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    Tomb Raider

    Game » consists of 22 releases. Released Mar 05, 2013

    A young and inexperienced Lara Croft is shipwrecked on a mysterious island in this reboot of the beloved action adventure franchise, which departs from the mood of prior games in the series.

    Games Can Be Grown Up Too

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    PerryVandell

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    Edited By PerryVandell

    For the past few days, I’ve seen game journalists go back and forth on Twitter about how wrong it was that Crystal Dynamics had a scene that depicted the attempted rape of Lara Croft. I’ve read tweets of people talking about how their interest in the game has vanished, and others spewing vitriol towards the people at Crystal Dynamics for broaching a concept as messy and uncomfortable as rape. And my question to those people is: why now?

    The controversial scene
    The controversial scene

    Rape makes you uncomfortable? Good, because it should. In all my 21 short years of existence, few things make me writhe in my seat like rape. It’s heartless, evil, and one of the cruelest things a human being can do to another. I read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo while waiting to be selected for jury duty and was one of the most uncomfortable things I had ever read. But while I found the book to be extremely unsettling, I still respected it. I could tell by the language that the author was just as uncomfortable writing those passages as I was reading them. And because of those passages, I knew what kind of monster the villain was. They made me root for the main characters even more, and helped me dig even further into the intricate plot.

    So if books, movies and other forms of media can portray rape in a way that adds to the story, why is it so absurd for video games to do so as well? This public outrage against Crystal Dynamics insinuates that video games aren’t capable of capturing the same seriousness and maturity that other forms of media wield. That video games are merely children’s toys, and to compare them to other forms of media is preposterous.

    For as long as i can remember, people have cried for games to be taken seriously. We’ve long awaited the day where video games stand on equal ground with movies, TV, and books. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at the crowds of people who insist that video games are an art form. Most of them probably don’t care if Braid isn’t compared to Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. They just want something most of us want: for video games to be culturally accepted as something more than trivial drivel.

    Extreme situations can make people do extreme things
    Extreme situations can make people do extreme things

    You want games to be taken seriously without the uncomfortable moments that make you cringe? Well too bad. This world is full of uncomfortable situations, and very few of them offer easy answers.

    You can call me a rapist, a pervert, or any host of awful things at me. Fine, I don’t care. What I do care about is that developers are given a chance to prove they are on equal ground with the other great storytellers of our time. A first-rate morbid tale doesn’t need rape to hold everything in place (at that point, it probably wouldn’t be a very good story in the first place). But rape and a quality story aren’t mutually exclusive either. And until we stop treating games like second-class media, they’ll never be taken seriously.

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    PerryVandell

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    #1  Edited By PerryVandell

    For the past few days, I’ve seen game journalists go back and forth on Twitter about how wrong it was that Crystal Dynamics had a scene that depicted the attempted rape of Lara Croft. I’ve read tweets of people talking about how their interest in the game has vanished, and others spewing vitriol towards the people at Crystal Dynamics for broaching a concept as messy and uncomfortable as rape. And my question to those people is: why now?

    The controversial scene
    The controversial scene

    Rape makes you uncomfortable? Good, because it should. In all my 21 short years of existence, few things make me writhe in my seat like rape. It’s heartless, evil, and one of the cruelest things a human being can do to another. I read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo while waiting to be selected for jury duty and was one of the most uncomfortable things I had ever read. But while I found the book to be extremely unsettling, I still respected it. I could tell by the language that the author was just as uncomfortable writing those passages as I was reading them. And because of those passages, I knew what kind of monster the villain was. They made me root for the main characters even more, and helped me dig even further into the intricate plot.

    So if books, movies and other forms of media can portray rape in a way that adds to the story, why is it so absurd for video games to do so as well? This public outrage against Crystal Dynamics insinuates that video games aren’t capable of capturing the same seriousness and maturity that other forms of media wield. That video games are merely children’s toys, and to compare them to other forms of media is preposterous.

    For as long as i can remember, people have cried for games to be taken seriously. We’ve long awaited the day where video games stand on equal ground with movies, TV, and books. Don’t believe me? Then take a look at the crowds of people who insist that video games are an art form. Most of them probably don’t care if Braid isn’t compared to Van Gogh’s “Starry Night”. They just want something most of us want: for video games to be culturally accepted as something more than trivial drivel.

    Extreme situations can make people do extreme things
    Extreme situations can make people do extreme things

    You want games to be taken seriously without the uncomfortable moments that make you cringe? Well too bad. This world is full of uncomfortable situations, and very few of them offer easy answers.

