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    Created with the release of Tomb Raider on PlayStation in 1996, the Tomb Raider franchise with its iconic heroine adventurer Lara Croft quickly grew into a cross-media pop-culture phenomenon.

    Sexualizing Violence in Tomb Raider

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    Avatar image for lordgodalming
    lordgodalming

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    Edited By lordgodalming

    Like Batman before her, this year Lara Croft was reimagined in a dark and gritty origin-story franchise-reboot simply titled Tomb Raider. Unlike the new Batman, who believes that a hero must not take human life, Lara’s rebooted character goes from brilliant university student—isolated and weeping over the first deer she must kill so she doesn’t starve to death—to a soulless serial murderer in the space of about fifteen minutes. And somehow it makes the new Tomb Raider even more exploitative than this:

    As any writer knows, a compelling story moves forward on the motivations of a compelling main character. And the new Lara Croft is compelling. Wonderfully modeled and animated, and superbly voiced by British actress Camilla Luddington, you can’t help but root for the latest Lara from the start. And root for her you must, because she goes through some serious shit.

    The developers have said they approached the game and story with a single unwavering theme in mind: survival. Indeed, when you complete the game, a message fills the screen: “A SURVIVOR IS BORN.” In case you weren’t paying attention to the last 15 hours of gameplay and dialogue about survival. But, okay, I’m on board. The team had a vision, and by heaven they stuck to it.

    Which is actually the story’s biggest problem, in my opinion. Tomb Raider is Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom reimagined by the “minds” that came up with the Saw franchise. These guys—and I do mean guys; watch the credit crawl to see the percentage of women who worked on this game—wanted to make Lara Croft into a believable, empathetic survivor, but they also banked on their audience’s appetite for watching Lara, and by extension attractive young women, get hurt over and over. The Tomb Raider series has always been known for mildly horrific death animations when Lara topples over a cliff or gets eaten by a dinosaur or something, but the newest game positively gets off on watching Lara suffer. Certain levels are without a doubt designed so that you will fail them at least once, forcing you to watch, for example, Lara get impaled through the throat by airplane wreckage.

    And never mind the death animations. Even if you somehow manage to play through the game without dying a single time, you will still have to watch Lara nearly drown in a sinking ship, fall onto a jutting piece of rebar and yank it out of her belly, get caught in a rock slide, watch companions get tortured and killed, nearly be starve and freeze to death, get tied up and slapped around, and fight off a rapist. And that’s in the first hour of the game. It gets to the point where the actress who plays Lara is gasping and grunting much more than she ever speaks. More than one reviewer mentioned that the early parts of the game sound like a particularly aggressive porno film. You can make other comparisons to pornography as well; I dare you to find a single game that penetrates a male lead character with as many phallic analogs as Tomb Raider does with Lara Croft.

    But before we get too hung up on specific events of the story, let’s step back and look at the whole thing. Lara Croft is part of a university expedition funding itself through a contract to make a reality television show that chronicles their search. As most games are dominated by bald white male characters (I assume hair is difficult to render), I salute the developers for creating a multicultural cast of characters. Besides Lara, there’s a Scottish cook, an English mercenary, a Japanese-American producer, a Samoan cook, a black mechanic, and a white tech nerd who looks distractingly like Daniel Radcliffe. In practice they’re fine characters, but are still mere cardboard cutouts compared to the depth and complexity of Lara herself.

    So Lara and her friends get shipwrecked on an uncharted island that—surprise!—happens to house the very ruins they were looking for. But it’s already inhabited by a human-sacrificial cult. These dudes are vile, vile people. As mentioned above, they do terrible, dehumanizing things to anyone who blunders onto their island, and for this reason we are meant to feel like Lara is still a good human being when she starts slaughtering them by the dozens.

    It doesn’t help that messages like “Head Shot! 15XP” pop onto the screen every time you take down an enemy. Story-wise, Lara is supposed to be taking lives reluctantly, no matter how diabolical her enemies are. Getting rewarded with extra experience points for burying a climbing ax into an adversary’s brain just doesn’t gel with the story’s insistence that Lara is sickened by what she must do to survive.

    And I think that separation is what breaks the game’s story. I won’t say it breaks the game itself, because regardless of its philosophical faults, Tomb Raider is a fantastically-made piece of media. Art and animation, control and level design, technical presentation—every aspect of this game is absolutely top tier.

