Well I won't be buying the new Tomb Raider...

[Use_Imagination_here]

After reading the article the comments about "protecting her" do seem very creepy to me. It's a very odd way to put it at the very least.

 

[Zeckt]

And this is the reason nobody wants to do female characters anymore, because everybody has a different view on what she should be and that their portrayal is the right one so you get everybody getting upset about their own ideals about what they want out of female characters.

Male characters are not put under a microscope like this hence why they don't even bother trying to make serious females now. If she's serious she's too serious, if she's sexy she's too sexy. If she's stupid then it portrays women as stupid. It never. Ends. Why can't a female character deal with serious issues? why can't she be a dumbass in a funny game? why does she have to be your ideal paragon of a woman every time? More importantly why can't we just shut up and let the developers do what they want without criticizing them with our biased opinions till they change her to your image and not theirs?

Stop being so bloody protective of digital women and realize that women too can experience hardships or be total parodies. Why don't we have entire topics dedicated to how bulletstorm with its satires or Master chief with his drab military attitude are ruining the male image? because nobody cares and takes it seriously. This and the lollipop chainsaw thread are really starting to get on my nerves, your way too overprotective of digital women. Get a grip people! You seriously need to stop as your holding digital women back as if this were the 1950's! Why does everybody have to be so serious about female characters?!

 

[TailstheHedgehog]

And this is the reason nobody wants to do female characters anymore, because everybody has a different view on what she should be and that their portrayal is the right one so you get everybody getting upset about their own ideals about what they want out of female characters.

Male characters are not put under a microscope like this hence why they don't even bother trying to make serious females now.

I'm not sure that's the case. Look at the film industry - most protagonists are male. I'd say most mainstream music artists are male, but perhaps that's because the only era of music I really listen to is 70's-90's so I could just be stuck in the past. Look at the corporate level of major companies and most executives are male. This is all connected. Women don't get an equal representation in games because we live in a patriarchy (hence the music industry reference), nobody's scared to write one up, it's just normalised to use a male character instead.
But I'll agree men aren't put under as harsh a microscope. They really should be. We should really be analysing the shit out of games such as Call of Duty all the way to Infamous. Why are they men? What's the purpose? What have these male characters got that female characters find it tougher to achieve? Why did Male Shepherd get the box art for so long? Has that even been remedied?
If only ^.^ .

 

[LiquidGrape]

Boobies? Sexist
No boobies? Sexist

You just can't please everyone

Yeah, this.

I do like it when people don't bother to approach the reservations of a particular group honestly.

Dissect persistent and endemic problems with gaming culture? Cor, no! Instead, let's just endeavour to approach the matter with the most base understanding of the power dynamics which define said problem, isolate a single miniscule aspect of the discourse, twist it so that it bears an (at best) remote semblance of relevance to the matter at hand and then proceed to blow it completely of our proportion for the benefit of inconsequential conflations.

Or in layman's terms: "gawd feminists just can't make up their minds about boobs can they."

 

[Dandark]

I do not understand what the fuss is about here. A character goes through a tramatic situation and ends up getting stronger because of it? That's a pretty common storytelling aspect.

Is it because it involes a female and attempted rape? She is like 17 and stranded on an island with pirates/bandits(?), what do you think would happen? Nothing actully happens anyway, it's not like he gets around to it, it just implies that he was going to probably rape her if not stopped then she murders him.

I see it as the breaking point where she realizes she will have to kill someone, this is her first kill right? People seem to be overeacting and making a big deal out of nothing.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

I might be on the fence about this game, but I do like the reddesign they did. Looks much more..almost human and believable for a character like her.

I just don't want them to expand on that...you know what I mean. They dont make her a target for sexuall encounters in the game (which apperently they already did, but cleased there hands of it, apperently)

EDIT; to clarify, they don't do it every chapter. I love the character evolpment from what I've seen so far, and I understand they would try to do that to a girl on a deserted island, I just hope she becomes stronger through out the game, which I'm sure she will. I do like what they have show far, as it shows great promise to me.

 

[Nami nom noms]

"And then, Rosenberg says, those scavengers will try to rape her. "She is literally turned into a cornered animal," Rosenberg said. "It's a huge step in her evolution: she's forced to either fight back or die."

Wow.

And I thought I was maybe reading too much into the trailer when I saw it last week, but this, coming from one of the producers of the game, just raises it to a new level of creepy.

I'm dreading this. I don't want to see Lara pick up her iconic handguns as a reaction to an attempted rape. That's not a strong believable female character - that's just sleazy, and I am really concerned that this is the kind of exploitation movie thinking that's driving the reboot.

