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Chillmatic
Jul 25, 2003

always seeking to survive and flourish

Palpek posted:

I don't know if you have noticed but many voices in this discussion are saying exactly that but using humor and exaggeration instead of just throwing hands into the air. Like my posts on this page for example.

Oh don't get all butthurt. If you're not one of the people i'm talking about then just don't worry about it. My point was that it's incredible that there's this much discussion on it at all, not that literally every single person here is doing it.

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ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Chillmatic posted:

Oh don't get all butthurt. If you're not one of the people i'm talking about then just don't worry about it. My point was that it's incredible that there's this much discussion on it at all, not that literally every single person here is doing it.

Because, shockingly, other games are either less focused on injuries or more willing to actually acknowledge them.

Look at the Batman games. Batman sure as gently caress is still Batman by the end of the game but he completely looks like he's been through a day (or days) of hell. He's got stubble, bruises and cuts, his cape is torn to shreds, and in general they emphasize "wow, poo poo, this guy got wrecked." In fact in the original Arkham Asylum, every permanent change to Batman's model matches to a cutscene event. It gives the violence a sense of permanence, even if it's mostly artificial and illusion because the actual gameplay doesn't match up.

To use another example: Snake Eater makes every serious injury you get involve the use of the medical screen. This wasn't a great idea from a gameplay perspective but it emphasized "Jesus, Snake is getting the poo poo kicked out of him." (Or if you were particularly good, that he wasn't, and Volgin comments on this too.) When you lose an eye in a cutscene it has a semi-permanent effect on the game when shooting in first person mode.

I'm not pointing at Kratos or Dante because they're explicitly magical mythological figures. Nor am I pointing at Nathan Drake because there is nowhere near as much emphasis on him getting hurt in unavoidable ways. Batman and Snake are the closest comparisons tone-wise to what it feels like Tomb Raider is going for which is why I'm using them as a comparison.

It isn't about the fact that Lara is a female character, it's about the fact that Tomb Raider, in comparison to other games, has a much larger focus on the injuries the protagonist takes without acknowledging those injuries. If we were only talking about the gameplay then I wouldn't even notice it, but after the ninth unavoidable "Lara falls off a cliff and slams into the ground" cutscene it starts to go from impressive to a bad comedy sketch. It's be just as weird if they did it with a male character.

Frankly I'm happy they didn't make Lara a mewling waif who cries over every enemy she kills because that would have sucked. I thought the reboot overall did a good job with her. That doesn't mean that they didn't get excessive with just how much she survives without repercussions or acknowledgement. It feels silly after a while not because of her gender but because the game puts emphasis on it.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Mar 7, 2013

4 Day Weekend
Jan 16, 2009
I think it's more that they treat Lara's first kill as a big deal but then the rest don't really carry any weight. Are there any others games that have a similar set up?

All other games where you kill a bunch of people are still bad, but the characters never bat an eye towards it at all for the most part.

Chillmatic
Jul 25, 2003

always seeking to survive and flourish

4 Day Weekend posted:

I think it's more that they treat Lara's first kill as a big deal but then the rest don't really carry any weight. Are there any others games that have a similar set up?

Yeah. Far Cry 3 had literally the exact same angle, and the exact same outcome. (one kill with shaky hands and omg omg wtf and then 5 minutes later literally Rambo.)

quote:

It isn't about the fact that Lara is a female character, it's about the fact that Tomb Raider, in comparison to other games, has a much larger focus on the injuries the protagonist takes without acknowledging those injuries. If we were only talking about the gameplay then I wouldn't even notice it, but after the ninth unavoidable "Lara falls off a cliff and slams into the ground" cutscene it starts to go from impressive to a bad comedy sketch.

Dude I could name five games easily off the top of my head that have this exact same theme, and nobody went to any lengths like this to debate this kind of crap.

I don't at all disagree that they overdid it with the "Lara falling down" bit, but this hyper focus on her injuries damaging or not damaging her pretty face/body is just kinda disturbing when nobody thinks to even notice the kind of damage that male characters take.

quote:

That doesn't mean that they didn't get excessive with just how much she survives without repercussions.

I hear what you're saying and I'm not implying that the execution of the game was perfect; not by a long shot. I'm just amazed at the fixation on stuff that i've seriously never read about in any other video game in memory.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Chillmatic posted:

Yeah. Far Cry 3 had literally the exact same angle, and the exact same outcome. (one kill with shaky hands and omg omg wtf and then 5 minutes later literally Rambo.)


