention of the ever-cannibalistic game production line, always hungry for accessible trends that can be utilized in their next game.
If the new Tomb Raider succeeds, my concern is that the feature that is most likely to be recycled into other properties is that which I referred to as "Darker and Edgier 2.0". Wherein failure is greeted with prolonged scenes of painful death, and success is greeted with extended scenes of suffering.
One can argue whether the way the new TR is using these themes is meaningful and sympathy-inducing or merely exploitative and courting controversy for controversy's sake, and I suspect there are cases to be made for both points and the argument is likely to persist until, and possibly even past, the game's release.
What I have little doubt of, however, is that the game's success would see imitators that were ham-handed and cringeworthy. Possibly for an extended life cycle, since unlike cover mechanics or bullet-time, inflicting suffering on the protagonist doesn't require new technology. Treating the hero[ine] to a narrative of inevitable sadism could become next year's brown-and-grey.
It may be that TR will create a compelling new gaming experience. But I can't help but wish that it were a new IP, or an offering from an independent studio; something less likely to spawn imitators. However effective the new Lara may be, I don't want to play through a series of crawl-and-bleed simulators.
I think that the problems that people have with the attempted rape scene are threefold.
1)http://www.doesnotplaywellwithothers.com/comics/pwc-0050
This is the first reason. I admit that it was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the trailer. "Well, Lara's second reboot in this console generation and, oh look, they're going to work rape into it. How completely original." At what point did rape go from "horrific crime" to "overused motivation in every female character's story"? Rape in fiction has become the lazy writer's way to give a female character motivation.
Do you have a woman who has issues with her father? Well, you could go into complex motivations such as that he was someone who was always emotionally distant and was never there for her when she was growing up which would allow you to explore why he was that way. However, that's a lot of writing. Instead, you could just say "he raped her" and you have instant motivation.
Personally, I'm going to hold out for Metroid: Another M where we find out that Samus' REAL trauma comes from Ridley raping her when she was a child.
2) It is actually demeaning to women to continually resort to rape. Here is a woman who almost drowned, gets trapped on an island where she is hung upside down, has to set herself on fire to escape said hanging, lands on a bone (?) which goes right through her side, wild dogs try to eat her face, and other traumatic things happen to her. But she is a woman in a video game and, as we know, women can't feel any sort of real emotional trauma unless it involves rape. It is demeaning to women to say that they are so one-dimensional that the only way to make their motivations mean anything is to press the rape button.
3) It trivializes rape. When you continually make every origin story involve rape, it goes from being portrayed as this horrific crime that can scar a woman for years to having the same emotional impact as having Bowser kidnap the princess. What this eventually results in is rape being treated no differently than getting a headache and Kickstarter projects attracting misogynist hordes because it becomes so commonplace that people get desensitized to what it is.
In the end, the Lara Croft name has baggage. We all know that she's going to get off the island and become an amoral psychopath who murders everything that stands between her and the shinies. Given what we've seen of this game, she's going to have cutscenes where we think that she's actually a human....followed by gameplay periods of ultra-violence and a complete disregard for any wounds/emotional trauma that she suffered in a previous cutscene.
(Prediction sidenote: Lara's friend who gets dragged off? She's dead by the end of the game. We need a "best friend dying" scene to be checked off on the emotional trauma list.)
I think Crystal Dynamics knows it too which is why they're backpedaling on the scene. I think they're looking at the reaction and asking themselves "Guys, does this story really have the level of writing to avoid a Dickwolves backlash? Because, if it doesn't, we might want to drop that scene. It's not like we don't already have enough "break the cutie" scenes in the game."
Just to clarify, the scene didn't really bug me more than a rolling of the eyes and a "Oh, this again" reaction. However, I can see where a lot of people are coming from when they're protesting the scene in the trailer. I imagine that, especially for a rape survivor, seeing a game with Lara Croft: world's most murderous grave robber , use something traumatic as a throwaway piece to establish motivation is something that seems a little exploitive.
