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Old 16-03-24, 16:51   #1
Darkon
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Question Did the DLC create a plot hole in Underworld?

Okay so recently I've been rewatching gameplay videos for the DLC levels and I noticed something that doesn't make sense (to me at least). Basically this dialogue between Natla and the Doppelganger in "Lara's Shadow":

Quote:
Natla: "... Take me to your birthplace"
What follows is the Doppelganger taking Natla to this ancient device in Helheim where Natla reveals that it was used to create the Doppelganger but can also be used to regenerate herself, after the cutscene a journal entry for the Doppelganger unlocks that says among other things "I was born in this device, against my will".

Am I missing something or is this just outright impossible? Reasons being that:

1 - Natla couldn't have gone to Helheim prior to Lara acquiring the Mjolnir, it's established early on she never got a hold of the artifact needed to open the path.

2 - She already created a Doppelganger before without using this machine in Anniversary, she presumably used Atlantean knowledge/technology to create the previous one (retroactive plot hole maybe? Although one could say they were different kinds of doppelgangers as an explanation perhaps?)

3 - Why would there be such a machine in Helheim in the first place? A device to heal Natla and create doppelgangers?

So why did Natla need Lara to open the path to Helheim if she was apparently already able to go there after being requested to create that creature by Amanda? .

Is this really a plot hole or did I miss something?
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Old 17-03-24, 00:02   #2
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I really wish they'd have offered an actual explanation about all of this stuff, but I'm fairly certain they were just making up things as they went hoping it would all somehow add up. It's been a long while since I've played LAU, but if I had to speculate I seem to recall there were many different Niflheims (e.g. the one at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, the other one in Thailand) and Helhaims; all across the globe and across different civilizations/cultures which had their own various legends/myths/interpretations of them, but ultimately they were the same thing and they all appear to have come from the same source (the source being the ancient world).

Quote:
Lara: "Various myths use different names, but they all apply to the same remnants of the ancient world."
The "underworlds" Lara tracks down in the game were used to store the Thor artifacts (gauntlets, belt, hammer), but I'm sure there are more that Lara hasn't discovered or explored. Some of them can be accessed by the dais technology which Legend focused on (in addition to the scattered Excalibur pieces), and which mirrors the various underworlds Lara discovers in the sense that the dais also turn up in different parts of the world from Bolivia to England and Nepal.

Quote:
Lara: "Swords in stones, Alister. They're part of the monomyth. There wasn't just one Excalibur or one Merlin. We keep seeing swords and daises all over the world because they were everywhere."
All that is to say, Natla knows how to operate ancient technology as demonstrated by not only her knowledge of it, but also by her ability to perform the Odin ritual and use the Midgard Serpent. Seeing how all ancient technology is connected in LAU, and thus Atlantis and these Norse ruins have more in common than not, it makes sense there'd be devices that make cloans. The difference between Underworld's doppelganger and the one in Anniversary is that TRU Doppel is essentially a more intelligent species of thrall that Natla controls through the 'Ohk Eshiva' command. Anni Doppel lacked the ability to perform complicated tasks beyond copying her real counterpart's movements, and her appearance was also more primitive. This seems to hint at the Norse technology being a bit more advanced than the Atlantean one.

Quote:
Lara: "I'd only seen something like this once before -- a doppelganger that Natla sent after me years ago, but that one didn't have a mind of its own."
Natla's main goal in Underworld was to access the Helhaim at the bottom of the Arctic Sea, something she wasn't able to do on her own (as you point out). I'm not sure what the exact location of Doppelganger's birth place is as I've never played Lara's Shadow, but due to the snow we see as Doppel and Natla enter, it appears to be somewhere outside -- possibly nearby, or at the very least in the vicinity of the Helheim/Avalon gate, but not inside/beyond it.

