So many of you may know my opinion on the new Lara Croft "design". Which for those still unaware, goes a little something like this......
While re-reading my Tomb Raider issue of Game Informer today, I a though occured to me. My mother loves Tomb Raider - she has beaten every single one multiple times, except for the ones on the 360 (because I own the only 360 in the house). She still plays some of the older ones on PC to this day. And I wondered what she, a long time Tomb Raider and Lara Croft fan would think of the design.
So I took my magazine and showed her the cover with the mug-shot of Lara on it (which has no Tomb Raider related give-aways on it) and asked her what she thought of it, and who she thought it was.
She didn't know. I then turned and flipped to the full-body shot in the magazine, taking care to cover her name and the paragraph title. I asked again. She still didn't know. Then I showed her the the title of the article, and that is was Lara Croft she had been looking at.
Her first response was "That doesn't look anything like Lara Croft at all. It looks like a completely different character from a completely different game."
Her next response was "Why does she look like that?" to which I gave the gave the answer of the game is supposed to be a sort of re-start for the series, and that they wanted to make her look more "grounded" and "realistic".
"But she isn't supposed to be "realistic". She is supposed to be a fearless, beautiful treasure hunter who goes anywhere and does pretty much anything. This Lara looks like a random, average college student who looks like she'd shit herself at the sight of a large dog, much less having to fight a pack of wolves moments into her first adventure. If they're trying to "fix" the series, why would they mess with the part that really never had anything "wrong" with it?"
I shrugged; I don't have an answer to that. Of course the point was driven even further home when after I shrugged she added "And I'm not going to lie; from that mugshot, if it wasn't for the lips, you wouldn't be able to tell if that was a man or a woman. Lara always had way more feminine features than that."
Its just one example, but I think it makes the point pretty clearly; when someone who loves the games and has played pretty much on releases ever since they came out cannot recognize the main character on sight, but rather has to be told and shown who it is, you've gone too far. For all intents on purposes, it might as well be a different character.
And they don't even have the same out that the new Devil May Cry Dante does, in that the "new" Dante will wind up looking more like the "old" Dante by the end of the new game, since its supposed to explain how he wound up like that.
Unless Lara gets some serious plastic surgery, "new" ain't looking like "old" ever again.
While re-reading my Tomb Raider issue of Game Informer today, I a though occured to me. My mother loves Tomb Raider - she has beaten every single one multiple times, except for the ones on the 360 (because I own the only 360 in the house). She still plays some of the older ones on PC to this day. And I wondered what she, a long time Tomb Raider and Lara Croft fan would think of the design.
So I took my magazine and showed her the cover with the mug-shot of Lara on it (which has no Tomb Raider related give-aways on it) and asked her what she thought of it, and who she thought it was.
She didn't know. I then turned and flipped to the full-body shot in the magazine, taking care to cover her name and the paragraph title. I asked again. She still didn't know. Then I showed her the the title of the article, and that is was Lara Croft she had been looking at.
Her first response was "That doesn't look anything like Lara Croft at all. It looks like a completely different character from a completely different game."
Her next response was "Why does she look like that?" to which I gave the gave the answer of the game is supposed to be a sort of re-start for the series, and that they wanted to make her look more "grounded" and "realistic".
"But she isn't supposed to be "realistic". She is supposed to be a fearless, beautiful treasure hunter who goes anywhere and does pretty much anything. This Lara looks like a random, average college student who looks like she'd shit herself at the sight of a large dog, much less having to fight a pack of wolves moments into her first adventure. If they're trying to "fix" the series, why would they mess with the part that really never had anything "wrong" with it?"
I shrugged; I don't have an answer to that. Of course the point was driven even further home when after I shrugged she added "And I'm not going to lie; from that mugshot, if it wasn't for the lips, you wouldn't be able to tell if that was a man or a woman. Lara always had way more feminine features than that."
Its just one example, but I think it makes the point pretty clearly; when someone who loves the games and has played pretty much on releases ever since they came out cannot recognize the main character on sight, but rather has to be told and shown who it is, you've gone too far. For all intents on purposes, it might as well be a different character.
And they don't even have the same out that the new Devil May Cry Dante does, in that the "new" Dante will wind up looking more like the "old" Dante by the end of the new game, since its supposed to explain how he wound up like that.
Unless Lara gets some serious plastic surgery, "new" ain't looking like "old" ever again.