    It’s just a shame that the first Tomb Raider game that tries to move away from overtly sexualizing Lara herself chooses instead to sexualize violence.

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    Animasta

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    So you're saying... there's ludonarrative dissonance?

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    stonyman65

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    #2  Edited By stonyman65

    No.

    Also, you do realize that the story was written by a woman, right?

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    PerfidiousSinn

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    I really hope I don't meet anyone who found the violence in Tomb Raider sexy. That person would be unbelievably fucked up.

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    MarkWahlberg

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    I think what you're looking for is trivialize or fetishize, not sexualize.

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    erhard

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    Oh, good grief.

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    Hailinel

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    Oh for Christ's sake.
    Oh for Christ's sake.

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    FluxWaveZ

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    Pornography?

    Some people are messed up.

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    DeathByWaffle

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    Honestly, I didn't feel like the violence was "amped up" at all from any other action game I've played. The only time I cringed was the first time I saw Lara get impaled by one of those spikes in the river.

    I liked the game, but it definitely had its problems with story. Many of the characters seemed thin (including Lara herself), motivations weren't always clear. My problems with the story have nothing to do with any sexualization of Lara, though. I felt like they didn't treat her any differently from her male counterparts in other action games.

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    Three0neFive

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    #9  Edited By Three0neFive

    This reminds me of the people who heard Lara screaming in pain during the E3 demo and complained that it was "too suggestive." Like, are you fucking kidding me?

    What kind of person sees a woman in pain and the first thing that comes to their mind is "TOO SEXUAL, IT'S LIKE SHE'S GETTING FUCKED LOL"? You're inferring things that definitely aren't there, dude, and it says a lot about you as a person.

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    soldierg654342

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    #10  Edited By soldierg654342

    @lordgodalming said:

    It doesn’t help that messages like “Head Shot! 15XP” pop onto the screen every time you take down an enemy. Story-wise, Lara is supposed to be taking lives reluctantly, no matter how diabolical her enemies are. Getting rewarded with extra experience points for burying a climbing ax into an adversary’s brain just doesn’t gel with the story’s insistence that Lara is sickened by what she must do to survive.

    That's not my takeaway from the story at all. Crystal Dynamic's intentions or not, they imply through the story with the "After all, you'r a Croft" line that Lara's a natural born everything, including killer. The dialogue after her first kill even seems to imply that what sickened her about it wasn't the act itself, but how easy it was.

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    JasonR86

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    lol

    Also, when I think of sexualizing violence I think of this...

    Loading Video...

    Not Tomb Raider.

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    Jams

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    Here we go again... I had to read the date this was posted like 4 times to make sure I haven't slipped into some kind of time warp.

    It’s just a shame that the first Tomb Raider game that tries to move away from overtly sexualizing Lara herself chooses instead to sexualize violence.

    It's all about your perception. You think her grunts sound sexual. I don't know if you've ever heard a girl struggle with something like rock climbing or sparring, but that's generally the sound they make. For some reason it sounds similar to sexual grunts, but there's nothing that can be changed there. It's also the sound they make when taking a shit. Women sound the way they sound. What are they supposed to do have her say in a flat tone, "ouch", "ouch", "huff huff I am tiring as I run..."? It's your brain that can't discern the difference. Mine certainly can and did.

    Also, fending off the rapist? I had particular trouble with that section (didn't know what key to press to fight on PC). Every time I failed he just choked her to death. There's no attempted depiction of rape there.

    I don't see how they sexualized violence in this game. I think they thought having her die in gruesome ways was cool so they over did it. That's what this whole game is. Overusing what they thought were cool ideas; making the game decent in some spots and dreadful in others.

    Having a women in a game in a catch-22. People are either going to complain the female character isn't up to their standards when developers put them in games. Or people will complain if they don't put them in games. They'll never catch a break with you guys.

    What's your solution to the problem? If you put women in games, they have to be covered in a burqa and not have a voice-over? But then you'll have women complaining (and rightfully so) that women are being suppressed. Or have them in game but everything they do is because they made her sexual in every way.

    What's your solution?