Dude I could name five games easily off the top of my head that have this exact same theme, and nobody went to any lengths like this to debate this kind of crap.

I don't at all disagree that they overdid it with the "Lara falling down" bit, but this hyper focus on her injuries damaging or not damaging her pretty face/body is just kinda disturbing when nobody thinks to even notice the kind of damage that male characters take.


I hear what you're saying and I'm not implying that the execution of the game was perfect; not by a long shot. I'm just amazed at the fixation on stuff that i've seriously never read about in any other video game in memory.

Please do. For example with Far Cry 3, it got enough controversy that the writer was literally interviewed about it and tried to use the argument that it was a game-length satire. (It was also a ridiculous interview but that's for another topic.)

I don't think you're entirely wrong. The :biotruths: stuff above about Lara being too weak (troll or not) is probably part of the bullshit, but I also don't think it's true that people ignore these sorts of things in other games. How often does Nathan Drake being a kind of crazy sociopath get brought up, for example? I haven't seen an Uncharted discussion where it doesn't eventually come up, simply because there's such a wide gap between Drake as presented and Drake how he acts.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Mar 7, 2013

Evil Crouton
Oct 4, 2004

The Amish scare me

SurrealityCheck posted:

As far as game mechanics go, I think they might have been better off hiding the in combat xp messages and made the "Good job headshot" feedback something less explicit. Maybe even divorced the xp entirely from how you choose to solve combat. I would have happily run through the game shotgunning all the dudes, but the moment I realised that stealth killing everybody, or headshotting them, was way better xp I was kind of stuck doing that.

Also exclamation mark messages like "KILLER HEADSHOT! +20xp" didn't really fit the nominally grim tone.

I liked the feedback in general. But I do agree that their choice of "killer" to indicate the bonus xp granted by that one skill purchase was a poor choice that resulted in a few popups that would have been more at home in Bulletstorm than Tomb Raider.

4 Day Weekend
Jan 16, 2009
Well I never played far cry 3, but doesn't that sound dumb?

Which other games are there?

Thievery
Jul 15, 2008

What happens in 3rd Street stays in 3rd Street.

I don't quite understand if people are saying she doesn't have model changes from damage? She has a tonne. By the end of the game she is covered in scars.

This isn't trying to fuel anything I just didn't realise that this was apparently a complaint or something?

Chillmatic
Jul 25, 2003

always seeking to survive and flourish

ImpAtom posted:

Please do.

Max Payne 3

Far Cry 3

Silent Hill 2

Dead Space

Alan Wake



All of those (with the exception of MP3) are everyman type stories where the protagonist goes through (sometimes literal) hell. They all handle this with varying degrees of success, but absolutely nobody that I ever talked to went on at length about how this did or did not affect their good looks or the way they walked or winced or groaned or shouted or anything.

quote:

For example with Far Cry 3, it got enough controversy that the writer was literally interviewed about it and tried to use the argument that it was a game-length satire.

That's because too many white guys are too stupid and touchy to understand what satire is (however admittedly clumsy the end result ended up being.) The guy had a good point to make and parts of it definitely peeked through.

Chillmatic fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Mar 7, 2013

Crappy Jack
Nov 21, 2005

We got some serious shit to discuss.

Chillmatic posted:

I hear what you're saying and I'm not implying that the execution of the game was perfect; not by a long shot. I'm just amazed at the fixation on stuff that i've seriously never read about in any other video game in memory.

In fairness, that very same fixation was a major part of the marketing. Like, all of the marketing. Up until the game's release, people basically didn't know anything about the game aside from the fact that Lara was gonna get the crap beat out of her and was eventually gonna rise to become a badass. That was how the game was sold, in the same way that Uncharted was sold as "Play an action movie". People literally didn't know if the game had tombs in it, but they certainly knew that Lara was going to get beat up, and that's most definitely colored peoples' perception of the game.

Crappy Jack fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Mar 7, 2013

4 Day Weekend
Jan 16, 2009
Do you kill other people in silent hill or Alan wake? I know you don't in dead space.

Chillmatic
Jul 25, 2003

always seeking to survive and flourish

4 Day Weekend posted:

Do you kill other people in silent hill or Alan wake? I know you don't in dead space.

Yes. In Silent Hill 2 he kills someone he's been talking to for most of the game. He freaks out for like 10 seconds and then welp it's back to business as usual. (there's also someone else he kills or has killed but that's a huge spoiler for a 15 year old game :v: )

In Alan Wake they're possessed or something but they are actual townspeople. You also have to kill a few of them that you've met before they turned possessed.



