Tomb Raider writer expressed an interest in making Lara gay?

[Archer666]

Any gay character written in a video game will be horrible because video game writing is horrible. Lara was okay pre-reboot( I dont know how she is now, not interested in the new game), but saying that "Oh I thought about making her gay!" just screams as attention grabbing to me.

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

I love this thread.

Jesus Christ, this is absurd. Look at this thing. The writer considered making a character gay and you're up in arms. I thought the Escapist was supposed to be fairly liberal, and yet here you are basically showing some pretty blatant homophobia. Sure, you dress it up nice under the veil of "It'd just be cheap titillation!" but come on. This is ridiculous. Essentially what you're saying is that any female homosexuality is nothing but pandering to men. Next you'll be saying that real life lesbians are only doing it for attention.

 

[Calibanbutcher]

SNIP

Hi there, I don't really want to get sucked into another discussion with you, but I wanted to add something:
You know who is also a great, strong female character and stars in action-adventure games?
Samus Aran.
Which makes Lara Croft A strong female character, not THE strong female character.
That is if we overlook the fucking mess that is Metroid Other M. Fuck that game.

 

[Treblaine]

If sexual relationships are going to be there, they cannot be a basis for the player "caring" about a non-player-character being kidnapped/ransomed or otherwise in jeopardy. Far better the other way around, that someone in love with them is a reason to get the player character out of an impossible jam.

And this is true whether male or female in homosexual or heterosexual partnership, just because the player character cares about them, doesn't automatically mean the real-world-player will care. I really didn't care about Dom's wife in Gears of War and it's not because i'm prejudiced against heterosexual relationships. Without a common link then the player will be obliged to go on the quest, not really motivated. You also cannot do this as it is so overused, the player can see this shit coming, they are going to want to get attachment to a character if they are going to be ransomed in some way or another later.

What I think works better is to take a far more basic relationship such as a parent figure or adopted child. Almost everyone has some sort of parent figure, even if it wasn't their biological parents, that important person to look up to. I cared far more about Indiana Jones saving his Dad in The Last Crusade, or Nathan Drake saving his father-figure Sullivan in Uncharted 3 than any other rescue quest. Partially because I think anyone can appreciate the care people have wrapped up in their guardians. Similar could work with a child but it couldn't just be "he's you're son, now care about him" it would work far better with an adopted son within the game time that you grow to care for more than any other random kid.

If Relationships are not controlled by the player RPG style (and hence line up player's intent with playable-character's intent) then they must be there to humanise the playable-character, to establish they have a broader range of feelings and emotions.

I mean, the best romance I've seen in years was in Clint Eastwood's J. Edgar, a sexless but passionate relationship between two men. It was an on screen relationship I could really believe in. I see certain significant aspects to homosexual relationships whether between men or between women, by removing the inter-gender barrier, and how it's not a partnership of convenience to "have a family" or conforming.

It's because of love, pure and simple, crazy about each other.

And I think that would be best set against the narrative, than work for it. Have the lover be a conflicting agent though not the main antagonist, but something like an government agent or gang leader. And you get rid of the BS like "no, I'm the man in this relationship" starting from more possibilities rather than the usual squabbles.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

What difference would it make unless they changed some missions to have importance placed on that sexuality? press a to 'scissor', press b to 'fist', press x to be 'tender', press y to be 'rough. I really don't get this...what difference does her sexuality make? The worst that would happen is there might be a kiss and maybe a little innuendo that would change nothing in the gameplay so i can see no problem either way.

It's a sad fucking day when what is essentially a puzzle game becomes involved in considering sex to sell itself. Make a good game and you don't need sex to sell everything. As ever, the current trends towards such things are retarded at best

 

[Frontastic]

No. Even if his intentions are noble, no. If this were a male character (make Nathan Drake gay, that could be interesting) fine, do NOT do it to Lara Croft. Even if they have succeeded in making more than a, how did Yahtzee put it, a bong with a couple of footballs nailed to it, it doesn't change the fact that to the wider culture that's what she'll always be. Making her gay just screams of; we want sales so hey look we have this hot chick who doesn't wear a huge amount, get wets and uses guns and oh yeah, she likes chicks!