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    CaptainTightPants

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    You can make other comparisons to pornography as well; I dare you to find a single game that penetrates a male lead character with as many phallic analogs as Tomb Raider does with Lara Croft.

    Dude... what?

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    cloudymusic

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    @lordgodalming said:

    I dare you to find a single game that penetrates a male lead character with as many phallic analogs as Tomb Raider does with Lara Croft.

    Prince of Persia? If you're not being stabbed by the guards' metallic phalluses, you're falling into entire pits full of them.

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    Three0neFive

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    @keres said:

    @lordgodalming said:

    I dare you to find a single game that penetrates a male lead character with as many phallic analogs as Tomb Raider does with Lara Croft.

    Prince of Persia? If you're not being stabbed by the guards' metallic phalluses, you're falling into entire pits full of them.

    Don't forget Gears of War, with it's homoerotic undertones perpetuated by raping enemies (and getting raped) by tiny, explosion-propelled metal phalluses.

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    Zeik

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    #16  Edited By Zeik

    Penises! Penises everywhere!

    There's only one thing the over the top violence did for me in Tomb Raider, make me try my damn hardest to not die, which I felt was the point. Unlike most games that treat death completely casually with a simple checkpoint reload, death in Tomb Raider was a completely unpleasant experience. When Lara was in danger there was a visceral sense of dread on my end as well, knowing that if I screw up I would likely see her brutally killed. Anyone who saw that as sexual is seriously fucked up.

    This also isn't the first time I've seen someone suggest that sounds of pain coming from a female voice actor sound "sexual". It's also not the first time that I did not ever once think that while I was hearing it myself.

    This reminds me of that whole "controversy" about Bert and Ernie or Patrick and Spongebob being "gay", because certain people were seeing what they wanted to see.

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    I_Stay_Puft

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    #17  Edited By I_Stay_Puft

    I actually thought Tomb Raider was about on par with Dead Space 3 death scenes. I swear if Tomb Raider was labeled a survivor horror game the death scenes would probably not be a huge deal. I guess Issac Clarke could be an example of, " I dare you to find a single game that penetrates a male lead character with as many phallic analogs as Tomb Raider does with Lara Croft," but I still don't see it unless sharp pointy things look like penises.

    Loading Video...

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    Ravenlight

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    I did not pop a boner at any point during Tomb Raider. If anything, the violence wasn't sexy enough.

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    TheHumanDove

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    This is very intellectual

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    DarthOrange

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    @jasonr86 said:

    lol

    Also, when I think of sexualizing violence I think of this...

    Loading Video...

    Not Tomb Raider.

    I think of Barbarella.

    Loading Video...

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    StarvingGamer

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    Would you rather they impaled her on a beach ball?

    No, seriously, this is fucking stupid. Did you actually read what you wrote?

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    SpaceInsomniac

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    @lordgodalming said:

    You can make other comparisons to pornography as well; I dare you to find a single game that penetrates a male lead character with as many phallic analogs as Tomb Raider does with Lara Croft.

    Dude... what?

    Dude, did you see how that knife went into her! It's just like my COCK! *bro fist*

    Loading Video...

    Clearly, they should have called this Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Phallic Analogs.

    Seriously though, I'm looking forward to eventually playing the new Tomb Raider and judging for myself.

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    mrfluke

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    AngelN7

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    @hailinel said:

    HOLD ON! this is serious...

    There's a Valkyria Chronicles anime?! or what

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    TangoUp

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    Dark and gritty is an excuse increasingly being used for unimaginative writing and settings. Also, I would like it if they avoid putting in sequences like avoid obstacles in the river or in the air while moving through at fast speeds.

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    Belegorm

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    Wasn't this topic already done to death within the first few weeks of the game's release? I thought we all agreed "there's some seriously shitty dissonance going on with the character, and shitty depictions of her death" AAGGGGGESSSSS ago. Do we need to bring this up again?

    On another note... does anyone actually REMEMBER that Tomb Raider game at this point? Apart from people just playing it now I mean. People who played it at release, and people who didn't play it but heard about it on the bombcast and all the news articles about the controversy of the game probably have largely forgotten it by now.

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    Zeik

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    @belegorm: I don't think it's any more "forgotten" than any other release. People have moved on to other stuff, so it's not being brought up in regular discussion, but there are plenty of people who enjoyed it and are fully on board for a sequel. If anyone has literally "forgotten" about the game this quickly they have seriously awful memory.