    You can call me a rapist, a pervert, or any host of awful things at me. Fine, I don’t care. What I do care about is that developers are given a chance to prove they are on equal ground with the other great storytellers of our time. A first-rate morbid tale doesn’t need rape to hold everything in place (at that point, it probably wouldn’t be a very good story in the first place). But rape and a quality story aren’t mutually exclusive either. And until we stop treating games like second-class media, they’ll never be taken seriously.

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    deactivated-5e49e9175da37

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    This reminds me of the Hays Code. Or the Comics Code. Essentially, it's another growing pain in this medium. People have a problem when it's in a video game simply because they can't think of a high-profile example of it (I can, there's a scene in Alpha Protocol which, while on one hand is super fucking hot, is only not horrifying because they give you a last minute chance to refuse it from happening, unlike real rape).

    Essentially, this is just the industry growing in terms of storytelling, just like film and comics and the written word did before it. You're on the right side of history, though.

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    BrockNRolla

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    #3  Edited By BrockNRolla

    Currently, I'm less disturbed by the content, and more disturbed by the justifications for it from the makers of the game. Note that I'm going off of what the guys have said on the most recent bombcasts.

    As you may have heard on recent bombcasts, the most unsettling thing about this game might be the reasons behind the decisions the developer made. There was a lot of, "Well, we want the character to feel vulnerable; like you have to protect her," and "We chose a woman because we didn't think you would feel like you needed to protect a man," and other such super-macho-BS, which, as Jeff put it, "That makes me want to have nothing to do with the game," because he thinks its bullshit that developers talk about gamers like they have to be those kinds of people.

    At that point, you're beyond the game, but knowing that this sort of stuff underlies the supposedly "mature" story is kind of unsettling in its own way.

    More to your point, if you learned that the writer of a book or movie had super gross reasons for the mature storyline elements of the media, that would be equally unfortunate in any medium.

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    MarkWahlberg

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    #4  Edited By MarkWahlberg

    This is actually why I don't like a lot of modern literature or movies. People confuse 'mature' with 'edgy' and think that throwing in some crazy, weird violent/sexual situation is going to make them seem more 'real' (that enough quotation marks for ya?). It's why I don't much care for stuff like The Kite Runner, Atonement, and even Dragon Tattoo. They all had potentially interesting stuff in them, but they decide that no, it's more important to throw in controversial bullshit just to bump up sales. I'm not saying that doesn't belong in literature - it does, and banning it would only further the deception that it doesn't happen IRL- but just doing it to get noticed is disgusting.

    It doesn't take hardcore sex or violence to be taken seriously. It takes an intellectually mature, thoughtful approach to creating the artwork in question. Period.

    People get into a fuss over depictions of sex in video games because by and large, the industry has not proven it is capable of handling anything mature (n any sense of the word) in a consistently intelligent manner. We'll stop throwing a fuss once developers have shown they're capable of deserving our trust in that regard.

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    TheHumanDove

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    #5  Edited By TheHumanDove

    Ughh I was going to reply with something thoughtful. but I think I just ate a worm from this apple I was eating. I'm sorry, I just had to tell someone.

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    NMC2008

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    #6  Edited By NMC2008

    Sure games can be grown up but who would you sell them to?

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    Animasta

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    #7  Edited By Animasta

    @BrockNRolla said:

    Currently, I'm less disturbed by the content, and more disturbed by the justifications for it from the makers of the game. Note that I'm going off of what the guys have said on the most recent bombcasts.

    As you may have heard on recent bombcasts, the most unsettling thing about this game might be the reasons behind the decisions the developer made. There was a lot of, "Well, we want the character to feel vulnerable; like you have to protect her," and "We chose a woman because we didn't think you would feel like you needed to protect a man," and other such super-macho-BS, which, as Jeff put it, "That makes me want to have nothing to do with the game," because he thinks its bullshit that developers talk about gamers like they have to be those kinds of people.

    At that point, you're beyond the game, but knowing that this sort of stuff underlies the supposedly "mature" story is kind of unsettling in its own way.

    More to your point, if you learned that the writer of a book or movie had super gross reasons for the mature storyline elements of the media, that would be equally unfortunate in any medium.

    right on the money.

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    StarvingGamer

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    #8  Edited By StarvingGamer

    I think there's a serious disconnect between the messaging behind the game and the marketing we've seen so far.