Crappy Jack posted:

In fairness, that very same fixation was a major part of the marketing. Like, all of the marketing. Up until the game's release, people basically didn't know anything about the game aside from the fact that Lara was gonna get the crap beat out of her and was eventually gonna rise to become a badass. That was how the game was sold, in the same way that Uncharted was sold as "Play an action movie".

I agree this was a huge problem, and hopefully not a mistake they or anyone else will make again. I'd just hope that people could form their own impressions after playing the material and not just continuing to believe everything to saw in an advertisements.

quote:

I just can't fathom how like, a bit of dissonance between cut scenes and gameplay can actually affect somebody's enjoyment so much. It makes me wonder how any of you guys have ever enjoyed a video game before, this kind of crap happens constantly.

I don't care about what any marketing guys said about this game before it came out, or whatever they hyped it to be. In my eyes, that stuff has nothing to do with the actual game.

That confusion you're feeling? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. People are flipping out for literally one reason. Lara is a young girl and her doing heroic things and having bad stuff happen to her, as happens to all heroes, doesn't compute in their brains.

quote:

Also beating up a young woman will have a far different impact than beating up a young man, for various social and other reasons. The death scenes are too much and disturbing and slightly voyeuristic, I don't see how you could argue against that.

I argue against it because as someone who plays videogames, I've already long ago accepted that I was going to be exposed to violent stuff. The fact that it's happening to the hero that I'm playing as upsets me far more than the fact that that hero is a woman. Dudes getting chainsawed in half in Gears doesn't upset you but this stuff does?

I think the disconnect here is that I'm a writer and in my own fiction women are confident capable badasses who get poo poo done on their own terms in their own way. I don't see them as helpless or needy or in need of protection or any of that poo poo, and fyi most women find it really offensive for you to see them that way.

Chillmatic fucked around with this message at 16:51 on Mar 7, 2013

Spite
Jul 27, 2001

Small chance of that...

Chillmatic posted:

I'd be willing to bet a large sum of money that you will never, ever, be able to find a thread full of so many people arguing this kind of stuff about a video game with a male protagonist.

"Why don't her injuries show up more? Why can she take bullets and fall and stuff and not limp around like an injured deer?"

"Why is she such a sociopath for killing guys who are trying to murder her? Why doesn't she just curl up into a ball and cry instead?"

"Why are the death scenes so violent?"

"Why does she manage to stay so clean and pretty?"

gently caress's sake, guys. Find me five pages of this kind of bullshit in a discussion about Max Payne or Batman or God Of war or Dead Space or whatever the gently caress else. Seriously, give it a try. Substitute "her" and "she" above for Kratos or Marcus or Halo dude guy.

If you ever find yourself wondering why so few women play not-casual videogames, or why women have had a hard time finding good heroic role models, this thread is a fuckin' perfect example of the obstacles still in place.

People have made the exact same point we are making about Lara Croft in Tomb Raider about Nathan Drake in Uncharted. It's EXACTLY the same issue, down to the villain saying "But how many people have you killed as well?!!! mwhahahahaha!" at the end. Likable determined protagonist turns into murder machine once the player has control. It's not that she should give up and die at all, it's the pure numbers of enemies and gameplay tailored around HEADSHOT +15XP.

They talked big about their narrative and marrying it to their gameplay and they failed to do so. To make it worse, they failed to do so in precisely the way the game they are completely copying also failed. It's sloppy and disjointed. It's a game trying to show the horror of survival but treats human life as if it's just a loot bag after the first kill, and that kind of ruins their plot.

Also beating up a young woman will have a far different impact than beating up a young man, for various social and other reasons. The death scenes are too much and disturbing and slightly voyeuristic, I don't see how you could argue against that.


Personally, it's not the injuries or anything, it's the millions of enemies which cheapens it to me. That's all I mean myself, I like that she's a badass. I just think you can show someone is badass without throwing constant waves of 25 dudes for her to mow down like it's nothing.
VVVVVVVVVVVVV

Spite fucked around with this message at 16:50 on Mar 7, 2013

Caesar Saladin
Aug 15, 2004

I can't wrap my mind around why Lara getting realistically beaten up is at all connected to enjoyment of a shooty-jumpy escapism fantasy game. I don't know what type of deep psychological horror you are possibly expecting from a reboot of a boob-themed franchise, but I find this game to be pretty drat fun and polished. Is it possible to just react to the game on its own terms, in which the violence against Lara kinda facilitates the stakes?