EDIT: One other thing I'm realizing just now is that the Natla X Richard Croft relationship is a bit of a mess. She hired him some time after her awakening in New Mexico to find the Scion, but he was unable to locate Qualopec's tomb and thus Qualopec's piece of the Scion. At the beginning of Anniversary, Natla tells Lara:

Quote:
Natla: "This is a game you've played before; with your father. You both spent years searching for the Scion of Atlantis. All you needed was the location of Qualopec's tomb."
It's not clear to me from that sentence if Lara was actively helping Richard with the search while he was still alive, or if she picked up where he left off once he'd gone missing and was presumed dead. We know Lara is in possession of his diary when we hear Richard narrate his diary entries in Anniversary. Right at the start of Peru we hear him say:

Quote:
Richard Croft: "Vilcabamba continues to elude us, and my insistence that we press on in spite of these failures has morale low... I suspect Jenkins to be the author of this sedition; he simply refuses to accept the possibility that Atlantis is the foundation upon which all known civilizations were built. Increasingly, I find it is Lara alone who remains untainted by academic dogma, and open-minded enough to see this truth."
Anyway, after making no progress on that front -- Natla tasks him with finding the Thor artifacts, something that leads him to discover one of the gauntlets in Thailand -- by that point, he realizes Natla is using him and keeps all the knowledge he'd gained to himself, and stores it away in hopes Lara finds it later. When Natla learns that he'd crossed her, she kills him and then contacts Lara years later. Obviously, the biggest plot hole here is that Richard had every opportunity to warn Lara about Natla in some way, whether it be through one of the diary entries or a voice recording on an old cassette tape. I just find it hard to believe he wouldn't mention such a dangerous individual as Natla, knowing she'd be after Lara next (and I realize the scribbled message at the destroyed site in Thailand could be interpreted as his way of warning Lara, but it's already too late for that by that point as the events of Anniversary had already taken place).

We know Natla had one and only one goal all along: she wanted to bring forth the 'Seventh Age,' which was essentially a reset of the world through a giant cataclysm. I guess she could achieve that in two ways -- either use the Scion to access its full power which is what she got frozen for by Tihocan and Qualopec, or she could trigger the same event by using the Midgard Serpent in Helheim. With all the pieces of the Scion damaged beyond repair by the end of Anniversary, she'd moved onto plan B in Underworld.

Also, continuity error: why is Natla shown in her "scorched" form (the way she appears at the end of the game) in the intro to Anniversary, when in the original game she looked just like she did when she got frozen? I.e. in her human form and Atlantean get-up. Anniversary clearly shows the crystal breaking due to the explosion, but she flies away in her mutated form, and when we see her again she's in her human form and has no wings??? The wings are odd because when Lara reaches the top of the pyramid they're part of the ceremonial dress she wears (I presume) although she also has them in the flashback, and in Underworld they seem to be attached to her skeleton in some way. A MESS, Your Honor.

Last edited by [Xmas]; 17-03-24 at 14:44.
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Old 17-03-24, 21:36   #3
Darkon
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^That was a really insightful post, thanks for taking the time to post that! You're right about TRU doppelganger not being created in Helheim! I just noticed the cutscene shows them walking from a snowy location into some sort of temple where the machine is housed so they clearly were outside of Helheim by that point, I feel so dumb for not noticing that now .

You're right about the Richard Croft plot holes, how come he never warned Lara besides the message in Thailand? Also how come Lara only obsessed about her Mother's death but never found her dad's death suspicious or anything?

And oh let's not get started on Natla's inconsistent design . I guess they wanted the opening cutscene to look more edgy by featuring scorched Natla instead, it wouldn't make sense for her to have mutated since she was literally frozen. Maybe her wings are retractable or something? And she had them hidden through most of anniversary until she got to Atlantis, it requires some magic anatomy of course because she clearly wasn't just hiding them under her clothes as it would be impossible not to notice it, then Amanda was kind enough in Underworld to craft her a custom prisoner outfit with holes for her wings .

I really wish they had expanded more upon the "different names, same myth" concept but the Norse connection was clearly and afterthought after Legend, ultimately all these interesting subplots fell really short in the end and many things amounted to nothing. How come the most ambitious stories never pull through in this franchise .
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Old 17-03-24, 23:11   #4
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Hey, no problem! It was fun recounting/revisiting the storyline after so many years! I was always fascinated by the overarching themes in the LAU trilogy, though I will say that after rewatching the cinematics on YouTube, the rose-colored glasses have definitely worn off lol. I'd realized how LAU foreshadowed many of the same pitfalls Crystal Dynamics would go on to repeat in the Survivor trilogy. No matter what mainline entry they create, they always have these huge lofty ambitions -- especially in terms of the story, which isn't necessarily a bad thing per se, but it's just funny to me how both Legend and TR2013 set up these interesting plot threads only for them to either never go anywhere, or they get resolved in the most underwhelming of ways.

