C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER

Okay, so, you, whoever the fuck you are, making the new Tomb Raider, I see what you're doing there.  I see what you want to do.  I saw the concept art and saw right through it.  Kind of waifish (by Croftian standards) young woman covered in blood and carrying a bow.  I get it.  I got it.  It's the mockingjay in the room that no one I have seen so far is talking about.  And I sort of sympathize here.  I don't know if you guys wanted to do your requel of Tomb Raider or you wanted to do Hunger Games, but at some point, some suit from the publisher came in with the smell of death upon him and told you... I don't know whether it was a copy of one of Collins' books or if it was the license to Tomb Raider, but you got the directive.  Make Lara more like Katniss or your Katniss-expy into Lara.  

You may have noticed that your methods have come under fire.  I have some more fire for you, but I also have some advice.


0) Adding rape or the specter of rape to a game or story or whatever does not add grit, it does not add realism, it does not add anything but rape.  That's all it adds.  You can make a story about a rape and have it be a powerful story.  You could, hypothetically make a game about a rape and have it be a powerful game.  Understand, though, when I say you, I mean someone way more qualified, mature and better at narrative than you.  You cannot.  You should not.  You should stay away from rape.  It is not an arrow in your narrative quiver.  It is a grenade with the pin already pulled.  Don't feel bad that you are unqualified.  I am also unqualified.  However, unlike you, I know that I am unqualified.  You can feel bad about that part.

1) Degradation, humiliation, getting captured, possibly (almost?) rape, and doing a lot of things wrong, which you are giving as selling points of your game, these do not make Lara Croft into Katniss Everdeen.  I'm not sure where you got the notion to take that road to that destination.  What it does do is ruin what people seem to like about the existing character in the franchise.  It's basically saying "Lara Croft sucks now!  Chicks, man.  Amirite?"

2) Adding all the experience of seeing your character fuck up in a cutscene or get beaten up, or have something bad happen to them or get (almost?) possibly raped (?) as rewards for good play (as I am certain that emotionally non-resonant death at good old Jagged Rock Junction is still a core part of the TR experience) IS SHIT DESIGN.  I know that walking on broken glass barefoot made Bruce Willis an action star, AND YOU WANT THAT, but that is movies, this is games.  If a player makes it through a particularly tricky bit of platforming or worse, a grueling gun battle only to watch their character get shat upon in a cut scene, my non-scientific sampling of data (but statistically significant numbers) says they either get pissed or don't give a shit about your shitty cut scenes.  So when our success state is failure, your success state is bored indifference.  This strikes me as being bad for all of us. 

3) Your spokesman (whose speaking privileges are revoked, BTW) made it pretty clear that this Tomb Raider requel was not made for existing fans of the franchise.  I was not one, but your requel is not reaching out to my demographic, either (probably a good call on your part, there aren't many middle aged gamers of foul mouth and high moral dudgeon out there).  I see who you are courting, and I see how you are courting them, and while the spectacle of seeing Lara Croft taken down a peg is probably going to net you a couple of sales from the mouth-breathingest of the dudebro market, I don't think those guys are into single player action games.  Not a lot of opportunity to be a douchebag to other people online, except in defending your rapey story choices.  Maybe you are cleverer than I thought...

3a) But these idiots who rush to your defense online are not guaranteed sales, no matter what they tell you.  $60 is kind of a lot to spend on pure spite, and, even if you are selling the degradation of Lara Croft to the dudebro market, even if you were, you are not selling the core gameplay.  I read the Kotaku article with you claiming that characters will want to "protect" and "help" Lara Croft, that she needs your sweaty hands to save her from the bad guys and the jagged, jagged rocks.  Let us leave aside the fact that Ezio Auditore da Firenze or Batman do not need your "help" to take on the Borgias or the Joker, but Lara Croft, who predates both of them in video games, does.  I don't have the sales figures on chivalry, but I don't, again, think that they are what you think they are.  The Prince of fucking Persia was never sold as needing your help.  I understand it's an old license, Tomb Raider, with a lot of kind of lackluster recent outings, but you don't sell an action-adventure game on those points.

3b) This point annoys me more than it should, only because I was going to talk up the direct player involvement with the purpose of protecting the protagonist of a game as a good thing.  Just in an entirely different genre, where protective instincts heighten the experience - survival horror.  There have been three characters in all of video gaming I felt the chivalrous desire to protect and they were, in order of meeting them, Seto, James Sunderland and Heather Mason.  Of those, one is female, two are young.  One's a dude about my age with serious emotional problems.  I was going to write something about how more recent survival horror is falling flat because they don't work this angle.  Your protagonist is either set up to be too badass, given a spunky sidekick (in survival horror, it should be you being the spunky sidekick) or switching back and forth between points of view so you never bond with any one character.  I would argue that your desire as a player to help and defend the protagonist, and to get a sense of your protagonist's vulnerability is key to a good survival horror game.  But no, you had to use this tack to tie it to misogyny to sell an action-adventure pretty much makes it impossible for me to speak of that experience at all as a good thing.  So fuck you.