The gameplay doesn't exactly match up to her injuries, but would you rather be limping around like a turd the entire game? That sounds fundamentally unfun.

I just can't fathom how like, a bit of dissonance between cut scenes and gameplay can actually affect somebody's enjoyment so much. It makes me wonder how any of you guys have ever enjoyed a video game before, this kind of crap happens constantly.

I don't care about what any marketing guys said about this game before it came out, or whatever they hyped it to be. In my eyes, that stuff has nothing to do with the actual game.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Chillmatic posted:

Max Payne 3

Far Cry 3

Silent Hill 2

Dead Space

Alan Wake



All of those (with the exception of MP3) are everyman type stories where the protagonist goes through (sometimes literal) hell. They all handle this with varying degrees of success, but absolutely nobody that I ever talked to went on at length about how this didn't seem to affect their good looks or the way they walked or winced or groaned or shouted or anything.

The entire point of Silent Hill 2 is that James is a literal broken person. People don't bring it up because the entire point of the story is that he was psychologically damaged and there is a very real and significant impact to every literal human being he kills. The damage James takes is semi-metaphorical, to the point where taking damage makes you more likely to get an ending where you commit suicide. People don't complain because it gave them exactly what they wanted/expected.

Likewise Dead Space is entirely about the psychological trauma Isaac suffered. It doesn't focus on the physical damage because the game doesn't really. (It gives him a suit of power armor instead and damages his power armor to show extreme physical injury.) DS2 is even more focused on this. DS3 has a boatload of complaints but those are largely because it was a rushed game with a stupid story. It doesn't get brought up because it has consequences.

I haven't played MP3 so I can't discuss that, sorry.

Far Cry 3 is a weird area to discuss because it's theoretically supposed to be satire and so it intentionally not focusing on the disgusting aspects is kind of the point. Even despite that it got enough controversy over various aspects that the interview was needed.

Alan Wake's, again, more about the psychological aspects. (I also didn't think it was a very well written game and would gladly go on about its problems but YMMV.)

The problem isn't that Lara is being put through hell. It is that there is an in-game emphasis on "Lara is being put through hell" without consequences of any kind. If they framed the game like "Here is an adventure" instead of "A survivor is born" then you'd probably only get the lovely rear end :biotruths: people discussing the issue and gently caress them.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 16:57 on Mar 7, 2013

Adraeus
Jan 25, 2008

by Y Kant Ozma Post

Thievery posted:

One thing I will say though is after playing through the whole game she did have a tendency to fall off/through everything, but I started finding it hilarious after the first couple of times. Running gag!

Doesn't Indiana Jones fall off/through everything, too?

Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


ImpAtom posted:

Far Cry 3 is a weird area to discuss because it's theoretically supposed to be satire and so it intentionally not focusing on the disgusting aspects is kind of the point. Even despite that it got enough controversy over various aspects that the interview was needed.
At no point Far Cry 3 feels like satire, not a single point. From voice acting to story and cutscenes it's all serious business actually drifting into an unsuccessful attempt at Heart of Darkness. An interview with the writer doesn't change that at all.

4 Day Weekend
Jan 16, 2009
No ones really making a big deal out of it, just people arguing whether or not there actually is a dissonance between the gameplay and the cutscenes.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

Palpek posted:

At no point Far Cry 3 feels like satire, not a single point. From voice acting to story and cutscenes it's all serious business actually drifting into an unsuccessful attempt at Heart of Darkness. An interview with the writer doesn't change that at all.

Well, yes, that's kind of my point. Far Cry 3 does this and it got criticized for it. The interview with the writer was trying to say that the disconnect and the disgusting aspects were intentional, but it certainly got discussed.

I also don't think it's a "this ruins the game" sort of thing. v:shobon:v Tomb Raider is one of the best reboots I've ever played and I think the new Lara is a fun character after the first two hours of the game.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Mar 7, 2013

Nyagato
Apr 6, 2009
This is probably not how the developers meant it to be understood but I kind of took it as when Lara kills the deer the first time that she does this more ofscreen. The same with treating injuries and stuff like that.
There are a few scenes where she cleans and bandages herself at camps but the action isn't really shown.