Lara has always been fairly asexual. She's aware of herself as a sexual object and uses it when it'll help her get ahead with whatever mission she's on (she pretty much flirted Larson into not killing her in Anniversary even when he had a clear shot but then killed him soon after because he stood in her way) but she never needed a love interest. It rarely fits her character (Kurtis worked because they were both pretty much as uninterested in each other that they were sort of drawn to one another by how committed to thier own causes they were).

 

[feauxx]

I haven't played the newest Tomb Raider... but what part of raiding tombs would have me finding out/wondering about who Lara Croft is romantically interested with? And it also would have bothered me a little that possibly THE most famous strong female main character in video game history is a lesbian.

Well the new Lara is not at all the butch stereotype. There is an amazing disconnect between the violence in gameplay and how she acts in cut-scenes.

Nor could you possibly describe the original Lara as butch, she lived in a big luxurious mansion, she had extremely eloquent voice. Apart from occasional violent gunplay, she was no "butch" she wasn't a Vasquez type character. And really, an obsession with travelling the world to obtain artefacts of mysticism and hunting cryptozoology (she hunted down and killed Bigfoot), that's hardly a Butch lesbian stereotype.

And is the Vasquez stereotype is over used? No, it's very rare, it's just the few few rare examples are pounced upon.

The actual stereotype? Marcus Fenix, Solid Snake, Master Chief, John Marston, Captain Price. Gruff stoic men with guns and the gruffer the voice the better.

The Vasquez type character is so rare it doesn't even qualify for sterotype status, it's a rarely used trope, and almost unheard of in a leading role.

And really... one don't have a lot of choices for it not to be Lara Croft due to the huge lack of female protagonists in gaming anyway.

What new character have we had in the last 15 years to choose from? Master Chief, no, a guy. Nathan Drake, no, a guy. Marcus Fenix, no, a guy. Raiden, nope, still a guy (though he at least takes on negative female tropes like impractically styled hair and high heels in combat). Of all the characters of new COD, all male. Of all the new characters created in the past 15 years, what new female action heroes have we got?

It's not that she's "the MOST famous strong female main character" but "THE strong female main character in" for action adventure games. Due to the lack of alternatives.

what are you on about? butch women can't be rich and eloquent? femme women can't be gay? a strong female can be anything, butch or femme, and those are tired old stereotypes in the first place. a girl is not automatically butch if she's strong and gay.

 

[PrinceOfShapeir]

No. Even if his intentions are noble, no. If this were a male character (make Nathan Drake gay, that could be interesting) fine, do NOT do it to Lara Croft. Even if they have succeeded in making more than a, how did Yahtzee put it, a bong with a couple of footballs nailed to it, it doesn't change the fact that to the wider culture that's what she'll always be. Making her gay just screams of; we want sales so hey look we have this hot chick who doesn't wear a huge amount, get wets and uses guns and oh yeah, she likes chicks!

Lara has always been fairly asexual. She's aware of herself as a sexual object and uses it when it'll help her get ahead with whatever mission she's on (she pretty much flirted Larson into not killing her in Anniversary even when he had a clear shot but then killed him soon after because he stood in her way) but she never needed a love interest. It rarely fits her character (Kurtis worked because they were both pretty much as uninterested in each other that they were sort of drawn to one another by how committed to thier own causes they were).

Her intentions. Rihanna Pratchett is a woman. Please actually pay attention.

 

[Treblaine]

SNIP

Hi there, I don't really want to get sucked into another discussion with you, but I wanted to add something:
You know who is also a great, strong female character and stars in action-adventure games?
Samus Aran.
Which makes Lara Croft A strong female character, not THE strong female character.
That is if we overlook the fucking mess that is Metroid Other M. Fuck that game.

Well I find it hard to overlook the utter mess of Metroid Other M which was entirely why I left her out. Not much was seen of her up to that point (she had somewhat of a Gordon Freeman style presence in the Prime series) and Other M seems to have killed the series for the foreseeable future.

