While I can sometimes do the whole "the fanbase is toxic" thing and sometimes I do feel nostalgia and personal bias, among other factors, sometimes clouds people's vision, overall agree with your point.. I don't think it can be argued that any of us don't love Lara, whatever iteration(s) of her each of us loves.

About the "you should be happy" argument I don't think anyone should forced to be happy for a type of game they don't think they'll enjoy just because Classic Lara features in it but at the same time I think it's way to early to have any opinion on it because it's way too early and we literally don't know anything about it other than the fact that it's free and for mobile phones.

Well the like to dislike ratio is better on gamespots trailer, but the general public is not happy that classic Lara is only in a mobile game.

https://youtu.be/D3GRBHmvIss

First I said when games started to become CINEMATIC, like when the first TR2013 was released that gave RLara an interesting origins story.

TRLAU, that is basically a very shallow type of indepth characterization.
They showed her different emotions because technology has advanced; she was basically no more than the Angelina Jolie Lara Croft iteration; so very shallow in writing.


Lara in AOD, if I want to describe her, someone who is going through a trauma but who has suddenly become a big **itch walking around the streets. Is giving a smile, or showing an interest in a new man called depth in characterization????
Being in the 2000's, you would expect something super different and interesting, but her character was as shallow as all the previous ones.

I can agree about TR4 and tR5, but still, there was no depth involved at all.
Just the advancement in technology which allowed for very few things to be explained in a better way, but still her character needed much more analysis.

And what makes Classic Lara still stand out is because she seems one of those people you look at and feel a mystery about her.

She is a competitor.
If the reboot had classic Lara in all her traits for example, part of her character would allow her to approach a problem in a calmer manner.
Scared, for sure, unsure as well; tearing possibly; but never shouting or sobbing like a baby or calling for rescue or even showing others that she needed help in the first place although she might have wanted help.

And the world is full of people who are like this; it is not that complicated; but they chose to scrap all that away and come up with a cry baby who is average in her fighting skills, too serious, doesnt even laugh that much, has no class, swears and is easily manipulated, all which are ANTI-LARA CROFT in my opinion...

All I'm really getting from this is "waaaah cry baby" and "waaaaay shallow" and "waaaaah nothing like classic Lara" which is a very shallow approach towards AoD Lara, LAU Lara and Survivor Lara at the same time so I don't think you'll ever be satisfied with anything the developers do.

Avalon is 100% correct

Because I do not mix storytelling with character analysis or giving depth to a character.

You can have a very wonderful story to tell, the cases like TR4, 5, AOD, TR LAU, but they do not have anything to do with character depth or skilled writing. Not to mention how contradicting the Lara personalities seem between Legend, TRA and Underworld. At least this is how I see it, there is no logical reasoning behind how she acts sometimes except that it is a decision the developers chose without giving any reason why it should happen that way and given that we supposedly know how Lara behaves or should behave, she does something completely contradicting and out of her character; maybe they thought this could be a twist to the plot, but that ended ruining the plot as a whole.

Okay this part I can agree with.

It's just the way you presented before / the way I read it came off as generalizing based on very specific story instances.

I don't think Survivor Lara is a crybaby or illogical and shouting all the time for example. She can be this but likewise there are also situations where she's collected and does her best to stay on top of situations. The way she deals with Konstantin comes to mind. He actively teases her about Jonah and Richard but she calmly just shoots him in the face and lets him die.

I don't think AoD Lara comes off as a bitch either, unless you specifically select the replies in conversation that make her a bitch, but that depends on each player.

There's obviously room for improvement I'm not denying that bit I don't think Lara's depictions so far were as shallow as described.

Could be as well, we can agree, they just need to be betterly written.

Your example about how Lara dealt with Konstantine, that was really good.
Yet, back in shadow, she was completely out of her mind when she handed that dagger to Dominguez and how she was very emotional when she met jonah again to tell him what she did; she was so hysterical.

Then again when Rourke was talking to her through the walkie-talkie, telling her about Jonah's death, manipulating her and she easily believed that and what did she do?
She swore, she was super crazy...

It is these contradictions that make this Lara Croft character seem off and poorly written as well.

It is like when the team sat down to write her down there was no clear Character biography about her.

They just seem to swing her emotions according to circumstances because they want to force us to sympathize with her nothing more, and that is why the emotions are not as genuine as they should be

She contradicts herself with the way she acts for no obvious reason which makes her seem like she has an identity crisis

Well Lara was doing everything she could to stop Trinity and she failed. Not only did Dominguez steal the dagger from Lara, she didn’t just hand it over, she also caused a massive Tsunami over Cozumel killing hundreds upon thousands also bare in mind, shed literally just witnessed a child being killed because of her. She’s angry at Trinity and herself what she let happen, she’s upset because of the devastation she’s caused, she’s scared because shes just found out she’s started an apocalypse.