(Btw, I think the Doppelganger birthplace with the health restoration device was still in the Arctic Sea, most likely in some ruins hidden not so far from Helheim that Lara obviously didn't even know were in the area. I suspect this because A) in spite of how strong the Doppelganger is, she still wouldn't have been able to carry wounded Natla too far on foot, and B) Natla mentions Amanda cut the power to the entire temple which I believe happened when Amanda realized she must join forces with Lara to foil Natla's plan near the end of Underworld.)

But coming back to the inconsistencies and other glaring stuff that doesn't quite add up -- 100% agreeing with what you said. It's unfortunate the people in charge of the story were so dead set on shoehorning the whole Richard/Amelia/Natla sub-plot into the story that it all kind of blew up in their faces and stood in the way of a satisfying conclusion. I feel like out of all the different plots across the three games, there's not a single one that ever receives full focus. In Legend, Amanda faking her own death and then showing up as the game's main villain feels rushed; in Anniversary, Richard's presence feels like an afterthought only so Lara can have an emotional investment in the quest; in Underworld, the dais and the Excalibur are suddenly forgotten about and it's all about Norse mythology, and surprise! Natla is alive, but enough about that.. Lara's doppelganger is blowing up her manor! Oh and Amelia is a thrall now lolz. It's like they were throwing everything at the wall -- a literal masterclass in bad storytelling. In the end, there's no time to address it all and thus so much gets skimmed over, or doesn't get fully addressed at all.

You could argue that none of it really matters as the trilogy is essentially about Lara's healing process and learning to let go of the past and move on, but then I'm like... GAWD, these are TOMB RAIDER games we're talking about here, not some epic drama series which I feel like is the tone they were going for. Imho, the reason they rebooted the franchise (for the second time) isn't because the series was growing stale by Underworld, it's because they quite literally wrote themselves into a corner, and needed a fresh start. WHY THEN did they include the same tired family drama again? I'm sorry, I just cannot.

Last edited by [Xmas]; 17-03-24 at 23:16.
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Old 17-03-24, 23:37   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by [Xmas] View Post
but it's just funny to me how both Legend and TR2013 set up these interesting plot threads only for them to either never go anywhere, or they get resolved in the most underwhelming of ways.
Hard agree on this one! The end of Legend made it seem like something really epic and exciting was about to go down and... nothing really happened.

Quote:
(Btw, I think the Doppelganger birthplace with the health restoration device was still in the Arctic Sea, most likely in some ruins hidden not so far from Helheim that Lara obviously didn't even know were in the area. I suspect this because A) in spite of how strong the Doppelganger is, she still wouldn't have been able to carry wounded Natla too far on foot, and B) Natla mentions Amanda cut the power to the entire temple which I believe happened when Amanda realized she must join forces with Lara to foil Natla's plan near the end of Underworld.)
Ok now it all makes sense I was also confused about Amanda cutting the power but now I get what happened. Why didn't we get a third DLC where we play as Amanda and cut the power? Would have been fun .

Quote:
It's unfortunate the people in charge of the story were so dead set on shoehorning the whole Richard/Amelia/Natla sub-plot into the story that it all kind of blew up in their faces and stood in the way of a satisfying conclusion. [...]
Oh my God you're so right with this one! So much building up about finding the beloved Amelia and it was the most underwhelming thing I've ever seen, did we really have to play through three games to find Amelia as a zombie and be killed in the most anticlimatic and corny way? I would've preferred if they made her Natla's slave or something more interesting. At least in the DS version the finding Amelia cutscene is a QTE and you have to actually shoot her in game to kill her .

Quote:
GAWD, these are TOMB RAIDER games we're talking about here, not some epic drama series
I think the movies are to blame for this one because they seem to be the biggest source of inspiration for everything Crystal Dynamics did (during the LAU era at least), I guess they thought having these drama moments and giving Lara a personal reason for everything she does would make the players emphasize with her and while it was something new and interesting in Legend, it grew stale really fast.
Why on earth they felt the need to repeat the formula AGAIN in Survivor and make it 10x more dramatic is beyond my comprehension .
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Old 19-03-24, 16:40   #6
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Because of Crystal Dynamics corporate ideology of rehash the story to get the product out faster. They don't care at all about plot holes in story or about what the fans would like to see happen in the series. It's all about making a quick buck with Crystal Dynamics. Sad isn't it?
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Old 23-03-24, 14:19   #7
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Thanks to all of you for all the info above. I read it all. Interesting. I have to admit, I just play all the games and don’t focus too much attention to past storylines.
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