Would Tomb Raider's story still be considered good if the main character was male? [Spoilers]

[Karelwolfpup]

Well yeah OT, the plot basically was Uncharted 3 but with Lara Croft instead of Nathan Drake. Twas a rip roaring ride for sure, but as soon as you sat back and thought about it the plot kinda falls apart in many places. Was nice to see Lara in an oriental setting though, which seems to be coming back into style. Especially referencing WWII Japan for some reason. Not that I'm complaining about that, not that many games do reference the Pacific that much, if at all.

The characters could definitely have been fleshed out more, and who knows, maybe they were but the devs had to cut it due to time constraints from publishers or not being able to shoehorn it in with the gameplay?

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

I disagree with you here OP: I think the new Lara is quite exceptional by "triple A" videogame standards. I wish someone would make a game with a male protagonist who shows fear and goes through this sort of character development.

A now-infamous producer of Tomb Raider 2013 said (among other badly chosen words) that players would "root for Lara in a way that they might not root for a male character". I certainly did root for Lara more than other game characters, but it wasn't because she was female, it was because she was human.

as soon as you sat back and thought about it the plot kinda falls apart in many places

True, the plot has many many holes. But they're all fairly small. Nothing slapped me in the face and knocked me all the way back to reality. There was nothing in TR2013 as facedeskworthy as, say, the Lazarus Project.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Well it wouldnt matter except they couldnt call it Tomb Raider. Tomb Raider and Lara and linked to each other so well that it wouldnt work having a guy as the main role. Now a similiar story with a male character, yes it would work just as fine. Even in Farcry 3 you was a weak make character that had to fight for survival.

Both those characters in TR and FC3 had human character that can be identified with. With stories that we could identify with.

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

Wait, Tomb Raider had a good story? When did this happen?

When was the new Tomb Raider story considered good?

Depends on whether you are someone who likes plot or character development. If you're the latter then TR2013 is infinitely superior to the likes of Deus Ex, Bioshock, Half-Life, Mass Effect, etc.

 

[OldDirtyCrusty]

I'd still like Tomb Raider if it was a guy. How often do you see the protagonist of an action game actually being vulnerable and human while still being badass?

Not often enough.
Counting Uncharted and May Payne the score goes up to seven games. There may be some more but that are the ones i can think of.

I don`t really see much difference between the new Lara and Nathan and i don`t think that the main characters gender does anything for the quality of a game. With the new Lara i don`t even have trouble that she blasts away hundreds of hostiles. She openly admits right after the first kills how easy it is to pull the trigger.
The gruesome death animations are something that affected me since they made me not wanting to die and playing to survive.

The new Tomb Raider is a good game that does some things better than Uncharted, the characters and story are certainly not among these things. I wouldn`t call it a clone since it borrows from other games too and it`s 2013 there`s not much that hadn`t been done before. Aslong as the game is fun i`m fine with it. I enjoyed the new Tomb Raider and i`m now waiting for the next one.

 

[TheCaptain]

Not having played the game so far, I have only your summary to go on, but I must say, I'm still very much looking forward to the game.

In my opinion it's a misconception that every new game must feature an intricate plot with various twists and turns and at least one never-seen-before gameplay element. I still rather play a good, old, solid "formulaic" game than something that desperately tries to be as innovative as possible and fails horribly. As pointed out above, Bioware's RPG's have always been at their best when they were retelling the same story over and over again in different settings.

That said, I never found Lara Croft especially appealing as a character and usually prefer playing a male character over a female one - of my seven Commanders Shepard, one is a female, so for me the game would probably work equally well with a male protagonist.

Of course, if the game wasn't featuring Lara Croft, I would probably have missed it entirely, so in my case, the game at least benefits from this particular female protagonist.

 

[jollybarracuda]

I think what makes Tomb Raider unique is that we've seen male characters in many other games get brutally murdered and injured in countless ways. Leon in RE4, Isaac in Dead Space, Marcus in Gears of War, etc., etc. But very, very rarely do we see women in games go through this kind of punishment. It's actually quite unsettling seeing it happen to her, more so than to men because, for the most part, men are the ones that take the beating in video games, while women usually remain fairly intact. So it's not unsettling because she's a woman, it's unsettling because we're not used to seeing this happen to anyone other than male characters. So for your question, no, Tomb Raider probably wouldn't have had the same effect had it all been happening to a male character, just because we've seen it all happen before in many other games with a male character.

 

[Casual Shinji]

When was the new Tomb Raider story considered good?

Depends on whether you are someone who likes plot or character development. If you're the latter then TR2013 is infinitely superior to the likes of Deus Ex, Bioshock, Half-Life, Mass Effect, etc.