Lara was the iconic female video game hero of the 90s. She didn't need a justification for going on adventures and kicking ass any more than her male counterparts did. Now it's a reaction to an attempted rape. How can this possibly be seen as a step forward?

This is going to be worse than Other M.

This.

My alarm bells have been ringing for a while now... the new Tomb Raider is going to suck.


What worries me most is the apparant thought process from the developers:

Dev 1: 'We need to characterize Lara more, make her more believable and show how she overcame her fears to shoot another person.'

Dev 2: 'ok, lets put her in an extreme situation whereby she will have to shoot people.'

Dev1: 'But how will we do that?'

........

Dev2: 'Rape!'

Out of all the possible solutions they could have come up with, they went with rape... it just smacks of immaturity to me... mark my words, this is not going to end well.

 

[Alterego-X]

The stupid part of this is that they released it was happening. Cardinal rule, show, don't tell. It's DC"s, "Guess which hero is gay!" all over again.

Except that this one was almost entirely made up by the gamers' moral panic.

It's not like they specifically made a public statement about how there will be rape in Tomb Raider. There was an interview about the new Lara's characterization, and in it, there was a listing of hardships happen to Lara "her best friend gets kidnapped, she is taken hostage, they try to rape her..."

That latter part referred to a random light groping scene that we ALREADY SAW in the trailer at that point, (and no one was specially offended by it), but then with the interview, the Internet started reconstructing that sentence as "Lara's origin story is about rape".

As soon as that happened, the publisher already made a statement that this is not the case, and that Tomb Raider DOESN'T deal with themes of rape.

 

[JakBandit2208]

So I must be crazy cause I read that article and didn't find anything sexist about it other than the whole "cornered animal" bit. I seriously think people are overreacting especially since the game isn't even out yet.

 

[Davroth]

Mainly it's making the point that realistic looking women are more human then oversexualized blowup-dolls. I'd agree with that.

And that vulnerability thing, I'm kind of indifferent about that. I'm not a big fan of it, but books and movies are allowed to do it, sometimes even critically acclaimed ones. I don't see why it should be especially despicable in video games. And that's not how games work, is it? You don't look after Kratos in God of War. You are Kratos. Same thing here. IMO, anyway. ^^

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Maybe it would?ve been better if the creators didn?t just advertise (as in, mention at all, although the internet could just be twisting it into advertisement) that rape would be a point in the game, but I guess it generates publicity. Then we could save the arm-flailing until people have actually played the damn game. Stuff like this is beginning to make me believe that we?re all just subconsciously sexist hypocrites, and not always in the negative way either. I thought we?d gotten past the days when people blew a gasket whenever they saw a woman being ?immodest? if she revealed her thighs in public, as if it was some kind of horror if men just so happened to get an erection and then blame the aforementioned woman for not restricting herself. I mean, I thought we were meant to be living in a sexually liberal society.

And yeah, rape does tend to happen much more to females than males. Tough titties, Turkleton, that?s just an inescapable fact of life. Talking of titties, I never found Lara Croft that hot. Then again, the last time I played a Tomb Raider game was the first one when I hadn?t even reached puberty.

Talking of which, what games are there when men have almost been or actually have been raped? Maybe people will be happy if we throw more of them in, eh?

Despite all what I?ve said, I don?t know how I feel on this matter. I don?t even care, frankly, since I?m not a Tomb Raider fan and I couldn?t care less about the oversexualization of women in video games. Perhaps it?s because I?m a man. *shrugs*

 

[Tony2077]

at this point the game is a day one purchase or die trying

 

[Lilani]

Well, I'm sure the new Lara does look more accurately like a person, if I could actually see her under the muck, bruises, burns, blood and bandages. She has just become exploited in a different way, from superdeveloped prim Barbie body to damsel in distress broken woman who needs a man to take care of her. The sexualisation of her character is still there, it has just changed to this masochistic gorn fantasy.

You know, I'm trying to be on a hiatus from commenting here, and I'm actually trying to make a video expressing my opinion on this article. But after reading this, I simply couldn't let it stand. Here is the exact excerpt from the script I've written.

The sentiment I?m getting is ?I don?t want to see Lara pick up a handgun for the first time to defend herself from being raped.? Well why not? I don?t think I?d ever consider using a weapon against someone unless it were that sort of a desperate, fight-or-die situation. It?s like there?s this expectation that a strong character can never have been weak at any point in their life. As though heroes can never be made, as though they have to be born with all their strength and willpower intact from day one. It?s like people have this terminal fear that if a female character at any point in her adventure is vulnerable or has a weakness, she is on the whole a weak character. That?s just not true. To show a female with a few weaknesses and insecurities is not misogynistic. But to say that a woman having any sort of weakness automatically means she is completely helpless or needy--that is misogyny.