I don't know if it's ok to do stuff ofscreen in games like it is in movies or books but that's how I saw it anyway. I don't really need to see abselutely everything Lara does.

ghostwritingduck
Aug 26, 2004

"I hope you like waking up at 6 a.m. and having your favorite things destroyed. P.S. Forgive me because I'm cuter than that $50 wire I just ate."

blackguy32 posted:

I guess the problem I have with this is that the new trilogy did have the technology, and there is nothing in there nearly as gruesome as what is shown in that gif. Even if it was, it usually occurred off screen such as if you failed a QTE

This looks like it has captured the tone of the first PS game that I liked. As gruesome as that death is, it wouldn't be nearly as bad if it wasn't on an endless loop.

Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


From other titles doing the impactful first kill thing and then going Rambo I can also remember the 1st Assassin's Creed and Darkness 2 1. I'd actually call it a recurring theme in games.

Palpek fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Mar 7, 2013

4 Day Weekend
Jan 16, 2009
Pretty sure Altair had killed s bunch of people before the game even started.

Also I remember trying to play assassins creed 2 while killing as few people as possible and man that was annoying.

Palpek
Dec 27, 2008


Do you feel it, Zach?
My coffee warned me about it.


4 Day Weekend posted:

Pretty sure Altair had killed s bunch of people before the game even started.
You're not Altair though are you? You're only controlling him via Desmond and he does commit the very first kill even though using Altair's body. It's a point of the plot and a fitting example.

4 Day Weekend
Jan 16, 2009
I'd say that's arguably Desmond just remembering it rather than actually doing it. Besides the game starts with you defending against a bunch of enemies and it doesn't treat the first kill with any weight and neither does Altair or Desmond. Its just a generic fight.

bloodysabbath
May 1, 2004

OH NO!

Fonzarelli posted:

I can't wrap my mind around why Lara getting realistically beaten up is at all connected to enjoyment of a shooty-jumpy escapism fantasy game. I don't know what type of deep psychological horror you are possibly expecting from a reboot of a boob-themed franchise, but I find this game to be pretty drat fun and polished. Is it possible to just react to the game on its own terms, in which the violence against Lara kinda facilitates the stakes?

The gameplay doesn't exactly match up to her injuries, but would you rather be limping around like a turd the entire game? That sounds fundamentally unfun.

I just can't fathom how like, a bit of dissonance between cut scenes and gameplay can actually affect somebody's enjoyment so much. It makes me wonder how any of you guys have ever enjoyed a video game before, this kind of crap happens constantly.

I don't care about what any marketing guys said about this game before it came out, or whatever they hyped it to be. In my eyes, that stuff has nothing to do with the actual game.

Exactly this. Immediately following the opening cutscene, the entire game is Lara in a survival situation. When you've got a deathtrap island full of guys with guns shooting at you, you don't get to have a long drawn out internal battle about what it means to take a life. It's adapt or die. Tomb Raider isn't a multiseason TV show where writers can slowly build or alter characteristics in a protagonist over X episodes. This is a bleak action movie, and you have to establish setting, as well as characters and the relation between them as fast as you can.

It's effective storytelling, and another thing that this game has on its side more than most games is that story, dialogue, characters, and setting all do a good job of getting the audience to believe that a silver-spoon trust fund girl with no real life experience can become a hardened badass inside the space of a few in-game hours.

(Also, for all the complaints that Tomb Raider is too shoot-heavy now: The shooting picks up later in the game, but the ratio is way more focused on platforming, collecting, etc. Shooting's role is primarily that of a very entertaining palette cleanser.)

Maybe it's because this game is just so good, but it seems like Tomb Raider is getting picked apart for things most other games, movies, etc. get a pass for.

Sober
Nov 19, 2011

First touch: Life.
Second touch: Dead again. Forever.
Anyone have maps of the Mountain village with all the collectables and stuff marked on it? For some reason the waypoints and the treasure maps bugged out and I'm not particularly up for pixel hunting GPS caches (11/15) or finding that last document or anything. I don't really understand why the waypoint function only works on collectables and why I can't just cancel it without having to hover over it to remove it first.

halwain
May 31, 2011
I would have liked the game more if she wasnt carrying around so many weapons and would have used her environment to actually kill things.
One of the best parts was when lara just had her bow and nothing else, i would have liked if there was a bigger focus on avoiding enemies than just killing them head on.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

bloodysabbath posted:

Exactly this. Immediately following the opening cutscene, the entire game is Lara in a survival situation. When you've got a deathtrap island full of guys with guns shooting at you, you don't get to have a long drawn out internal battle about what it means to take a life. It's adapt or die. Tomb Raider isn't a multiseason TV show where writers can slowly build or alter characteristics in a protagonist over X episodes. This is a bleak action movie, and you have to establish setting, as well as characters and the relation between them as fast as you can.