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    Hailinel

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    @angeln7 said:

    @hailinel said:
    No Caption Provided

    HOLD ON! this is serious...

    There's a Valkyria Chronicles anime?! or what

    Yeah, the first game was adapted into a TV series, though I have yet to see the whole thing myself.

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    Justin258

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    It's not pornographic at all, unless you consider getting impaled by any cylindrical object a "phallic analogue" at every opportunity. Hell, if anything, I feel like they tried to distance themselves from that. If they were taking the low bridge and aiming for sex appeal, Lara wouldn't be so damn bloody and dirty throughout the entire thing. Maybe her grunts and groans while jumping and climbing could be, but it's never clear if that's intentional or not (and at some point your mind is just in the fucking gutter).

    As for the rest of the game, I can see it being considered somewhat exploitative, what with all the gore, but I just found it more fun. See, the story's just good enough to make you interested, but not good enough to make you take it seriously. Your party might as well wear shirts that advertise their archetypes as well as a number signifying who is going to die first, second, third, etc. Lara herself is supposed to be characterized as this scared kid who is going through a brutal rite of passage, but she gets through that rite of passage when she blows a hole in her would-be rapist's choker's head. And from there she has little to no problem giving all of these bearded men their due. Put her and Nathan Drake in the same room and the only difference is their gender.

    On the community podcast a few months ago, I described this game as "the best action movie I've played all year", and that's all it is. It's memorable only because it's a Hollywood equivalent of a good dark action movie. Its story stands only as a vehicle for set pieces and gameplay and set pieces, its characters are merely devices to keep the plot moving, and it doesn't hold up under scrutiny.

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    me3639

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    IDK what has happened but i just like to play games. If you are passionate about change you might want to start with the real world before attacking fantasy.

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    audiosnow

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    I haven't played the game (though I've certainly heard about this sort of content), but it seems like they took cues from Tarantino. Some of the developers' comments sounded as though they wanted to provoke for provocation's sake. That's not to say that it isn't a well designed, well written, or great playing game, or that the developers aren't good-hearted people; but, like Pulp Fiction, they wanted their cameo with their chance to say n*****.

    And I have to say, you put a semi-colon within em dashes. I like that, it takes guts.

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    Hamst3r

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    #32  Edited By Hamst3r
    Phallic Analogs
    Phallic Analogs

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    Coafi

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    #33  Edited By Coafi

    @hamst3r said:
    Phallic Analogs
    Phallic Analogs

    Those penises are too sharp, I mean Cage got ripped in half, for fuck's sake!

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    lordgodalming

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    And I have to say, you put a semi-colon within em dashes. I like that, it takes guts.

    Go big or go home. That's what I say.

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    lordgodalming

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    @lordgodalming said:

    It doesn’t help that messages like “Head Shot! 15XP” pop onto the screen every time you take down an enemy. Story-wise, Lara is supposed to be taking lives reluctantly, no matter how diabolical her enemies are. Getting rewarded with extra experience points for burying a climbing ax into an adversary’s brain just doesn’t gel with the story’s insistence that Lara is sickened by what she must do to survive.

    That's not my takeaway from the story at all. Crystal Dynamic's intentions or not, they imply through the story with the "After all, you'r a Croft" line that Lara's a natural born everything, including killer. The dialogue after her first kill even seems to imply that what sickened her about it wasn't the act itself, but how easy it was.

    Interesting point, thanks.

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    drbobbint

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    Yawn. Maybe if we make fun of this guy enough he can take some screencaps and start a kickstarter and get thousands of dollars. All kidding aside, I think this guy is trying to look too hard into this to find something offensive. Give me 27 hours, a bottle of scotch, and a penny and I'll find something misognystic about modern currency.

    My favorite quote was "Like Batman before her, this year Lara Croft was reimagined in a dark and gritty origin-story" as opposed to the happy origin story batman had? Let's not forget early versions of batman had him wasting criminals with guns... He's become a lot tamer than he used to be. Which batman reboot is he referring to? Are we talking animated reboots? Live action? Video game? He talks a big game about exploitation, but methinks he's way too young to remember real exploitation films/media.