I’m pretty sure if any of us did that, we’d be slightly hysterical too.

This right here is the point I'm trying to make.

They're portrating Lara, or at least trying to, in a more relatable manner.

The whole point with Survivor Lara is to have less polished and more humane reactions because that's what people apparently wanna see.

Whether that's a good or bad thing or something we like or not is a whole other topic, but they're trying to make Lara look like she's going from a regular girl to a hardened adventurer. That's why there was initially no manor and no money and working at a bar and no grand college studies, because super rich Queen that uses her wealth to become an adventurer is not something the average person can relate with.

The argument of "If anyone else did x/y/z you'd also react this way" doesn't work for me because the whole point of Lara Croft is that she isn't just anyone. I understand the reboot tried to make her more grounded/relatable/boring, but they went too far imo. Lara Croft is supposed to be a power fantasy. Lara also caused a lot of **** in TR4 yet she still remained calm, collected and sorted it out herself.

You'd think with after all the trauma she'd been through in the first two games, that Lara would be emotionless to that stuff now. People died on Yamatai because of her leading them there, she caused that but she's somehow okay with that in Rise.

I think a more interesting way to write it would be her being dismissive and emotionless and have that be juxtaposed with Jonah being compassionate and resentful towards Lara. And this would be a source of conflict that she deals with throughout the game. That could've been the "morally grey" point too.

The whole point is that people dying wasn't her fault. They were looking for Yamatai which neither Richard not Whitman, both experienced archaeologists, were able to find yet Lara pinpointed its location and actually got them where they were going in the first place.

Grim chose to put up a fight, Roth chose to sacrifice himself for Lara and Alex chose to play the hero to impress Lara.

They all made their own choices and Lara literally led them were they all willingly set out to go to anyway.

I agree. Lara is fundamentally a larger-than-life cartoony power fantasy type of character, who is morally grey and actually a bit of selfish asshole, a glorified treasure hunter.

I do understand why they've tried to make her so grounded and realistic, that's just the direction the gaming industry has moved in and they're following trends to stay relevant. It does come at the cost of Tomb Raider's brand identity though.

The argument with CLara didn’t do this and CLara didn’t feel that type of way doesn’t work with me either. The two studios are writing from a completely different perspective.

Yes in Tomb Raider 4 Lara nearly caused an apocalypse and she had to stop it but the difference is core based the storyline on the apocalypse not Lara herself, Lara was more of an avatar that we used to go through the adventure. Sure, Lara had a little backstory with TR4 showing us her as a teen with Von Croy but that was it.

Fast forward to Shadow; the writing in the reboot era focuses more on Lara and her as a character. What she thinks, what she feels, how she reacts and that’s what the game(s) are based on. So yes, Lara goes through all these emotions and we’re witnessing it, we’re witnessing her breakdown but we’re also witnessing her overcoming these and pushing through.

Core focuses on Tomb Raiding and using Lara to do it; Crystal are focusing on Lara and using tombs/disasters to do that. I wish they would stop, I wish they would focus more on the raiding, myths and the artefacts but unfortunately they aren’t.

Jay Walker was too cocky with that tweet talking about how he's only been seeing positive things :x

I agree. Mostly I've been seeing negative comments and reactions so now what

I don't believe it's even about how she reacts per say, it's more about the fact the developers choose to put her in these situations. Some people talk about these things happening as if there's no choice - "oh, but there was a tsunami and people died, of course she'd be upset, wouldn't you?" - no, it's not real life and the developers literally created that tsunami with their hands. They chose to put her in that situation, they chose her to be the "cause" of it, just like they chose to make the story all about her parents, just like they chose to create Paititi. You name it, they did it. They're making a game and they're very deliberately making these scenarios for a distinct purpose.

How about it's not the end of the world? How about Lara doesn't need to save a civilisation and collect dice for them? How about Lara just goes on a treasure hunt because she wants to? That doesn't mean there can't be well written characters and depth in the writing, but not everything needs to be "DRAMATIC!". Don't they realize by putting Lara in these over the top setpieces that it does the opposite of what they set out to achieve? It's clear that no-one finds it relatable anymore, they just find it exhausting. Tone it down for the next game, that's all I'm asking for.

Let’s tag him in negative tweets to put him in his place

I think he's actually coming across them himself along with the team. Hopefully the learn something out of this.


He's a great dude but c'mon...who thought of a mobile game?

Meh... I’m not a fan of the art direction but I hope it’ll be fun. I’m more excited for TRUE

I liked everything until I saw it was for mobile devices lmao

That's one of the points of SotTR, though. Lara is having a sort of identity crisis. Her actions are erratic and contradictory because she is feeling erratic and contradictory.

