General Tomb Raider Discussion

[biscuits]

Originally Posted by Blackmoor

Richard has never worked for me because they made him have Lara's identity, they gave him her defining attributes - discoverer of hidden ancient mysteries that nobody else can find, explorer and adventurer. And it just subjegates her as a character in her own story!

I know not everyone else sees it this way but I do and have as soon as the first film did it, which Crystal then picked up and ran with for every game thereafter.

I have actually no problem with her parents being in the stories (within reason) provided they don't trump Lara by being her, from whom she then is a copy. I think it was flawed and lazy from the start and I don't know why Crystal continue to push this narrative in every game.

I think it was a lazy way to try to make a more personal story. Writers always do parental or familial stories for this kind of stuff.

[jajay119]

Sega continuing to put SE in the shade when it comes to celebrating major milestones and embracing your past.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im9CxOSSiFU

Honestly never thought I'd see the day where Sega were someone to aspire to.

[Yuna´s Wish]

^ Well, I've read it's for the 31st anniversary, not the 30th. So let's wait for TR's 26th anni (?).

All they released for the proper 30th anniversary was a horrible remaster of Colors. Have they even fixed it?

So no, why would we want that?

(But yes, the remaster looks great and I hope it's not a glitchfest)

[.snake.]

Originally Posted by Blackmoor

Richard has never worked for me because they made him have Lara's identity, they gave him her defining attributes - discoverer of hidden ancient mysteries that nobody else can find, explorer and adventurer. And it just subjegates her as a character in her own story!

I know not everyone else sees it this way but I do and have as soon as the first film did it, which Crystal then picked up and ran with for every game thereafter.

I have actually no problem with her parents being in the stories (within reason) provided they don't trump Lara by being her, from whom she then is a copy. I think it was flawed and lazy from the start and I don't know why Crystal continue to push this narrative in every game.

That's such a good observation.

One thing the first movie didn't do though (as far as I can tell) that the games started doing with Legend onwards, is make Lara the eternal skeptic, and Richard the believer or conspiracy theorist. And that just flies against Lara's character entirely, or her experiences and discoveries.

It was Legend that started this whole thing about Lara being a scientist and skeptic, with Amanda pointing that out. Amanda was the believer in the occult and supernatural, and so they had to make Lara the opposite of that for some reason. The idea that Amanda is the one who has to convince Lara who "will never understand" that Avalon is not a myth makes absolutely no sense if we are meant to believe that Lara has discovered Atlantis and battled Egyptian Gods up until this point in her story. Lara has to be pushed to the brink to realize that her father was, in fact, right.

The Reboot takes the exact same approach again. In the same way that Legend and Anniversary hint at Lara's father being disgraced for believing in Atlantis or the stone-dias-portals, the Reboot makes him the disgraced archeologist for believing in a lost civilization or immortality of the soul. In all of Lara's campfire journals she's perpetually struggling like a typical skeptic or atheist that her father may have been right, until at the end she finally acknowledges and embraces it.

What's stupid about all of this is that it makes Richard the true intrepid archeologist who took the risks to venture into unknown obscure archeological territory, and Lara simply the lapdog who eventually sees 'the light.' And this idea of Lara the skeptic vs Amanda/Richard the believers actually goes against what Classic Lara established: in TR4 Von Croy is the skeptic often saying he doesn't believe in "ancient hocus pocus" and Lara wants to believe in the curse on the Iris or the Semerkhet prophecy; and in TR5 Ireland she's obviously had first hand encounters with the supernatural.

[LNSNHGTDS]

LAU Lara doesn't dismiss the occult and supernatural, she merely seeks to find the logical explaination behind what ancient cultures or average modern day people might call "magic" or "miracles".

The whole premise of LAU is Lara discovering very ancient artefacts created using long forgotten mechanisms that later cultures attributed to magic or godlike power. It's the "truth behind the myth" aspect that make the mythologies of these games so intriguing to me personally. She also never dismisses these ancient powers because she herself experienced them as a kid, in contrast to Alister, for example, who constantly dismisses the king Arthur story as nothing more than a myth. Lara even shuts him down when he's having one of his rants in King Arthur's Tomb? saying "You're so literal Alister. Archaeology is half metaphor you know." and it's most of these metaphors that she uncovers the truth behind of in her journeys.