Then that must mean I don't like plot and character development at all, since I found both of these in the new Tomb Raider to be about as solid as a wet newspaper.

 

[DioWallachia]

Shit, now that you mention it. If they had made the new Tomb Raider a game other than Tomb Raider with a male lead character but the game was otherwise in tact including the other characters and stories... I think it would have ended up in Tropes VS Women episode two and we'd probably be arguing over it in those threads for the next few months.

Why is it okay for a damsel in distress to be rescued by a girl but not a guy? Given equal treatment, shouldn't this be just as bad?

Because when you write a game entirely about an empowering female figure it seems a bit odd to call you out on a trope who's worst quality is the possible unfortunate implications that may arise from it if you look at in a particular way? Generally, the concept of a damsel in distress is called out not simply because it exists, but because it is so prevalent and because you so rarely have a helpless male in distress, because such a character is regularly shoe-horned into the passive love interest role and is given no depth beyond being eye candy and a reward for the protagonist, and because it is almost always male power fantasies doing the rescuing. I'm assuming none other than the first apply here.

It is prevalent? how so? besides Mario and Zelda games, how prevalent it is? how prevalent is the DiD trope of male rescuing female, compared to the trope of "Incompetent, paranoid, idiot, straight white male protagonist" that keeps appearing even MORE frecuently than ever in the movie media? If you havent noticed, one is more harmful than the otehr because of the close proximity that they present those people with those tropes frecuently.

 

[Zhukov]

No, not really.

I liked the new TR and I liked the new Lara, but I don't think either the story or the character were anything special or even noteworthy in their own right.

I think a large part of the positive reception comes down to the desire for Strong Female Characters in games. A desire that's apparently starting to border on desperation.

It's a bit sad that the standard in video games is so low that the new Lara Croft is being treated, at least by some, as some kind of godsend.

 

[jcfrommars9]

"Would Tomb Raider's story still be considered good if the main character was male?"

I don't know. But my positive reception to Lara Croft was that they were able to show her character being that vulnerable and yet that bad ass at the same time. That gave the character a great deal of depth. There's that saying, you're afraid but you're not a coward. Lara also in the game showed intelligence, resourcefulness, determination, bravery and a certain disregard for her own safety when it came to helping her friends. I think the story is special because they attempt to and in my opinion, succeed in showing and addressing what it means to survive in such a unforgiving environment. As Lara herself would come to say, the price for surviving is too high. The side characters were clearly archetypes and bland outside of Roth. Roth was the only one that had any depth and felt was truly necessary to Lara's development as a character. The most interesting thing I found about Mathias was just how long he was on the island. The diaries of a madman were mildly entertaining. In the next game though, Lara should have a greater, more visceral challenge to her character. A Belloq to her Indy.

 

[McMarbles]

[glib]

You mean... Uncharted?

[/glib]

 

[Risingblade]

You'd have to reverse all genders in the story. A young, sexy man trying to survive on an island and getting captured and raped by amazons.

I'd play that game, wanna headshot me some amazons~

 

[Proverbial Jon]

but the excellent story and characters more than make up for all that.

The people who said this... did they actually play the game?

The support characters are all broad stereotypes with zero depth or impact on the story. Sure, most of them are likeable but that's not the same as good characterisation.

Spoiler: As for the others...(spoilers)

Roth is just there to act as a giant metaphor for the passing of the torch and to be the "push" that Lara needs to believe in herself. His death is inevitable and not at all surprising.

Sam suffers from a borderline pathetic hero worship of Lara before she's even done anything noteworthy. Plus she's rather adept at getting captured. Over and over again.

Father Mathias is your run of the mill religious zealot with little to do or say that hasn't been done by every villain before, ever.

And Lara? Well, she does the best she can in a terrible situation. There's really not a lot of character actually going on with her. Her development within the narrative doesn't match up with her in-game advancement and everything about her gunning down hundreds of armed madmen just feels... wrong.

The story itself was actually pretty cool but ultimately suffered from bad pacing. It took far too many hours of gameplay before we really learnt anything about the island and the forces at work. There was too much emphasis on shooting people over fact finding or, ya know, tomb raiding. Anyone remember that part where Lara was actually interested in the academic side? Nah, me neither...

 

[m19]

The support characters are all broad stereotypes with zero depth or impact on the story. Sure, most of them are likeable but that's not the same as good characterisation.

I thought the story was mostly Lara vs the island. Support characters never really had a place to develop. The worst they could do is saddle Lara with sidekicks a la Uncharted. I never felt like they needed to be anything more than likeable.