Please, spare me your concerns White Knight. This sort of "women can never be weak without being completely weak and needing a man" attitude is on the exact same level of immaturity regarding character as the people who are mad about her boobs being smaller. I honestly can't decide which group disgusts me more.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Well, I'm sure the new Lara does look more accurately like a person, if I could actually see her under the muck, bruises, burns, blood and bandages. She has just become exploited in a different way, from superdeveloped prim Barbie body to damsel in distress broken woman who needs a man to take care of her. The sexualisation of her character is still there, it has just changed to this masochistic gorn fantasy.

You know, I'm trying to be on a hiatus from commenting here, and I'm actually trying to make a video expressing my opinion on this article. But after reading this, I simply couldn't let it stand. Here is the exact excerpt from the script I've written.

The sentiment I?m getting is ?I don?t want to see Lara pick up a handgun for the first time to defend herself from being raped.? Well why not? I don?t think I?d ever consider using a weapon against someone unless it were that sort of a desperate, fight-or-die situation. It?s like there?s this expectation that a strong character can never have been weak at any point in their life. As though heroes can never be made, as though they have to be born with all their strength and willpower intact from day one. It?s like people have this terminal fear that if a female character at any point in her adventure is vulnerable or has a weakness, she is on the whole a weak character. That?s just not true. To show a female with a few weaknesses and insecurities is not misogynistic. But to say that a woman having any sort of weakness automatically means she is completely helpless or needy--that is misogyny.

Please, spare me your concerns White Knight. This sort of "women can never be weak without being completely weak and needing a man" attitude is on the exact same level of immaturity regarding character as the people who are mad about her boobs being smaller. I honestly can't decide which group disgusts me more.

Egads! You hath discovered my true identity!

Spoiler

Very well then, I shall accept your challenge, but I do insist that you refer to me as 'sir'.

I like the idea of us playing a prequel where we discover how Lara got into Tomb Raiding. I have nothing against the idea of Lara beginning the game weak and becoming stronger through her experiences. I don't think it is wrong that a female character be portrayed as having flaws, or going through trials in which she is hurt and put in danger.
The problem I have with the trailer and information we have of the game so far, (and that is an important point... but I'll come back to that) The problem I have is that this game seems to methodically and relentlessly take Lara apart, physically through all her falls, burns, impalements, fights etc. and emotionally through the pain of all that, and seeing her friends captured, possibly killed, nearly getting raped, etc.
As far as we can tell the game is not the tale of someone persevering through trials to become a stronger, more confident person. It is the tale of a preppy, pretty young girl getting beat up and wounded, and going from one juicy scene of distress to the next, with the ultimate focus being on watching her pain and seeing her suffer. It's the same concept as those 'Gore-porn' movies like Saw and Hostel, exploiting the allure of a young pretty woman, with the allure of violence and bloodshed, and mixing the two to become some perverted fetish material sexualising human suffering. That is the vibe I get from the trailer, and that is the conclusion I draw from the comments the developer guy made about the game in the interview he gave about it.

So that is the problem I have with not just the inclusion of almost-rape in the game, but the general feel of the game as a whole. The game doesn't build up an iconic character. It is not seeing how Lara got an interest in grave diving, or archaeology: But it is a thinly veiled shock game about how much they can make this character suffer. Let's tie her completely upside down, and have her burned horribly to get out of it, then nearly drowned and crushed in a sunken cave, then attacked by men and beat up, then nearly raped, then...
There is no plot, no character development, no purpose to her suffering. It's not something I want to play in a game, or see my character (whatever their gender) subjected to without any real point to it.

That said, that is the conclusion I have drawn from the information we have been given so far, and all that we have been given so far is one trailer and one interview. The game could turn out to be well written, these scenes that we see could turn out to be important parts in a much wider game of personal development and survival. Rape has been used successfully to show character development, or explain the level of suffering a person is going through: Andy Dufresne in the Shawshank Redemption is a good example of rape done realistically and purposefully, but all indications that we have so far seem to say that this game is using it, and everything else that happens to Lara, as some sort of twisted fetish-fantasy, which relishes in putting it's female victim through all these horrible situations, and the gamer has to help and protect her though it. (help and protect were the two words the developer actually used to describe the role gamers would take in playing the game.)