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Old 12-05-18, 23:53   #21
James_Rutland
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These are my thoughts exactly. I imagine anyone will be able to go from completing TR2013 to playing Shadow without any problems; all they'd need to know from Rise is that Lara went on an adventure and she faced Trinity, and boom, they're caught up.

It really is a shame though, because it feels like such a wasted opportunity - they had 3 games to tell her origin story and it feels like they threw one away. I'm replaying the game now and I really do think Rise is sound from a gameplay perspective and it's clear they focused a whole lot more on that (which is expected anyway), but as for story, it seems there is no clear direction and Lara is simply going through the motions.
I feel like as this is the bookend to the trilogy they had to explore new, interesting and darker elements of Lara's character in order to satisfy us and tie up her arc completely. So glad they're ditching the Mary-Sue character archetype that she was headed towards with Rise and giving us a Lara that ****s up and makes selfish, uncalculated decisions. She's more human and interesting that way.
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Old 13-05-18, 00:02   #22
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2013 was all about reacting to horrible situations and Lara being forced into this weirdass cult and magical mumbojumbo. Lara was battered and broken but learned that there is truth in myth.

Although Rise was a bit safe in it’s story telling, it still followed 2013 nicely. Lara found this truth and needs to confirm it, if only for her own sanity and beliefs. She becomes strained because everything she thinks she knows could be wrong. The father arc is, imo, just an easy and lazy way to make Lara reflect on her own experiences and compare them to this sad man with a tragic end. In the end, she confirms what she already knows and becomes more openminded and stable... buuuuut all the killing is now catching up to her.

Insert Shadow: From what I hear Lara isn’t fazed about the supernatural anymore (as a result of rise imo), but now it’s all about question what and who she is, and what it means to do EVERYTHING and go through ANY ordeal to get what she wants. I think this is a very natural evolution, even if they paused her ‘murdery’ side in rise (which is now back in the spotlight).

Concluding: I think it all fits perfectly, save for some thingies which I just mentioned. Lara learned to react/survive/endure, she learned to believe/be curious/be interested and now she needs to learn to accept her darker side and thusly ‘become the tomb raider’ which to me basically means ‘become the anti-hero’

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Old 21-05-18, 19:34   #23
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I think RotTR is now perhaps a bit irrelevant because CD decided to oversimplify the game's original plot and in the process made Lara a character without growth.

I mean, as I said many times, the better story still buried within the one we got, the subtext is definitely there. This game would be the one where Lara finds that adventuring is what helps her cope with the events of Yamatai, and that she desperately needs more proof of immortality so she can be sure she is not crazy. Sure, she would first say, like she does in game, that she is doing this to clear her fathers name, but the realization that she is actually doing it just for herself, that she is just a trauma survivor trying to cope, would have been much more pronounced than what actually was. And when she accepts that (and gets her proof with Jacob's existence, which makes her accept Yamatai as real events and not hallucinations), she would become "free" of her mental shackles, and realize that she truly enjoys adventuring and is ready to do it for a living. But of course, when she realises that her whole life has been influenced by Trinity, she decides that she can only be free if she can take the organization down for good.

And of course, this would tie directly to SotTR, where Lara is perhaps too focused in destroying Trinity and reaching her freedom, that she doesn't see how similar to them she is becoming. Also, it is the adventure where she discovers that actions have consequences, and that adventuring without any sort of regards towards the deadly myths she is searching for may be a mistake.
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Old 21-05-18, 20:14   #24
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^ That would have been 10x better It was exactly what I expected of Rise from what we had seen before release, but oh well we all know how that turned out lol
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Old 21-05-18, 21:44   #25
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^ That would have been 10x better It was exactly what I expected of Rise from what we had seen before release, but oh well we all know how that turned out lol
I know right? It's kind of frustrating really, I more and more have a love/hate relationship with this game's story. Because, I don't think what we got was bad. Generic, sure, but it was well written. But there is so much subtext hiding inside it that points towards a much better story that really annoys me. Again, what I said above was not a wish-list, it is present in the game! I mean, there is even one cutscene where Jacob explicitly asks Lara if she is doing this for her father or for herself. And Lara herself always tends, after first saying she is doing it for her father, that she saw something that should not be real and needs answers. But it is so side lined to make the story as simple as it can be that I just don't understand why CD bothered to bring professional writers in the first place.

At least, going for their experience and by the first interviews, EM actually knows that, if you want to make a narrative driven game, your narrative must be complex, and story and gameplay must guide each other in equal ways. I am really interested to see where SotTR goes story wise.
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Old 23-05-18, 20:47   #26
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No matter how we look at it, Rise is definitely nowhere near as important as TR9 in term of character or world-building, but I can see what you mean. Just from the difference in box art which people have noticed, it gives us Lara's first adventure after Yamatai which she embarks on at her own will, even if she's still not THE Tomb Raider, so I suppose there's some small importance to it. Still, Shadow is obviously very much necessary to give us the real climax of her origin story.
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Old 24-05-18, 10:02   #27
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But it is so side lined to make the story as simple as it can be
I think this also due to the high investment cost: having a plot that spans over several games makes it rather necessary for the players to have played the previous installment(s) and that could mean less players and less revenue.

So on the one hand you want to have a good story for art-sake and for the fans but on the other hand you don't want to scare the casual players/broader audience away from your product. And so you end with three games (yes I dare say "three", because I don't think Shadow will be a major difference here) whose plot is more implied and in the background then something that is emphasized.
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Old 24-05-18, 16:31   #28
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I think this also due to the high investment cost: having a plot that spans over several games makes it rather necessary for the players to have played the previous installment(s) and that could mean less players and less revenue.

So on the one hand you want to have a good story for art-sake and for the fans but on the other hand you don't want to scare the casual players/broader audience away from your product. And so you end with three games (yes I dare say "three", because I don't think Shadow will be a major difference here) whose plot is more implied and in the background then something that is emphasized.
But really, what I'm saying is nothing that you need that much or (or any) additional information from the previous game. It would still be pretty much a stand alone story, the same way SotTR's story also seems to be actually.

All you needed to know is that Lara had a previous adventure that made her see something supernatural based on immortality, which is messing her up, and gave her a need to go through her father's research, which made a career studying myths on immortality and as ridiculed for it. This is basically all the info RotTR already gives as it is. You don't need to know she was shipwrecked on Yamatai, that she saw proofs of Himiko's immortal soul, that Sam almost died because of a soul transfer ritual, and that Jonah also was a survivor with her.

The writers already wanted to tell that more complex story. And that would not bring any more additional costs (I mean, the writers were already there, and I don't think having a more complex story would mean having to spend more money on motion capturing and cut-scene animation) nor would make gamers who have not played TReboot more out of context than they already were.
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