 

[Proverbial Jon]

Wait, Tomb Raider had a good story? When did this happen?

When was the new Tomb Raider story considered good?

Depends on whether you are someone who likes plot or character development. If you're the latter then TR2013 is infinitely superior to the likes of Deus Ex, Bioshock, Half-Life, Mass Effect, etc.

But Lara doesn't develop as a character. I'm not sure quite what it is about this game that has fooled people into believing that it's award winning literature.

Lara isn't flawed to begin with. She's touted as being brilliant in her field of work, having an eye for new details and willing to take risks (go into the dragon's triangle.) A couple of people aren't on her side initially but that's them, not her. There is nothing about her to improve. That's a poor start when you're looking to develop a character.

Then she's thrown into a bad situation where she has to do or die. Putting aside the crazy stunts she performs (which mostly transcend human ability or limits of endurance) most people would rise to the occasion in her situation and be able to do what she does because their very survival is at stake. Sure, there are some comments about her parents and some hints that she can't live up to whatever legacy they have forged, but the details are far too sparse and it all feels so bare bones as to be non existent.

Lara "develops" in her situation as any human would. The OP is right, you could replace Lara with anyone else, any gender, and you'd get the same exact storyline. That's the problem right there, this isn't a personal story about Lara, it's just an old time clichéd survival story about some chick on an island. Lara hasn't been reinvented, she's been homogenised.

 

[godgravity]

I think the fighting/killing should have had a lot less of the focus. Lara Croft would be much more interesting to me if she was more reluctant to kill someone, yet after her initial grief after her first kill, we have her mowing down hundreds of bad guys with relative ease.

What i mean is... imagine if the combat sequences were almost designed like their own little puzzles. You COULD simply fight everyone to the death, but there might be a better, more clever way to neutralize the threat than just killing everyone outright. Maybe some of the areas could have had the traps famous in the older TR games... and setting off these traps to snare bad guys could have been part of it.

Did we play the same game? I was perplexed at this, then (being objective) figured I should think about why I was confused.

Yep. I was quickly able to come up with four or five different scenarios where I "used the environment" where it wasn't painfully obvious you could do so in each case.

Spoiler

Rolling barrels down the hillside, pulling down the support beams, cause the ceiling to collapse via an explosion

In each case, you *could* have "mowed them down" - but it was more fun to find the alternate available paths.

I just don't think everyone was hitting LB as often as I was, making it much more of a 'survival' game than a 'shooter.'

 

[Epic Fail 1977]

The support characters are all broad stereotypes with zero depth or impact on the story. Sure, most of them are likeable but that's not the same as good characterisation.

Agreed, but this isn't their story. The focus is squarely on Lara.

And Lara? Well, she does the best she can in a terrible situation. There's really not a lot of character [development?] actually going on with her.

Significant change necessitated by challenging circumstances is pretty much the definition of character growth.

The story itself was actually pretty cool but ultimately suffered from bad pacing.

You mean the plot? I thought it was quite bad really, with lots of fridge logic and more than a few actual holes. It only existed to advance Lara's character, but it did that nicely enough for me.

Obviously in an ideal world we'd have great support characters and a great plot, but that won't happen until gameplay comes second to story (if it ever does). Here and now I'm happy to just get a protagonist with actual growth instead of an angry and/or charismatic brick.

 

[godgravity]

Wait, Tomb Raider had a good story? When did this happen?

When was the new Tomb Raider story considered good?

Depends on whether you are someone who likes plot or character development. If you're the latter then TR2013 is infinitely superior to the likes of Deus Ex, Bioshock, Half-Life, Mass Effect, etc.

But Lara doesn't develop as a character. I'm not sure quite what it is about this game that has fooled people into believing that it's award winning literature.

I really think all these opinions are in the same vein of players who 'skip' all the journals or don't really try to find all the backstory elements scattered around.

Sure, it's not top-notch writing or character development, but it *is* there. At least, more than most of her series has been up to this point, or definitely above and beyond the lacking blowout titles these days. Crysis 3, anyone?

 

[godgravity]

Obviously in an ideal world we'd have great support characters and a great plot, but that won't happen until gameplay comes second to story (if it ever does). Here and now I'm happy to just get a protagonist with actual growth instead of an angry and/or charismatic brick.

'Gameplay coming second to story' - please see "The Walking Dead"

QTEs is not 'gameplay' or strategy. I'll tell you though - the STORY in that one... I don't think I've ever been 'scared' to choose a QTE outcome, or brought to serious teary-eyed emotion via empathy ever in a game before "TWD"