    Maybe this new Tomb Raider game is going to be dark, edgy, and mature in a way no other game has been before. I don't know. But what I do know is that the way the game was portrayed during the E3 press conferences made it out to be a bombastic, action thrill-ride being targeted at male 14-22 year-olds, a group of gamers known for their willingness to casually throw around the word "rape." You're not lending the horrifying nature of the act its proper weight when you pair it with footage of Laura going Rambo, laying waste to a ton of dudes with her bow and shotgun.

    I understand the difficulty of successfully marketing a game during so brief a snippet of screen time, but with that being the case maybe they should have sat on the controversial scene for a while longer. It's very possible that the narrative arc of Tomb Raider will validate her transformation to action hero without undermining the adult themes more heavily present at the beginning of the game. I hope it does.

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    Metzo_Paino

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    #9  Edited By Metzo_Paino

    The subject matter isn't so much the problem, more the way it is being handled and "sold".

    Obviously rape is a very serious matter and if it is boiled down to you failing an escape sequence and then you get grabbed and then dragged in a dark hold screaming, (a bit like the snake monsters in Dead Space, but you don't get spat out), it is trivialising the issue to just another fail state. The way it is being talked about isn't really helping either.

    I am glad a developer is attempting to tackle the topic, because as a white male, the opportunity to further understand the female fear of rape in an interactive way could be both interesting and educational. I also hope that all of the marketing and explanations from Crystal Dynamics is just a bad choice of words, which it is very easy to fall into if you aren't thinking every sentence through twice.

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    Chroma_Auron

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    #10  Edited By Chroma_Auron

    Lets break it down to address each one.

    "When people play Lara, they don't really project themselves into the character," Rosenberg told me at E3 last week when I asked if it was difficult to develop for a female protagonist.

    "They're more like 'I want to protect her.' There's this sort of dynamic of 'I'm going to this adventure with her and trying to protect her.'"

    "She's definitely the hero but— you're kind of like her helper," he said. "When you see her have to face these challenges, you start to root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character."

    The big problem here is that we are not feeling like we are the character but feel like we are their protecting her. Like if she didn't have us she wouldn't survive. It makes it sound like a rescue the damsel game except we are the mysterious force that rescues this damsel. Yes it's sexist, no two ways about it. We are supposed to be Lara, we are supposed to struggle to survive and become strong.

    I read a comment about how her origin story in the series was about her surviving a plane crash when 8 years old and making it out of the mountain alive. She had a natural adventure spirit that wanted to explore. It seams kind of unreal but children to have the ability to block or distort trauma to survive. They could have worked it into this story and had her re-unleashing her adventure spirit that helped her survive.

    "She literally goes from zero to hero... we're sort of building her up and just when she gets confident, we break her down again."

    So when she is slowly gaining strength she is reverted back to default. It sounds like character development that goes nowhere.

    "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."

    Regardless of context, this statement is wrong on plenty of levels. The use of animal implies degradation of who she is. I know it sounds kind of a bit of hyperbole but to me, it sounds like she was made into a submissive sex object.

    "In the new Tomb Raider, Lara Croft will suffer. Her best friend will be kidnapped. She'll get taken prisoner by island scavengers. And then, Rosenberg says, those scavengers will try to rape her."

    Let's make a list of all the horrible things that will happen to her to explain how her character is deep (sarcasm). The events do not define the character but are the situations for change and growth. Unfortunately that does not seem to be what they are focusing on. Not only that but we got the stereotype of island scavengers killing and looting. The only way this could be worse is if they were made mostly black.

    These statements don't help convince me that they will do this wrong but I could be wrong and they do it well.

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    Sergio

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    #11  Edited By Sergio

    I'm tired of the arguments about how one shouldn't feel like they want to protect her. They seem to be trying to go for a character arc where you will empathize with her enough that you'd want to protect her, but in the end, you won't feel that way because she becomes the capable character we've known. There's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to protect someone.

    Reading Arya's POVs in A Song of Ice and Fire, I was often left wanting to protect her, but at the same time being amazed at how strong she was when faced with adversity. I keep wishing that George R.R. Martin will give her more POVs because I can see her becoming a kick ass assassin with the skills she's learning. I had also felt like protecting Bran, but lately his POVs have been less interesting for me.