By the time of SotTR, Lara is fully driven by an obsession for revenge and stop Trinity. That's why she fully lashes out, insults and all, at Rourke on Porvenir. But when she sees Jonah alive and the destruction she caused at the site, she breaks because she realises how easily manipulated she has become due to her obsession, or maybe even that in a twisted way she "wants" to be manipulated, she wants an excuse, any excuse to go rampant. And that scared her, because that's not the person she thought she was.

It also explains why she just gave the box to Dominguez afterwards, because she was trying to distance herself the most from that side of her. Yet everything still goes south.

Which explains her final decisions at the climax of the game: like it or not, things will get messy for Lara, and she needs to act. She can embrace her destructive side, but not be consumed by it. Act because the circumstances demand it, and not because she is stuck in the past and holds a grudge. She kills Dominguez because it is necessary, not for revenge, and doesn't change the world because she needs to move on.

Can you please write the games? I dont know how you came to that conclusion from what the game showed but I like it.

Beautifully written :tmb: Make it a sticky in the Shadow's subforums.

I think part of the "problem" (not necessarily a problem, or a problem with SotTR or the reboot games in general) is that the plots of games generally tend to be written in a very direct way: everything is explained right when it's happening, every character explains exactly what they are feeling. Most definitely a relic from when there was no voice acting in games, or even because gaming is a very active medium, so there really isn't time to process things.

On the contrary, the reboot games, especially RotTR and SotTR, are written in such a way that you need to think about everything to fully understand what's happening. You really need to have in mind what came before, the small reactions of the character, about the arc the game is trying to tell (which was hinted at during Cozumel, for example, with Lara doing something without thinking just to stop Trinity, make a huge mess, and not really fully grasping what happened until she Jonah snapped her out of it). Not saying they are the best thing ever written, but I am not pulling things out of my butt either. These themes are present in the game's plot, very deliberately by the writers. It's just being delivered in a way that isn't really that common in games, and perhaps for a reason.

For example, RotTR also hints that Lara's daddy issues aren't really daddy issues at all, it's actually all about Lara. At start of RotTR, Lara is being mocked due to what she said about Yamatai, like her father was in the past. Her proving Richard's claims about the immortal soul as true, proves that Himiko's immortal soul was also true. Her proving Richard was not crazy proves she herself is not crazy. When pushed about her true intentions with going after the the prophet's tomb and then Kitezh, she always ends up saying something along the lines of "I saw something that I can't explain". Jacob even confronts Lara directly telling that she might actually be doing things for herself and not for her father. I wish there was a more explicit moment where Lara explicitly says this is her true intention with going after the Divine Source and stuff, but again, it's all actually there already.

Why, thank you! :)

Heads up, I'm going to move this thread to our Android and iOS sub forum.

Thank you, the proper place for it :D

"No"
- Lara Croft, 1996

People focusing a lot on the like/dislike bar but the one thing that is jumping out at me is the view count(s)

Those are not very impressive numbers for a franchise that is apparently still popular.

If the general gaming audience still had a lot of interest in TR and it's future, those numbers would be much bigger whether the reaction was positive or negative.

That's why all this internal fighting is so silly. TR is dying and soon all these little disagreements might be irrelevant.

This is very nice and interesting indeed.

But you know what the problem is, maybe they meant to tell this, but it was not addressed properly; and this is our complaint that the trilogy has very bad writing.

What you described was never showed in my opinion, it did not touch me because they never went to talk about this Lara having to deal with an identity crisis which affected her behavior.
She appeared to me to have an identity crisis which felt very odd and out of her character.

They were focusing on graphics and hideous costumes and Ramboo.

I wish what you wrote was what the game wanted to address, it would have been an extraordinary story to tell.

TR has never ever ever had strong writing. best plot we ever had was in The Last Revelation and even that wasn't told too well. it needs to change

Wow, interest in this game went from 100 to 0 real fast.

Without gameplay or any new info there isn't anything to talk about...
Besides any thread thats relegated to this -Mobile/Android- part of the forum will be forgotten in seconds.

Moving the thread to this mobile section is what killed it off.

Imo it was way too soon. We barely know anything at all about this project. It's still a future game yet to come and should be in the future games section because it's a future game.

Indeed; it should have kept in the future section.

I disagree. That subforum is for the main entries in the series, while this place is for comics, movies, mobile and spin-offs.
It belongs here if you want to follow the simple rules of this forum. The next main game after Shadow should go in the future section.
Just my opinion anyway. It is a future game, but not a future main entry game so.

"Do you guys not have phones?"

I don't disagree with this; but this section in the forums very few members are willing to visit for interaction...
that's all...

That section says nothing about being only about main games. It's about any future game or project in development. We had two threads, one in this section and one in that section which I think was fine.

I'm willing to bet when more is revealed someone is going to make a new thread in the future section because there is barely any traffic here at all. Lol