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They're taking a series that became both a punchline and a parody of itself and bringing it kicking and screaming, literally, into modern game design and the expectations that come with it. Christopher Nolan did it with Batman. Before Batman Begins came out, the last thing people remembered from that franchise was "Clooney Batsuit Nipples." They're taking an avatar that was a walking pair of tits with guns and sassy quips and making her into an actual character with a backstory and a hero's journey, and they are doing it with a game that sounds like a possible early GOTY contender. These narrative driven third person shooters usually have nothing at stake for the protagonist - even when he's captured and beaten, Nate Drake still has great hair. If developers are going to take characters like Lara, or Max in Max Payne 3, and really start putting them through the wringer and chewing them up a bit, it's going to give these games things they've never had before - stakes, where the main character doesn't always seem invincible. Besides, if you don't want to see gruesome death animations, there is a simple solution: Get better at the game!  I have nothing invested in this franchise at all, but everything about what they've done with a washed-up series sounds nothing short of miraculous.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:07
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RentCavalier posted:If you're this squeamish about violence, how have you possibly made it into the modern era? The biggest hit of the Xbox 360 was a game whose defining feature was inserting a chainsaw into a person's crotch and hewing them in half. Lara Croft comes from a series where she can get eaten by T-rexes, so how is any of this stuff any more visceral or violent than anything else the genre has presented? Let's turn that around. Are the only games you've noticed recently the ones that are filled to the brim with blood and gore? Do you sincerely believe that the success of the medium these past few console generations owes itself solely to how lurid and voyeuristic they are about depictions of violence? With the way graphics and animation are becoming more detailed and elaborate, are artists obligated to draw out the million ways you can suffer? Oh, hey, lucky for me, there's like fifty billion other successful games that either avoid graphic death and dismemberment, or at the very least keeps that imagery consistent and tastefully picks and chooses what to show and what not to. Did you know that they'd considered a scene in God of War 3 where Kratos kills Aphrodite, after their sex scene, but then cut it because they felt it would be horribly uncomfortable and going too far even for a character who's otherwise all about death and violence? It's a shame this game which looks otherwise great doesn't have such restraint.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:08
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For me it's not so much the violence that's unsettling (although I will happily admit to finding violence geared towards women a lot creepier than violence geared towards men, even if's the same thing happening) but rather the way it's being presented to the player. A lot of the stuff here seems to be passing it off as something Lara has to go through, and that enduring it all is going to make her stronger/faster/deadlier/whatever. There's a weird under current in the advertising that these little scenes are something to aim for, almost; whereas by comparison Dead Space and Resident Evil 4's marketing had a lot of gore in them but it wasn't so blissfully focused on how wonderful the character's failure was. Maybe I'm over-thinking it. Game looks impressive, but I've had to dig to get stuff beyond death animations which is just 
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Feb 27, 2013 06:12
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You guys. The idea of Uncharted minus the stupid IM A MOVIE ALSO CLIMB AROUND ON ROCKS AND LEDGES ALL DAY plus Metroid style exploration plus brutal violent deaths is pretty much the best thing I've heard in a long time. Plus a classic yet refocused female lead in an action game. In my opinion this is how mature games should be opposed to bullshit like David Cage thinking maturity = deep pseudo intellectual farting (and I liked Heavy Rain). Hopefully it's going to be exciting, cringe inducing, and very gamey.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:14
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Kilometers Davis posted:You guys. The idea of Uncharted minus the stupid IM A MOVIE ALSO CLIMB AROUND ON ROCKS AND LEDGES ALL DAY plus Metroid style exploration plus brutal violent deaths is pretty much the best thing I've heard in a long time. Plus a classic yet refocused female lead in an action game. In my opinion this is how mature games should be opposed to bullshit like David Cage thinking maturity = deep pseudo intellectual farting (and I liked Heavy Rain). Hopefully it's going to be exciting, cringe inducing, and very gamey. Why does "brutal violent death" equal maturity, out of curiosity? I don't think violence in video games is inherently a bad thing but I have to say what it most often is is immature. It is gore porn at its most basic in a lot of cases, there for simple gross out or shock value. This isn't necessarily a bad thing but it's about as far from a mature handling of violence and death as I can think of. You can do a lot with implied violence that you can't do with active brutal onscreen violence. To use an example, The Dark Knight's infamous 'pen trick' is all camera angles and no gore but it manages to be shocking none the less. Gore in excess only serves to weaken the overall effect when gore does appear because it becomes commonplace, while a lot of good films and games can do a lot with a little bit of violence in the right place at the right time. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 06:26 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 06:21
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Monolith. posted:Where have you been for the last couple of years? I'm talking about the fad that Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite and X-Com have done where you unlock rewards depending on how many people pre-order. I think the first time I saw it was with X-Com and now the two other games I mention are doing it. I just hope this isn't the new "buy this game, get a tf2 hat!!".