    I can kind of understand if some people don't want to see this type of character arc where we see her before she was a bad ass, and only want the bad ass she is now. This game isn't for them. It would be nice to see a male character get this kind of treatment as well, but most male characters don't lend themselves well to such an arc, since many start off as some kind of law enforcement or military professional. The closest we've gotten so far is Nathan Drake as a child.

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    Sooty

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    #12  Edited By Sooty

    The wanting to protect her shit is hilariously dumb, you will apparently want to protect her, but after the cutscene she'll go on a murdering spree just like Nathan Drake. 
     
    Video games!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 
     
    Leave this "wanting to protect" shit for characters you can't control, or ones you genuinely can't kick ass with - case in point: Bella from Siren Blood Curse. 
      

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    TaliciaDragonsong

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    I could try and care for her, but then I see her takedown 5 dudes with a bow later and survive things that seem very deadly and unrealistic.
     
    Just another murder simulator.

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    High_Nunez

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    #14  Edited By High_Nunez

    Yes, it's kind of weird for me to identify with a lady as bad men attempt to do bad things to her when 5 minutes later she's pulling off acts of super-heroism that rival Stallone. Yea...video games.

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    TheHT

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    #15  Edited By TheHT

    @Chroma_Auron said:

    Lets break it down to address each one.

    "When people play Lara, they don't really project themselves into the character," Rosenberg told me at E3 last week when I asked if it was difficult to develop for a female protagonist.

    "They're more like 'I want to protect her.' There's this sort of dynamic of 'I'm going to this adventure with her and trying to protect her.'"

    "She's definitely the hero but— you're kind of like her helper," he said. "When you see her have to face these challenges, you start to root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character."

    The big problem here is that we are not feeling like we are the character but feel like we are their protecting her. Like if she didn't have us she wouldn't survive. It makes it sound like a rescue the damsel game except we are the mysterious force that rescues this damsel. Yes it's sexist, no two ways about it. We are supposed to be Lara, we are supposed to struggle to survive and become strong.

    Meh, fuck what that dude said. When I'm playing as a character, I don't insert myself into the fiction as a disembodied helper. Reads like someone trying to deal with the hypothetical issue of "boys play video games, boys aren't girls, this game features a girl, HOW CAN BOY POSSIBLY RELATE?!" It's nonsense. If the characterization is done well enough, anyone can be pulled in regardless of gender of the player or the character.

    @Chroma_Auron said:

    "She literally goes from zero to hero... we're sort of building her up and just when she gets confident, we break her down again."

    So when she is slowly gaining strength she is reverted back to default. It sounds like character development that goes nowhere.

    She isn't reverted, she's broken down. What happens to her doesn't just disappear as she's reverted to a previous state of existence. She gets strength, gets broken down, and then gets back up stronger than she ever was before. Repeat until she's a hero. Standard character building stuff.

    @Chroma_Auron said:

    "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."

    Regardless of context, this statement is wrong on plenty of levels. The use of animal implies degradation of who she is. I know it sounds kind of a bit of hyperbole but to me, it sounds like she was made into a submissive sex object.

    Wat. Have never heard the term "cornered animal" before? That statement alone has nothing to do with sex or submission. In fact, the whole point of it is resistance.

    @Chroma_Auron said:

    "In the new Tomb Raider, Lara Croft will suffer. Her best friend will be kidnapped. She'll get taken prisoner by island scavengers. And then, Rosenberg says, those scavengers will try to rape her."

    Let's make a list of all the horrible things that will happen to her to explain how her character is deep (sarcasm). The events do not define the character but are the situations for change and growth. Unfortunately that does not seem to be what they are focusing on. Not only that but we got the stereotype of island scavengers killing and looting. The only way this could be worse is if they were made mostly black.

    I agree that it's the choices made in the face of those hardships rather than the events themselves that define an individual, but when you're making a story like this I can't imagine you could afford to focus less on the events themselves and still maintain believable levels of character development. The events need to be true to the growth in Lara they beget.

    Also, I'm sure the "island scavengers" are just scavengers who focus on islands, not what you were thinking.

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    prestonhedges

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    #16  Edited By prestonhedges

    Rape as drama is primarily used as a cheap screenwriting tactic. Just because books and movies use it doesn't mean it's suddenly "high art" or whatever.

    Also, "She literally turns into a cornered animal"? So she turns into a wounded bear?

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    Animasta

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    #17  Edited By Animasta

    @gladspooky said:

    Rape as drama is primarily used as a cheap screenwriting tactic. Just because books and movies use it doesn't mean it's suddenly "high art" or whatever.