And I chose in counterbalance the male playable-characters of extremely active franchises like Gears of War.

I was of course not being so literal with "THE lead female role", I was emphasising the point that we just have such a complete lack of females as player characters, especially in action or adventure games.

Oh no, I said "complete lack" which literally means "None at all". Just another example of how wrong it is to take what people say literally true when the figurative meaning is clear.

It sure isn't helped by the trend of reboots and endless sequels using the same protagonists. And the leads of new IPs hardly rock the boat, Isaac Clark as stoic armoured guy, and another big buff and burly bearded bloke for leading role in Last of Us.

We don't seem willing to recognise how male stereotypes, and how accepted they are, are driving female roles out of gaming. The tendency (if not dependence on) having big masculine brute as a lead role. In many cases it's incongruous, like in Last of Us gameplay footage we've seen, it establishes how weak Joel is fighting the crazies one-on-one, how he needs to use every dirty trick to pick them off one by one... but the size differences between him and them make it look like he could take on two at a time.

 

[Treblaine]

what are you on about? butch women can't be rich and eloquent? femme women can't be gay? a strong female can be anything, butch or femme, and those are tired old stereotypes in the first place. a girl is not automatically butch if she's strong and gay.

I agree totally, there is no reason a Butch woman can't be rich and eloquent... but that's a real person or well fleshed out character, and I was responding to the issue of Lesbian stereotypes, and how Lara doesn't conform to them to spite their claim that she does.

User "I say old chap" identified the problem he perceived as the Butch stereotype:
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/9.404038.16736054

Of course "femme women" can be gay, but it's the stereotypes he is accusing is there, when it is not.

Also, I didn't say "Rich" I meant the type of house, I assume people have actually seen Lara's mansion but I forget how many people telling ME how Lara Croft is haven't played a single Tomb Raider game. Lara Croft's mansion defies all butch lesbian stereotypes in the choice of art-style. Again, it's their stereotype claim which is borne from ignorance.

And these stereotype were labels that were invented for a reason, they were there to increase varied depiction, but here they are being used as a basis to oppose it.

I love this thread.

Jesus Christ, this is absurd. Look at this thing. The writer considered making a character gay and you're up in arms. I thought the Escapist was supposed to be fairly liberal, and yet here you are basically showing some pretty blatant homophobia. Sure, you dress it up nice under the veil of "It'd just be cheap titillation!" but come on. This is ridiculous. Essentially what you're saying is that any female homosexuality is nothing but pandering to men. Next you'll be saying that real life lesbians are only doing it for attention.

It may be genuine, but I can't possibly see what they are working towards.

It would help if they ACTUALLY READ THE INTERVIEW rather than make absurd speculation of the writer's intent, when she explains herself in the interview.

She is not at all saying "corr! Wouldn't it be hot if Lara was lezzing it up a lot! We could make so much money this way" no, she genuinely considers Lara's sexual orientation as part of considering her as a deep and multi-dimensional character.

What difference would it make unless they changed some missions to have importance placed on that sexuality? press a to 'scissor', press b to 'fist', press x to be 'tender', press y to be 'rough'.

On second thoughts, maybe PrinceOfShapeir is spot on.

No one reacted this badly to Nathan Drake being "outed" as a heterosexual, no one made snide jokes that such a thing would necessitate an explicit sex simulator.

 

[theSteamSupported]

I've got two words for y'all: Fucking Åmål

 

[Treblaine]

Lara has always been fairly asexual.

Nope. Asexual is not having any sexual interest in either gender EVER!

Tomb Raider games only ever looked at a relatively short section of Lara's life where she reasonably won't have any sex, especially considering the circumstance of Tomb Raiding. Yes, people can go a few days without sex especially when 99% of that time is spent alone in death-trapped filled labyrinths.

She's aware of herself as a sexual object...

...and uses it when it'll help her get ahead with whatever mission she's on (she pretty much flirted Larson into not killing her in Anniversary even when he had a clear shot but then killed him soon after because he stood in her way)

And the actual scene in question:


What you claim happened is so transparently not true.