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Feb 27, 2013 06:22
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ImpAtom posted:Why does "brutal violent death" equal maturity, out of curiosity? When I say mature I mean mature as in M rated, dark, not for children. Like the GTA standard set a long time ago. Sometimes you just want some brutal "unpleasant" fun and that's what games like this deliver. I'm not looking into it too far, only far enough to see it from an entertainment standpoint.
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Feb 27, 2013 06:25
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Man I'm stoked as hell for this game, but I don't really get you guys being so dismissive about this game. I've played the hell out of all the REs, Silent Hill series, several Mortal Kombats including the most recent gruesome as hell one, and that kill where Lara slides down the water and gets impaled through the head and dies a painful, gurgling death is the first time a game death has actually made my stomach churn. Most people have thresholds and if you can't understand why this might push it for some folks, then I don't know what to tell you.
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Feb 27, 2013 08:09
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This game could be the best or the worst game ever, but people really need to get off the tumblr bandwagon hating on games. This game isn't even that violent, and gruesome death scenes have been part of tomb raider since 1996. Maybe you guys should make a thread where you can discuss how it's no big deal when you chainsaw people in half in other games but when it happens to a woman it crosses a line. Maybe the misogyny in gaming thread?.
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Feb 27, 2013 08:39
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Um, nobody's made accusations of misogyny here? It's the marketing and emphasis they've put on Lara's many deaths that have soured our interest in the game. Chainsawing people in half elsewhere isn't played up as some sort of life affirming, character building trait.
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Feb 27, 2013 08:49
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This looks like the video game version of The Descent Also, while gory deaths of women usually turn me off of whatever I'm watching or playing, it doesn't bother me much when it happens to the player character and can be avoided by not loving up.
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Feb 27, 2013 08:53
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Clearly none of you did swan dives off a high ledge onto sharp, rocky ground when you were bored or stuck in the original.
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Feb 27, 2013 08:57
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iuvian posted:This game could be the best or the worst game ever, but people really need to get off the tumblr bandwagon hating on games. This game isn't even that violent, and gruesome death scenes have been part of tomb raider since 1996. Why are you so defensive about this?
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Feb 27, 2013 09:14
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poptart_fairy posted:Maybe I'm over-thinking it. Game looks impressive, but I've had to dig to get stuff beyond death animations which is just They were intently focusing on this, right out the gate, with the developers making claims about how the players should want to "protect" Lara, and how "vulnerable" they wanted her to be, which carries all kinds of bad implications that, in fairness, they probably weren't aware of -- you sure as hell don't want to "protect" Nathan Drake or Ezio Auditore, characters just like Lara Croft whom audiences really love. Yeah, there's definitely a gender issue involved, but really digging into that would do this thread no favors, and it's not at all the only reason why this tastes so foul. It'd be just as horrific and unwelcome if it happened in an Uncharted. As for Tomb Raider, newer trailers have played up the adventure aspect and avoided showcasing the suffering as much as earlier ones did, but given the way that audiences receive and react to information, the damage was already done. They might have chosen to actually cut the torture porn from the game itself -- and in my opinion, they absolutely should have -- but they left it. And again, no: The fact that there were violent ways to die in previous TR games is irrelevant, because the visuals weren't nearly as sophisticated and the suffering couldn't be rendered in such excruciating detail as they have chosen to do now.