    Also, "She literally turns into a cornered animal"? So she turns into a wounded bear?

    it turns out that she is an animorph, this is why they had to reboot it

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    OneManX

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    #18  Edited By OneManX

    I'd get mad at it, if there was rape... considering she gets felt up, then the next second SMOKES the dude.

    It's hard to get angry about something that isn't there.

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    Akrid

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    #19  Edited By Akrid

    I'm not sure that I'm ready for this super heavy stuff to be in video-games. Controlling some aspect of something sexual has the capacity to be far more disturbing then controlling something that is violent. As Jeff said on the bombcast, it's all about what you're personally willing to see in your media. But that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. It's absolutely logical in this case that something like this would happen on an island of crazed men, so it's hard to truly justify it as overly or purposefully controversial. When you go for full-on gritty realism - as games have been for years - it's hypocritical to bar certain subjects in a way. Yes, it could be seen as a sort of cheap way to make the player afraid for and protective of Lara, but really, what is wrong with that? It's a cheap shot? Yeah, maybe. But what isn't these days.

    As far as the comments made by the developers go, It seems like they're just pulling the curtain back a little more then some people are comfortable with. Attaching you to a character and then making really bad things happen to them is something that's used across all mediums. Even in video-games already - look at Enslaved. You get attached to Trip and you want to protect her, since she is kinda helpless. You follow Monkey's arc from hating her to loving her like a sister and doing anything to protect her. That didn't even have the counter argument of empowerment, yet you don't see anything but praise for the relationships built in that game.

    And it doesn't matter that she's a woman really, that's just one more device to shock the player into feeling a bit more about what's happening. You can't honestly tell me that seeing a woman get hit is not more painful then seeing a man. What's more, that's not even a gender specific reaction. I've been in movie theatres where a bad guy is kicking the shit out of a dude, but then backhands a woman and the whole audience will gasp. Sure, our hero can bleed out on the floor, but don't you dare mess with the leading lady! There's nothing wrong about tugging at the heartstrings, even if it's in a sort of cheap way.

    Hell, if they were more noble they could certainly make a game where you sympathize with and want to protect a pathetic, beaten down man, but that's much harder because it is simply not the social norm. Probably sexist, but still not the norm. Media have to pull tricks in order to make you care about characters, because hey, they aren't actually real. To elicit emotion from someone, you have to tap into something they know. And while certainly there are many strong women out there that feel they need to protect a man, the opposite is more commonplace. It's very rare when you find a movie or game that doesn't appeal to our most basic stereotypes and misconceptions about each other, and when they don't, it often borders on art-house.

    But this game fails at that goal anyway. From the E3 demo, it's hard to sympathize with a woman who gets hurt a bunch, kills 4 men incredibly skilfully, and then gets hurt some more. Looks silly.

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    TentPole

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    #20  Edited By TentPole

    The protagonist in one of my favorite books murders underage girls and rapes their corpses. Doesn't mean that the book itself is immoral.

    James Franco is currently filming a film adaptation. I hope it turns out good.

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    EpicSteve

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    #21  Edited By EpicSteve

    I get being uncomfortable with seeing depictions of rape. Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo are all incredibly unsettling. Calling this "grown up" is the wrong turn of phrase, but anyone specifically not wanting anything to do with this game based on a rape scene needs to grow a fucking backbone.

    If the developers want to craft a vulnerable protagonist, great. That has the potential to make combat scenarios more gratifying. It's a lot easier to craft a vulnerable woman than a man. Anyone specifically coming out to say "that's sexist" needs to understand society has double standards and if you're trying to tell me that men and women are on equal grounds in terms of toughness than you're a fucking lunatic.

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    Dimsey

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    #22  Edited By Dimsey

    Feel like I've been saying this a lot lately, starting to sound like a broken record and all. 
    But don't like? Don't look. That's what it should come down to. 
    I don't think there needs to be a big-ass moral debate over it and I'm kind of tired of seeing it every time something like this happens.
    If enough people are put off by this and don't buy Tomb Raider as a result, then they and others will know that perhaps broaching the topic isn't a great idea or at least they'll try to handle it better.  
    But even if it doesn't and this suddenly turns into a thing that other games try to do... Don't like, don't look. Out of sight, out of mind. 
    If I got up on a soapbox every time something rubbed me the wrong way I'd never shut up. Instead I just ignore it and so far that's worked pretty well. 
    Play the crap you like, ignore the crap you don't and everyone will be a little saner for it. 
     