In contrast to Richard and Amanda, Richard may have had the right clues about the Scion or Mjolnir and Thor's gear, but he didn't have the skills to actually go to most of these places and see if he could prove them, which in turn lead to him being discredited and ridiculed by his colleagues. The only reason he could acquire one of Thor's gauntlets was because Natla gave him the coordinates herself and he had a whole crew and possibly mercenaries with him in order to survive the tiger thralls' attacks. Couldn't save him from Natla though, whereas Lara defeated her twice. Amanda on the other hand, who if I'm not mistaken was actually an anthropologist, not an archaeologist (might be wrong) was obsessed with finding relics and technology of the past in hopes of reintroducing them to the world, whereas Lara was only in it for discovering the relics (andfindinghermother)

In the Survivor games Lara has never had any supernatural experiences until Yamatai so, like most people, she is initially dismissive of it all and thinks her father was just handling his grief in a very wrong way, but then realises that "Hey, my father wasn't crazy after all" so she digs up his research to see what he was all about.

[Tombraider95]

Originally Posted by Blackmoor

Richard has never worked for me because they made him have Lara's identity, they gave him her defining attributes - discoverer of hidden ancient mysteries that nobody else can find, explorer and adventurer. And it just subjegates her as a character in her own story!

I know not everyone else sees it this way but I do and have as soon as the first film did it, which Crystal then picked up and ran with for every game thereafter.

I have actually no problem with her parents being in the stories (within reason) provided they don't trump Lara by being her, from whom she then is a copy. I think it was flawed and lazy from the start and I don't know why Crystal continue to push this narrative in every game.

Pretty much. Lara used to be the black sheep of her family, but then they made it all about following her parents footsteps, making what she does not so special or unique anymore. boringgg

[Yuna´s Wish]

Richard had no tombraiding skills. I bet he didn't encounter a single Naga when in Thailand. After all, he retrieved the Gauntlet from the shrine without opening the door to the shrine (which required already having a Gauntlet to manipulate, and the only other Gauntlet was in the Mediterranean Sea).

Isn't there a hole on the roof? He must have entered from above and escaped the same way. 5 minutes in tombs and then he went to the beach with Natla (wise choice, Thailand's beaches are heavenly. Like pad thai).

[Tombraider95]

Originally Posted by Yuna´s Wish

Richard had no tombraiding skills. I bet he didn't encounter a single Naga when in Thailand. After all, he retrieved the Gauntlet from the shrine without opening the door to the shrine (which required already having a Gauntlet to manipulate, and the only other Gauntlet was in the Mediterranean Sea).

Isn't there a hole on the roof? He must have entered from above and escaped the same way. 5 minutes in tombs and then he went to the beach with Natla (wise choice, Thailand's beaches are heavenly. Like pad thai).

Doesn't really matter how much "skill" he had, the fact he was interested in this field in the first place takes it away from Lara imo. Makes it seem like Lara was only interested in it because her dad was. It's pretty common for people to end up working in the same type of field as their parents, as it's something they'd be exposed to and have a lot of knowledge/interest in from a young age.

Lara was supposed to be rebellious, yet this is the opposite.

[.snake.]

Of course Richard had skill. Whoever came up with this idea that he didn't? Where is that confirmed in the games?

According to Legend, he discovered the Ghana temple and the Ghalali key. According to Underworld, he discovered the Thailand temple, a map revealing the locations of the temples in Mexico and Jan Mayen, plus a gauntlet, Eitr stone, and transport that plus a bunch of thrall panthers and spiders back to England and store everything in a secret hidden vault beneath his mansion. He also somehow figured out Natla's secret.

And in the Survivor trilogy it's much the same. His wife is pissed he's "off in some tomb at the other end of the world" and he has an entire library and secret trophy room filled with artefacts from his adventures. And in the 2013 documents it's implied that Roth, Grim, and "old Dickie Croft" had adventures together.

All 6 games basically set it up that he's the male version of Lara and what she will grow into one day. The only difference is that Lara briefly seems to have doubted a lot of his discoveries and beliefs, but eventually her skepticism is shattered by what she discovers in order to validate his theories.

Originally Posted by Yuna´s Wish

(wise choice, Thailand's beaches are heavenly. Like pad thai).

Pad thai is overrated. Drunkman Noodles are better.

[Yuna´s Wish]

Pad thai is the best. I've eaten for 60 baht or less.

There is also fried rice with seafood.

------

You're right about the skills, particularly in the Reboot universe. I often forget Richard exists there (how I do that is beyond me) but he does have that impressive display of artifacts.

But he could also have obtained them from auctions, or he could have had an archaeology team that helped him on his endeavours.

Then again, I could be forgetting a document explaining he got the artifacts in tombraiding fashion.