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Feb 27, 2013 09:18
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Liquid Penguins posted:Is this really what people want from a tomb raider game? Coming from someone with no former interest in Tomb Raider: Yes, absolutely! I want a spiritual successor to MGS3: Snake Eater. In essence, a jungle survival game about eating wild animals, fixing broken bones and vomiting everywhere. That gif could've easily fit into the prologue mission in Snake Eater, minus the part where you die because you're not awesome enough to survive a branch through the head. Attack on Princess fucked around with this message at 09:28 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 09:23
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I really wish this game had taken a few more risks. Like discourage the player from killing, ever.
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Feb 27, 2013 10:56
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Donnerberg posted:Coming from someone with no former interest in Tomb Raider: Yes, absolutely! I want a spiritual successor to MGS3: Snake Eater. In essence, a jungle survival game about eating wild animals, fixing broken bones and vomiting everywhere. That gif could've easily fit into the prologue mission in Snake Eater, minus the part where you die because you're not awesome enough to survive a branch through the head. "Snake, you have a branch impaled through your cranium. Open up your medical screen, and remove it with the knife. Then use Antiseptic and a Bandage. Be more careful next time."
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Feb 27, 2013 13:05
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Geomancing posted:"Snake, you have a branch impaled through your cranium. Open up your medical screen, and remove it with the knife. Then use Antiseptic and a Bandage. Be more careful next time." See, it works, because Metal Gear is always thoroughly absurd, yet plays itself so deadpan-straight that it becomes it's own flavor of farcical no matter how gruesome. They could mitigate the awfulness by taking the Prince of Persia approach, as well. Lara Croft posted:
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Feb 27, 2013 13:30
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^^ That Prince of Persia bit always bugged me. How do you make that kind of mistake telling a story, anyway? "And then two feet of roughly cut, sandy wood spikes ripped through my intestines and... Wait, that's not how it went." Really I can see how this is causing problems because it does seem at odds with the tone of the rest of the game. They're trying to build Tomb Raider as a more serious minded action game, but these deaths are WAY over the top. To compare in terms of Comedy, it's like trying to fit a pie-to-the-face gag with a laugh track into Bill Murray's Groundhog Day without changing anything else. Yes it's a joke, and yes it's a comedy, but the tone's lost.
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Feb 27, 2013 14:27
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The violence is a bit freaky, but it definitely reinforces the idea that you should take the game a bit more seriously and try not to die. I'm not sure about the latter pickaxe murders of cultists though... *videogame violence*.
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Feb 27, 2013 14:46
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I'm playing through Dead Space 1 now and I definitely try to keep Isaac alive to avoid the death scenes. They're always really long, and the voice-actor had nothing to record but screams, grunts and yells in the game.
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Feb 27, 2013 14:51
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i am tim! posted:That Prince of Persia bit always bugged me. How do you make that kind of mistake telling a story, anyway? "And then two feet of roughly cut, sandy wood spikes ripped through my intestines and... Wait, that's not how it went." It's probably just Farah dozing off and the Prince just checking if she's still listening to his story at all.
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Feb 27, 2013 14:55
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Apparently the early review embargo doesn't come without restrictions; there are severe restrictions on showing actual video/gameplay of the game. A lot of talk about the game on the latest Bombcast. A lot more tempered and cool a reaction, as well. Seems like the game is quite linear, with a lot of backtracking once you reach the more open areas.
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Feb 27, 2013 15:31
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HenessyHero posted:Clearly none of you did swan dives off a high ledge onto sharp, rocky ground when you were bored or stuck in the original. Are you trolling, or are you just being willfully obtuse about this? Like, can you not see why a ten polygon primitive model of Lara ragdolling at the bottom of a cliff in a game from 1997 is somehow a little different than a near photorealistic person being graphically impaled on a spike?
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Feb 27, 2013 15:39
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When I play the game I'm going to make sure Lara doesn't die a gruesome horrific death. I'm hoping I can find some salvage with a clean warm blanket and some hot cocoa inside then Lara can be nice and toasty around the camp fire. 