    "So Lara and her friends get shipwrecked on an uncharted island that—surprise!—happens to house the very ruins they were looking for." Not really a surprise given that they chose that location based on empirical data based on logic...

    "These dudes are vile, vile people. As mentioned above, they do terrible, dehumanizing things to anyone who blunders onto their island" Did you actually play the game and listen to any of the audio logs/documents recovered? Because I"m sure these guys were really got hard thinking about getting shipwrecked on a creepy island inhabited by mythical creatures and just decided to torture people for laughs...Those people you murder during the course of the game are people too. Who have been there alot longer than Lara and her group.

    Lara is supposed to be taking lives reluctantly, no matter how diabolical her enemies are-----Yeah, because between getting raped/murdered and killing someone, i'm going to feel busted up about it. Part of the game is about her dealing with that fact and reconciling herself to the idea of HAVING to kill someone in order to SURVIVE.

    I motion for this topic to be closed based on the fact this guy is attempting to stir controversy over a topic that is months old and has been discussed ad nauseum.

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    JouselDelka

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    What kind of person sees a woman in pain and the first thing that comes to their mind is "TOO SEXUAL, IT'S LIKE SHE'S GETTING FUCKED LOL"?

    These sexism-o-phobics are the fucking worst.

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    deathstriker666

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    Great article. I don't understand where the sexualization part comes in (frankly some of your conclusions sound ridiculous), but I think your main point comes off wonderfully.

    Crystal Dynamic's latest take on Tomb Raider series tries to present Lara and the Tomb Raider fiction more maturely, but it ends up falling flat on its face. Whether you agree with it or not, Tomb Raider has garnished a notorious negative label by media and feminists alike. As evident by its marketing, this latest game plays right off that narrative by doing the exactly opposite. Opting instead for a progressive audience and ditching its old prepubescent one, even roping in a female writer just for them. This new Lara is supposed to have character instead of boobs and to be more of accessible and human-like protagonist. But it seems Crystal Dynamics wanted to stay true to the Tomb Raider name by keeping everything else. Maybe that planned it that way along and just pandered to political correctness to rope in gullible RPS readers? Or you can call me cynical.

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    Darji

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    I think the problem with Tomb Raider is that the first part was really good and that destroyed the whole game afterwards. People wanted it to make fun and through that the gameplay was not in tone with the story overall. The Last of Us did a much better job in this regard, Here the gameplay fits into the story and world they live in. But to actually archive that is really really hard.

    Uncharted 2 was another example. The storytelling was so good and the characters so believable that some people got out of the game after killing thousands of people. We need to learn that gameplay does not have to be fun all the time. For a harsh game with a harsh world gameplay should be harsh and cruel too. Which means one hit kills. Every encounter could be your last once and so on. The last of us was a step into the right direction and succeeded were Tomb Raider and Uncharted failed. But this way of thinking is rather young so we need more time to evolve gaming to a true and intense experience that does not stay in conflict with the storytelling and its characters.

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    monetarydread

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    #40  Edited By monetarydread

    This is a video game, not literature. The priority is crafting an experience that is fun, not to provide a detailed believable story. The story is just one part of the experience and is only there for a certain percentage of the user base that needs that sort of thing for motivation. So it makes no sense to create a story at the expense of fun. If you are looking for a complete story, grab a book.

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    @hamst3r said:
    Phallic Analogs
    Phallic Analogs

    I'm so happy right now.

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    This is a video game, not literature. The priority is crafting an experience that is fun, not to provide a detailed believable story. The story is just one part of the experience and is only there for a certain percentage of the user base that needs that sort of thing for motivation. So it makes no sense to create a story at the expense of fun. If you are looking for a complete story, grab a book.

    But this is a huge critic point in games today that story and gameplay do not fit together. A coherent experience could be much much better than a movie or a book because you are the main character which can make games way more interesting and intense then jsut watching a movie or reading a book.

    In my opinion gaming is the most intense visual experience in Entertainment and media if its done right.

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    #43  Edited By Cloudenvy

    @hailinel said:

    @angeln7 said:

    @hailinel said:
    No Caption Provided

    HOLD ON! this is serious...