    But this also.
     
    @EpicSteve said:

     Calling this "grown up" is the wrong turn of phrase, but anyone specifically not wanting anything to do with this game based on a rape scene needs to grow a fucking backbone.

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    NTM

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    #23  Edited By NTM

    So basically, to make games more serious, the answer would be to bring a strong subject like rape into it? Hm, yeahhh. I really don't think that'd be something that makes it taken seriously by people who aren't serious about it already, if anything, they'd be more against it. Who actually likes to see rape in their stories? I don't think it strengthens the story at all.

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    Oldirtybearon

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    #24  Edited By Oldirtybearon

    Fuck it. I give up. is right. On this whole issue. Even Lollipop Chainsaw (kick-ass game btw).

    The real problem I see is that people in this thread are trying to treat biological instinct as if it were a bad thing, or some shameful thing. The target demo of this game is young men. The evil "male protector" instinct that this game seeks to exploit is real, and by tapping into it, they can provide an emotional resonance with Lara that you can't have with Nathan Drake or Marcus Fenix. You just can't. Men aren't biologically wired for same-sex preference the way women are. We just aren't. We see a man and assume he can take care of himself, so fuck 'em. We see a woman in peril and our first instinct is to help. To protect her in some way. The developers are right in that regard. Tapping into that can lead to something special and ground breaking in the medium. That doesn't make it sexist. That makes it highly manipulative, yes, but everything in fiction is manipulative. That's the whole fucking point. To manipulate the reader, viewer, player into having an emotional connection with characters either through likable personalities or struggles and triumph. Tomb Raider is going for the latter, and I see nothing wrong with exploiting every avenue they can to make it something that resonates.

    It's sexist if you make a sexy, strong, capable young woman the lead, and then put her through the same kind of struggle a male protagonist would go through. It's sexist if you then tailor situations and threats that are specific to her situation and gender to make it more personal. It's also apparently sexist if, as a player, you do feel that connection with Lara Croft that the devs are talking about cultivating in Tomb Raider.

    Well shit, with that kind of attitude, we're never going to get the kind of female characters in games that people seem to crave. Everything will be baby-proofed, all possible heroism scrubbed, all rough edges smoothed, and all possibility of harrowing adventure erased because when developers tried to give us what we claim to want (well-developed, meaningful female characters in games), we balk and cry sexism.

    Fuck. That.

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    Animasta

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    #25  Edited By Animasta

    @EpicSteve said:

    I get being uncomfortable with seeing depictions of rape. Last House on the Left, I Spit on Your Grave, and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo are all incredibly unsettling. Calling this "grown up" is the wrong turn of phrase, but anyone specifically not wanting anything to do with this game based on a rape scene needs to grow a fucking backbone.

    If the developers want to craft a vulnerable protagonist, great. That has the potential to make combat scenarios more gratifying. It's a lot easier to craft a vulnerable woman than a man. Anyone specifically coming out to say "that's sexist" needs to understand society has double standards and if you're trying to tell me that men and women are on equal grounds in terms of toughness than you're a fucking lunatic.

    the strongest man is stronger than the strongest women in terms of raw physical power, yes, but that's literally all you can say. Lara Croft has always been portrayed as being equal to someone like Nathan Drake, in terms of abilities.

    I do appreciate that you said "well society has double standards" and then proceeded to shit on perceived physical prowess of women in the same sentence.

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    PerryVandell

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    #26  Edited By PerryVandell

    @Oldirtybearon: I think you hit the nail on the head right there.

    Don't think it's necessarily wrong to avoid things involving rape. If that stuff's too raw then you have a right to avoid it. My problem is with people who denounce developers for attempting to break into territory that makes you uncomfortable. Though I'm not sure what you're getting at with the whole "men are tougher than women" bit. Sure, most men are physically stronger than most women, but I think both gender's are fairly equal when it comes to psychological fortitude. Just because Lara isn't crushing cans of spinach with her bare hands doesn't mean she can't be tough.

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    Danteveli

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    #27  Edited By Danteveli

    Was it Custers Revenge the game where you had to rape girl? So that was first really mature and edgt game. Also Rape Lay is like that? Just because you put rape in game it doesnt make it more mature and better.

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    EpicSteve

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    #28  Edited By EpicSteve

    @PerryVandell:It's just a a lot easier to craft a vulnerable woman. With a man, you ride a fine line of just creating a whiny bitch.

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