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Feb 27, 2013 16:02
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People complain about the oddest things.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:07
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I think it needs to be highlighted that this is meant to be an origin story, so while the start is 'Lara Croft, terrified archaeology student', the end result is going to be something more familiar, along the lines of 'Raids tombs, shoots fools, pisses off ancient cosmic evils and gives no fucks'. Y'know, how she always used to be. Batman Begins might have had a somewhat darker, more human point of origin, but we still ended up with Batman by the end. Edit: I'm waiting for people to be complete blindsided/enraged when the inevitable supernatural elements kick in.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:09
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Dominic White posted:I think it needs to be highlighted that this is meant to be an origin story, so while the start is 'Lara Croft, terrified archaeology student', the end result is going to be something more familiar, along the lines of 'Raids tombs, shoots fools, pisses off ancient cosmic evils and gives no fucks'. Y'know, how she always used to be. I really like it when games take risks these days. XCOM was a pretty big risk. Kickstarters are all different types of risks. When I first saw Tomb Raider last year or so, I thought "here comes a risky reinterpretation of an age-old classic!" I was actually very happy and anticipating. Then people started circulating the whole "this game has a death fetish" and I still said "well, I don't care about that, I like how Lara goes from being a prettied up princess to a badass and the visual feel they are going for, which is less than pretty smooth skin" and I kinda hoped it was merely an accidental representation. Well, I feel I don't have a problem with the Lara death scenes still, because you are in control of trying to avoid them, but all the killing... I won't know until I play it myself, but if it is completely impossible to avoid killing every last one of these guards, it'll just feel a bit disconnected.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:18
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I doubt we'll see overt supernatural elements in this game.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:23
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Mordaedil posted:Well, I feel I don't have a problem with the Lara death scenes still, because you are in control of trying to avoid them, but all the killing... I won't know until I play it myself, but if it is completely impossible to avoid killing every last one of these guards, it'll just feel a bit disconnected. "Well, that was quite a scrape, good thing I oh right video games.  "Dominic White posted:Edit: I'm waiting for people to be complete blindsided/enraged when the inevitable supernatural elements kick in.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:24
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poptart_fairy posted:Um, nobody's made accusations of misogyny here? It's the marketing and emphasis they've put on Lara's many deaths that have soured our interest in the game. Chainsawing people in half elsewhere isn't played up as some sort of life affirming, character building trait. Sorry but he/she's right. It really is hilarious how everyone's sharting their jorts over these death scenes when as videogamers we've been subjected to much, much worse over the years with barely an ounce of protest. Giant dude getting sawed in half = a-ok Lara Croft dying in other violent ways = an outrage, "very uncomfortable" etc. And isn't it interesting how in past years it was perfectly fine to dehumanize Lara Croft to a simple walking set of tits with no real voice or story, but now there's outrage when we see some seriously bad poo poo happening to that same walking pair of tits-- when we see the human being behind the facade? Between the reaction to that and the embarrassingly pervy Conan video review, I'd say we've more or less been shown a loving clinic on the problems the video game industry and a lot of gamers have with how they view women. For my money, I applaud what the dev is going for here. Chillmatic fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 16:25
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Applauding a developer for what they're doing with their game before playing the game seems really dumb to me. I don't have much to say about the violence for similar reasons, but coupled with the marketing and a lot of what's cropped up in reviews and previews I am kind of bummed out. Not because Lara Croft can die horribly or because she's a woman and they shouldn't get hurt or whatever nonsense people are shouting in response to the kind of bizzare criticism, but just because I don't understand why we needed this. I understand why they needed to reboot Tomb Raider, but I don't understand why Lara Croft needs to go through being a terrified young woman who gets butchered when, say, Nathan Drake didn't. I don't know. Could be interesting, could be terrible. I'm cautiously optimistic and a lot more excited to get my hands on the game than I was a while back.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:28