 

[m19]

It's important to note that there wasn't any intent nor does it really exist outside of Rhianna Pratchet's momentary fancy as she explained herself. But now since she uncorked this it's an itch that's going to be rubbing at CD on the interwebs. Meh. Hope it goes away.

BTW. Saying this for purely selfish biased fanboyish reasons and nothing else.

 

[Calibanbutcher]

snip.

Oh what the heck.
Yes I know you weren't being completely literal with "THE ONLY FEMALE LEAD EVA", but I felt that Samus Aran was worth mentioning, especially since I prefer her to Lara Croft, which may be because I truly adore the Metroid Prime games.
On a related note:
Lara Croft / Tomb Raider survived "Angel of Darkness", so I don't see why Samus Aran couldn't make a comeback after "other M"...

 

[Frontastic]

Her intentions. Rihanna Pratchett is a woman. Please actually pay attention.

Apologies that was a slip, it is so rare that we get female writers that my mind just assumed male even though I know she is a woman. Hence why I think she does mean well with this, I just think it's a bad move in terms of how it makes these games look. I wouldn't even give a male writer the benefit of the doubt when choosing to make her gay in a reboot timeline. If they'd done it in the previous timeline I'd be ok with it. This whole reboot just screams "mass appeal at any cost".

Lara has always been fairly asexual.

Nope. Asexual is not having any sexual interest in either gender EVER!

Tomb Raider games only ever looked at a relatively short section of Lara's life where she reasonably won't have any sex, especially considering the circumstance of Tomb Raiding. Yes, people can go a few days without sex especially when 99% of that time is spent alone in death-trapped filled labyrinths.

She's aware of herself as a sexual object...

...and uses it when it'll help her get ahead with whatever mission she's on (she pretty much flirted Larson into not killing her in Anniversary even when he had a clear shot but then killed him soon after because he stood in her way)

And the actual scene in question:


What you claim happened is so transparently not true.

Ok lot of points.

Fair enough, you're right. Oxymoronic phrasing on my part. I said "fairly" because we're dealing with 3 timelines here. In the CORE timeline, she's hetro due to Kurtis and even then the attraction is debatable. In the Legend timeline (or are we calling that the Underworld timeline now? Whatever) I've always read her a asexual. The flirting with Larson is an act and is dropped so quickly. Ditto Rutland.
I will concede your point though. We are seeing a relatively small amount of her life so your point stands. But personally I've always thought she was more interested in adventuring than persuing a regular life so the only place she could meet someone is while tomb raiding. And she's ran into enough men that she would have displayed some interest in someone surely (in much the same way Larson clearly is interested in her despite being just as much on the job as she is). Yet the only two I can think of were both passing interests at best and both in the Core timeline (Von Croy in the teenage section of TR4 and Kurtis) so I still read Legend Lara as asexual.

"Sexual Object" - I'm pretty sure it means what I think it means. She's attractive, she knows it. She knows most men won't take her seriously at first glance (and they never do) and she often gets the upper hand that way. She's aware she is objectified and uses that to get what she wants. She is aware she is an object of sexual desire in the eyes of her enemies and plays up that role when needs be. Hell, I've long pondered if she dresses that way as a distraction technique given how often she deals with well-armed henchmen/male villains and why her greatest enemies tend to be women who she can't use that against.

And finally the clip. That's not actually the clip in question. Both those cases prove he would shoot her (though in the mine one he clearly didn't think he'd ever have to) but both cases are either self defence or a last resort. She shoots him first, of course he'll shoot back. The Peru one, she was beating him and he still had a job to do, it was a last resort. This is the actual clip I meant. (From 2.30 or so)

 

[Treblaine]

snip.

Oh what the heck.
Yes I know you weren't being completely literal with "THE ONLY FEMALE LEAD EVA", but I felt that Samus Aran was worth mentioning, especially since I prefer her to Lara Croft, which may be because I truly adore the Metroid Prime games.
On a related note:
Lara Croft / Tomb Raider survived "Angel of Darkness", so I don't see why Samus Aran couldn't make a comeback after "other M"...

