The Final Hours of Tomb Raider Begin With an Introduction to the New Lara Croft

@Kierkegaard: My response was to your initial comment; I'm not generalising. You didn't like that the man made a light-hearted comment about Lara's sexual attractiveness, then you proceeded to use his remark as an indication of her worth as a person. That's your problem.

Fuck yeah!

I'm not sure about... her accent. Is something wrong with me?

@Kierkegaard: If you were thinking my whole rant was an attack on just you and/or your comment than I apologize, it's not. I've been behind on Bombcasts and have been marathoning through a bunch and the constant negativity about the exploitativeness of this game has just rubbed me the wrong way. To me it seems people are stretching to see something that isn't ment to be there just to have some sort of controversy to talk about.

My statements were more of a generalisation and I only really quoted that tree of comments for @Binman88 second sentance which was one of the most sensible questions that I've seen posed on the issue. Also I don't think the character's sexyness was a focus of the first video, it was a throwaway line ment as a joke and "haha, look we're having a real conversation and not at all just focusing on the talking points marketing approved".

Another item has just been added to the long list of reasons I posted - Patricks new article about Rhianna Pratchett being the one writing the story in which he says; "Knowing a woman was chiefly involved in setting the tone and establishing the context of this new game, one that finds Lara Croft put in harrowing, formative situations, would have framed the conversation differently." I fail to see how the fact the story is now confirmed to have been written by a women makes any difference in any of the topics the crew have been mulling about. The fact that the sole differentiator is the sex of the author shows at the very least a subconsious fixation on sexism.

@Phr4nk0 said:

@Kierkegaard: If you were thinking my whole rant was an attack on just you and/or your comment than I apologize, it's not. I've been behind on Bombcasts and have been marathoning through a bunch and the constant negativity about the exploitativeness of this game has just rubbed me the wrong way. To me it seems people are stretching to see something that isn't ment to be there just to have some sort of controversy to talk about.

My statements were more of a generalisation and I only really quoted that tree of comments for @Binman88 second sentance which was one of the most sensible questions that I've seen posed on the issue. Also I don't think the character's sexyness was a focus of the first video, it was a throwaway line ment as a joke and "haha, look we're having a real conversation and not at all just focusing on the talking points marketing approved".

Another item has just been added to the long list of reasons I posted - Patricks new article about Rhianna Pratchett being the one writing the story in which he says; "Knowing a woman was chiefly involved in setting the tone and establishing the context of this new game, one that finds Lara Croft put in harrowing, formative situations, would have framed the conversation differently." I fail to see how the fact the story is now confirmed to have been written by a women makes any difference in any of the topics the crew have been mulling about. The fact that the sole differentiator is the sex of the author shows at the very least a subconsious fixation on sexism.

Yeah, I just found it a weird line in the context of this intense story. I'll let that lie, though.

I completely agree with you about that line from Patrick. And I think I've been consistent on this, too. We can't judge a game as having poorly written story, from men or women, until we know the extent of that story from actually playing through it. I'm trying to point out what I see as pointlessly bullheaded marketing since, eh, I think it's important to point out mistakes rather than gloss over them. That the writer is a woman does not make any bad, sexist writing or character development in there (hypothetically) any less bad or sexist. That she wrote games before this that did not fall into these overtones does give a different spin, though--that is, the content of her portfolio, not her gender, creates a difference.

The reason why sexism and racism are different than merely person A saying something mean to person B is because they are institutionalized, social problems. They are systematic belittlings of minority races or women by the people in power, white males. So it is completely and sadly possible for people to be sexist or racist against their own sex or race as it is, in part, in grown in our culture.

I'm hoping Pratchett is writing a good story and this is a good game and all of this talk will be an important break down of marketing rather than the game. But it is still important. The RE5 stuff was, too. Games are growing up. We should expect that they, even in their marketing, promote a fair, equitable, progressed culture.

British Heroin

So... Is she british?

I honestly think once you're an hour in on this game, it will not seem like a radically different shift from any of the previous Tomb Raider re-imaginings, and there have been several. Nothing in this segment convinced me that the acting will either blow me away or disappoint.

That's not saying anything negative about the game, which looks fun. It is saying something about how they pretty much needed to build controversy for a game not that different from other AAA video games with voice actors and mo-cap in order to sell it. Gender-based controversy is this year's Frostbite Engine.

The video is heavily produced and you can tell they are being very careful about the spin and inference of every word. I suppose this is better then the debacle of being flippant and unthinking about what was shown or said, but the interview was dry and boring. They also seem very determined to ONLY put women out front from now on. If the game is being described it will be an actress or a female employee. Any slip ups are now from the mouths of women, their thinking being women are not sexist against themselves.

I think they screwed up with this story and much of the imagery. An island that has beaches that look like environmental disasters covered in broken machines, who inhabitants are just rapists, and who's history is dark without any light was just a foolish stupid mistake.

It will be an interesting juxtaposition to see what Far Cry 3 does and what Tomb Raider does with its islands, stories, and game play. So far TR looks like a depressing downer of a game.

Wow.  The overwhelming takeaway from this video is that Levi fella is ridiculously bad at flirting with ladies.  I love how he can't even pretend to concentrate on his job once he meets "the new Lara Croft".