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Dominic White posted:Batman Begins might have had a somewhat darker, more human point of origin, but we still ended up with Batman by the end.. On the other hand by the end of the trilogy we ended up with "Batman is fundamentally damaging both physically and mentally to the person being Batman and the happiest possible ending is not being Batman." So simply because the basic events are the same doesn't mean the tone is, and I think the tone issues are what is getting people here. I think, to be honest, what is putting people off the most is that the earlier games were Indiana Jones. They had gore and they had violence but it wasn't the focus. Indiana Jones has extreme violence (face melting, hearts getting ripped out) but it's almost always cloaked in the fantastical. The new one comes across a lot more like a completely different genre of film. I don't think that's necessarily wrong but it is worth pointing out that someone who likes the "boy becomes a hero" aspect of Batman won't necessarily like the "this is a crippling mental disorder" Batman. Likewise someone who liked Tomb Raider because it was an awesome Indiana Jones power fantasy might not be as happy with "Lara is a hardened killer whose desire to survive comes before all else" even if they're hitting the same points. Chillmatic posted:Sorry but he/she's right. Isaac Clark getting his head ripped off and replaced by a monster was, in fact, extremely uncomfortable to watch and I recall it coming up repeatedly in the Dead Space thread. It just also wasn't the primary focus of the marketing. Not to mention games like Manhunt where there was plenty of talk about how the kills were uncomfortable and disgusting or how the Punisher game needed its executions put in black-and-white to avoid an AO rating or... countless other things involving male characters. The violence that gets ignored tends to be 'fantasy' stuff. People get way more skeeved out by anything remotely realistic. (Thus why the "eye poke" in Dead Space 2 is infinitely creepier and more offputting than the giant swarm of zombie mutants.) ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 16:37 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 16:29
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Anyone remember how people reacted to the ending of Uncharted? We've seen it happen before. ImpAtom posted:On the other hand by the end of the trilogy we ended up with "Batman is fundamentally damaging both physically and mentally to the person being Batman and the happiest possible ending is not being Batman." Pretty much how things went in the comics. He ended up a downright paranoid, miserable old bat-dude who perpetually kept friends at arms length even when he was part of the Jusice League. Dominic White fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 16:33
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Chillmatic posted:Giant dude getting sawed in half = a-ok Only it's not some plate-wearing meathead/seasoned murderer/combat-hardened adventurer getting graphically skewered here, but a scared little girl, which I hope you'll agree is quite a different visual. Especially how they seem to be playing up the "break the cutie" angle for all it's worth. It's just an instinctive reaction as a human, and one I completely empathize with. Then again I find excessive violence off-putting in most games, so I'm perhaps to squeamish for modern AAA grit.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:37
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Dominic White posted:Anyone remember how people reacted to the ending of Uncharted? We've seen it happen before. If the ending to this game is Lara gunning her way through a horde of nazi zombies, Crystal Dynamics will have created the most brilliant satire imaginable.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:37
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Chillmatic posted:Sorry but he/she's right. It's almost like... There's a difference between cartoonish over the top violence, and realistic depictions of a human looking character dying in horrific ways! For what it's worth, the first time I stepped into a spike trap in Uncharted, I thought, "there's no way this game should have gotten away with a T rating." I'm not personally bothered by violence, but I think it's distressing how much gamers take increasingly graphic violence as a given.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:38
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Dominic White posted:Pretty much how things went in the comics. He ended up a downright paranoid, miserable old bat-dude who perpetually kept friends at arms length even when he was part of the Jusice League. No it isn't because Batman has literally been everything in the comics. Pretty recently he came back from a time travelling adventure and realized that being a miserable paranoid Bat-dude wasn't how he wanted to live and that he depended on his family and friends despite his best attempts to keep them at arms length. Then he created Batman Inc where he set out to fund and train heroes publically and revealed that Bruce Wayne was funding Batman the entire time. Going "this is what Batman IS" is a lot harder because Batman has been everything under the sun. Tomb Raider's a bit more static and defined and so a switch in tone feels more out of place, especially when marketed badly. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 16:43 on Feb 27, 2013 |
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Feb 27, 2013 16:38
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DrNutt posted:It's almost like... There's a difference between cartoonish over the top violence, and realistic depictions of a human looking character dying in horrific ways! I'm sorry. The responses to this statement will continue to be "  But Gears of War and Dead Space are ultraviolent and so was 1990s polygon ragdoll Tomb Raider so why are you so squeamish " because people cannot parse and are complete loving idiots.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:47
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DrNutt posted:It's almost like... There's a difference between cartoonish over the top violence, and realistic depictions of a human looking character dying in horrific ways! That's a ridiculous argument, though. Its like saying the Saw movies are less violent on VHS than blu-ray because they're in a lower resolution. We all know that isn't the case. The violence and brutality of an act isn't diminished by picture quality. The same applies to video games. Regardless of how many polygons Lara has, you're still seeing a virtual representation of a human being brutally killed/murdered.
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Feb 27, 2013 16:59
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