    There's a Valkyria Chronicles anime?! or what

    Yeah, the first game was adapted into a TV series, though I have yet to see the whole thing myself.

    I can tell you that it's a pretty decent spin on Valkyria Chronicles, back in the days where you could almost trust A-1 Pictures with source material. They removed the best thing about the ending though : (

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    The similarities between sex and suffering have been noted for centuries, and is in fact the entire backbone of the slasher genre (I have a lot to say on that subject, but despite how blue this site can work, I feel like I would be opening a can of worms that just isn't appropriate here), but I highly doubt that any of that was on the developers' minds when they made this game. I think you're taking the sexualized versions of Lara Crofts past and viewing this one through that lens.

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    #45  Edited By lordgodalming

    He talks a big game about exploitation, but methinks he's way too young to remember real exploitation films/media.

    When I was born, Jimmy Carter was in office, and that STILL makes me too young to have lived during the heyday of exploitation films. So are we mocking everyone who is younger than 45 now?

    "I motion for this topic to be closed based on the fact this guy is attempting to stir controversy over a topic that is months old and has been discussed ad nauseum."

    Maybe the mods will agree with you on this. Believe it or not, I am not the sort of person to throw rocks at a wasp nest just for the hell of it. You're probably enjoying the "controversy" more than I am, actually.

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    You do realise the only things which can impale the human body are pointed objects, right? If you associate long objects with a phallus then of course it's going to look sexual to you. If anything this entire overanalysis shows that your mind is firmly placed in the gutter.

    Also I'm incredibly concerned with your implication that the developers of this game, because of the ratio of men to women on the team, are misogynists and just chose to put a woman through pain because of the character's gender. As far as I know a woman wrote this game and I highly doubt she is a misogynist, if anything her message was probably something along the lines of "women can go through absolute hell just like any other lead character".

    I feel like women characters are never going to catch a break at this rate because someone is going to be like THIS IS TOO SEXY all the time, and if it's not that it's SHE GETS KILLED TOO SEXILY. When Mirror's Edge 2 comes out I'll be waiting for the oversexualization of Fate's haircut thread or some absolute horseshit reach.

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    @shagge said:

    The similarities between sex and suffering have been noted for centuries, and is in fact the entire backbone of the slasher genre (I have a lot to say on that subject, but despite how blue this site can work, I feel like I would be opening a can of worms that just isn't appropriate here), but I highly doubt that any of that was on the developers' minds when they made this game. I think you're taking the sexualized versions of Lara Crofts past and viewing this one through that lens.

    You may have a point there. And I think you're right about that can of worms here. The other places I've posted this editorial generated more actual discussion than knee-jerk disagreement. Important lesson about knowing your audience.

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    Sometimes people see what they want to see you know?

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    @shagge said:

    The similarities between sex and suffering have been noted for centuries, and is in fact the entire backbone of the slasher genre (I have a lot to say on that subject, but despite how blue this site can work, I feel like I would be opening a can of worms that just isn't appropriate here), but I highly doubt that any of that was on the developers' minds when they made this game. I think you're taking the sexualized versions of Lara Crofts past and viewing this one through that lens.

    You may have a point there. And I think you're right about that can of worms here. The other places I've posted this editorial generated more actual discussion than knee-jerk disagreement. Important lesson about knowing your audience.

    But these slasher and exploitation movies sexualize women also through sex scenes, nude scenes or wearing a bikini while being murdered. This is not the case in Tomb Raider so I do not see the connection. Lara's death were always cruel and shocking but now they are more explicit through better technology animations and presenting. but they never really changed.

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    @shagge said:

    The similarities between sex and suffering have been noted for centuries, and is in fact the entire backbone of the slasher genre (I have a lot to say on that subject, but despite how blue this site can work, I feel like I would be opening a can of worms that just isn't appropriate here), but I highly doubt that any of that was on the developers' minds when they made this game. I think you're taking the sexualized versions of Lara Crofts past and viewing this one through that lens.

    You may have a point there. And I think you're right about that can of worms here. The other places I've posted this editorial generated more actual discussion than knee-jerk disagreement. Important lesson about knowing your audience.

    I do think people are being too dismissive. While I strongly disagree that the violence is sexualized in Tomb Raider, it's worth thinking about on a larger scale. Not even just video games, but all entertainment.

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