1)http://www.doesnotplaywellwithothers.com/comics/pwc-0050
This is the first reason. I admit that it was the first thing that came to my mind when I saw the trailer. "Well, Lara's second reboot in this console generation and, oh look, they're going to work rape into it. How completely original." At what point did rape go from "horrific crime" to "overused motivation in every female character's story"? Rape in fiction has become the lazy writer's way to give a female character motivation.
Do you have a woman who has issues with her father? Well, you could go into complex motivations such as that he was someone who was always emotionally distant and was never there for her when she was growing up which would allow you to explore why he was that way. However, that's a lot of writing. Instead, you could just say "he raped her" and you have instant motivation.
Personally, I'm going to hold out for Metroid: Another M where we find out that Samus' REAL trauma comes from Ridley raping her when she was a child.
2) It is actually demeaning to women to continually resort to rape. Here is a woman who almost drowned, gets trapped on an island where she is hung upside down, has to set herself on fire to escape said hanging, lands on a bone (?) which goes right through her side, wild dogs try to eat her face, and other traumatic things happen to her. But she is a woman in a video game and, as we know, women can't feel any sort of real emotional trauma unless it involves rape. It is demeaning to women to say that they are so one-dimensional that the only way to make their motivations mean anything is to press the rape button.
3) It trivializes rape. When you continually make every origin story involve rape, it goes from being portrayed as this horrific crime that can scar a woman for years to having the same emotional impact as having Bowser kidnap the princess. What this eventually results in is rape being treated no differently than getting a headache and Kickstarter projects attracting misogynist hordes because it becomes so commonplace that people get desensitized to what it is.
In the end, the Lara Croft name has baggage. We all know that she's going to get off the island and become an amoral psychopath who murders everything that stands between her and the shinies. Given what we've seen of this game, she's going to have cutscenes where we think that she's actually a human....followed by gameplay periods of ultra-violence and a complete disregard for any wounds/emotional trauma that she suffered in a previous cutscene.
(Prediction sidenote: Lara's friend who gets dragged off? She's dead by the end of the game. We need a "best friend dying" scene to be checked off on the emotional trauma list.)
I think Crystal Dynamics knows it too which is why they're backpedaling on the scene. I think they're looking at the reaction and asking themselves "Guys, does this story really have the level of writing to avoid a Dickwolves backlash? Because, if it doesn't, we might want to drop that scene. It's not like we don't already have enough "break the cutie" scenes in the game."
Just to clarify, the scene didn't really bug me more than a rolling of the eyes and a "Oh, this again" reaction. However, I can see where a lot of people are coming from when they're protesting the scene in the trailer. I imagine that, especially for a rape survivor, seeing a game with Lara Croft: world's most murderous grave robber , use something traumatic as a throwaway piece to establish motivation is something that seems a little exploitive.
Here: http://jezebel.com/5918222/the-rapey-lara-croft-reboot-is-a-fucked+up-freudian-field-dayWoodsey said:
That's probably a good representation of the anti-New Lara design choices crowd. Argue with this, not me.
Again, my intent wasn't to advocate either way; I just saw misguided commenters claiming that the anti-NL people are trying to stop women from being hurt in games, which isn't really the case at all. Nobody gives a shit if a woman gets hit in a videogame, so long as it isn't in a sexualized/weirdly paternalized/whateverized way -- that's really the argument here.
You find it retarded that people get upset over depictions of rape. I take it you or someone you care about hasn't been raped? Or murdered? Are you that oblivious that you can't imagine a game offending someone who had? I don't think rape or murder in entertainment should be banned by any means, but I think we shouldn't act so cavalier about such a serious issue that effects real people. I don't require you to be offended, all you have to do is accept that this might bother people besides yourself.tzimize said:
So you believe all publicity is good publicity? That this scene and its lousy justification won't cause some potential customers to avoid the title? I know people who are refusing to buy this game on principle, just from seeing the discussions around it.veloper said:
In less highbrow locales I hear gamers talk about wanting to fail that QTE deliberately just to see what happens.maninahat said:
We may not be the intended audience. I won't play the game anyway, because QTEs are boring. The girls won't play it either, because they are upset, but what about all those teens and basement dwellers?
Tomb Raider sold on tits and ass. I reckon the company knows what audience they are targetting.