Fair enough. What did you actually want to mention about Samus Aran? Other than that I didn't mention her?

I don't know what to make of either Samus or Lara as they have have changed so much in their most recent games. Most jarring is Tomb Raider-2013's focus on such grim violence yet a character development that makes Lara seem more like a tragic and emotionally wrought child-soldier than an adventurous and ever-confident explorer.

Angel of Darkness was mainly a technical failure, a small team with an overly ambitious project and insufficient capability, in both technical and design terms it was broken.

And in fact "Tomb Raider" as the concept didn't survive though the BRAND was revived, but a completely different team with a completely different approach that rebooted everything.

Imagine if Samus Aran came back and they changed her back story so that she wasn't raised by the Chozo and had two annoying colleagues followign her everywhere explaining every challenge she comes across, the items progression disappears and is replaced by COD style gun mechanics? Would you say that Metroid had "survived"?

It's not enough that the Trademarks are reused, the spirit has to be captured. And for Tomb Raider, Angel of Darkness didn't kill that, the numerous reboots and retcons did that.

 

[anonymity88]

And then they made Cortez and Trainor for ME3 romance options and they made Kaiden bisexual. Which I don't have a problem with as long as it doesn't mess up my game. But why wouldn't all these characters know that Shepard doesn't swing that way? It threw me off when Kaidan declared that he wants to be more than friends. He should know that I romanced Liara in ME1. He should know that I romanced her in ME3 as well. He should know that Shepard is heterosexual. It was a real immersion breaker for me. Which is why I had the idea that players should be able to select their character's sexuality at the beginning of the game in the character creator. It's an RPG after all. Very character driven.

captcha: be mine

Always, captcha. Always <3

He was probably thinking he's about to die a horible death anyway, what's he got to lose?

Haha

OT: Since it was a throwaway remark it's impossible to think how it would have panned out but, in my mind at least I can't see a reason either for Lara to be romantically involved with anyone at least in this game. Surely she's too busy fighting off crazed cultists?

Captcha: hand over fist

I guess they could have made some money hand over fist.

 

[Erttheking]

You know I look back and forth between the video Jim made about how there needs to be more women in games and everyone being on board with that, and this thread with people being against a well known female character being gay, and I can't help but be really confused.

 

[Treblaine]

I'll say it again: we have way more than enough lesbian videogame characters. That wouldn't be even be original or controversial; just another token lesbian fanservice in a videogame.

Really? Let me think of any games with lesbian characters within the past ten years. A few Bioware games, because they're Bioware, Metal Gear, although nobody is straight in Metal Gear, and, um, uh... well I can think of like two from Fire Emblem, and Veronica in Fallout: New Vegas. So yeah, a few PCs in Bioware games, a series in which less people are straight than LGBT (repressed feelings, Kojima?), and less than a handful of others. So much pandering, totally.

I think you are being too generous, I don't think there is a single lesbian character in the whole Metal Gear Saga.

The Boss was in a relationship and had a child with The Sorrow. So, unless it was a union of convenience, that makes her unlikely to be a Lesbian. How she remembers The Sorrow suggests it was more than that. And this was established early on.

RPGs only allow homosexual relationships because they give the player that freedom to partner up with almost anyone. It's not like it's in the designed single narrative.

And in order for there to be a lesbian relationship, the work must pass the The Bechdel Test

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

That means two female characters have to actually interact with each other over something other than a man.

And women are just so rare in games, even rarer than in feature films. There are so many games with no women in them at all and a significant proportion of games have either only a single women or so few women that do so little that they have no interaction with other women.

 

[Luciella]

Seriously?
Can we stop making everything gay? or fanboy orientated?
Lara is one of the only female lead charas in game that i looked up to and felt identified, making her gay...will change the way i see her.
Mind you, this is not homophobic. Just damn, why now everything has to be gay-ified?

I can only see this as either a low attempt to follow the fashion of "introducing something gay" or killing the already good image of her in the idea to make male fantasies come true!
Come on! 40% of the gamer community is female!
If you want Lara gay for male pleasure, make then Nathan Drake gay for female pleasure!