It's effective storytelling, and another thing that this game has on its side more than most games is that story, dialogue, characters, and setting all do a good job of getting the audience to believe that a silver-spoon trust fund girl with no real life experience can become a hardened badass inside the space of a few in-game hours.

(Also, for all the complaints that Tomb Raider is too shoot-heavy now: The shooting picks up later in the game, but the ratio is way more focused on platforming, collecting, etc. Shooting's role is primarily that of a very entertaining palette cleanser.)

Maybe it's because this game is just so good, but it seems like Tomb Raider is getting picked apart for things most other games, movies, etc. get a pass for.

lara isn't a silver-spoon fed trust girl though. She's established as having done quite a bit before this game, just not actively killing. I actually liked that because it was more believable that she had already done a bunch of stuff, just not crazy stuff.

I don't get what you mean about the platform/shooting balance though. There is a ton of shooting. (Well, bow-ing.) I think it's fun shooting, especially when you can stealth it, but there's a lot of it. In comparison puzzles are almost nonexistent or are insanely simplistic. It's certainly more shooter-themed than anything, but not in a bad way.

Spite
Jul 27, 2001

Small chance of that...

bloodysabbath posted:

It's effective storytelling, and another thing that this game has on its side more than most games is that story, dialogue, characters, and setting all do a good job of getting the audience to believe that a silver-spoon trust fund girl with no real life experience can become a hardened badass inside the space of a few in-game hours.

I disagree, she has a brief hesitation about the first dude, and then it's straight to mowing down all the baddies until the game ends. There is no development there: once you control her the enemies really aren't much of a threat.

The plot is trying to be a bleak survival movie, like you say. The gameplay is not a bleak survival movie/game. It's an easy shooter that throws a poo poo ton of enemies at you all the time. Who you kill like it's nothing, because they are just obstacles or XP bags in the gameplay. Human life is cheap - but that makes for a bad bleak atmosphere, because then there's no danger.

I think they mistook brutal death animations for actually making it tough on the player to survive. Like I said earlier, it would have been more effective to have far fewer enemies and make each one extremely dangerous. I don't think that type of game would sell enough copies, but it would hit their tone much better.

And Roth has been training Lara her whole life, so she's used to some survival stuff. Sam is the trust fund girl; she's the one funding the trip, after all.

SurrealityCheck
Sep 15, 2012

ImpAtom posted:

lara isn't a silver-spoon fed trust girl though. She's established as having done quite a bit before this game, just not actively killing. I actually liked that because it was more believable that she had already done a bunch of stuff, just not crazy stuff.


Yeah, they were relatively quiet about her background. I wonder if they are pulling her away from the Lara Croft, aristo model. But Roth certainly seems like a prime candidate for "EARTH NORTHERN GAMEKEEPER GUARDIAN".

Adraeus
Jan 25, 2008

by Y Kant Ozma Post

Spite posted:

And Roth has been training Lara her whole life, so she's used to some survival stuff. Sam is the trust fund girl; she's the one funding the trip, after all.

Actually, they all put money into the expedition.

Geomancing
Jan 8, 2004

I am not an egghead. I am well-read.
According to the comic that came with the game, the blonde archaeologist guy who was nominally in charge of the thing put the last of his personal money into it, Lara broke into her locked-away inheritance from her father to help, and they got Sam's rather loan-sharky father to put up the rest of it in exchange for 60% of the profit of sales of any artifacts found.

Lara's father left her an undisclosed amount of funds when he died, but she had it locked away so she had to 'make it on her own'.

bloodysabbath
May 1, 2004

OH NO!

Geomancing posted:

Lara's father left her an undisclosed amount of funds when he died, but she had it locked away so she had to 'make it on her own'.

Sorry, even if Roth had been giving her some kind of training since she was little, there is *nothing* more trust-fundy than this.

Shirkelton
Apr 6, 2009

I'm not loyal to anything, General... except the dream.
Regardless, she's explicitly still not a 'silver-spoon fed' trust fund sort like you said.

Qwo
Sep 27, 2011
It's a shame that this game has poor writing, considering the generally excellent trappings around it (including the gameplay and premise). I don't pay a lot of attention to stories in games, so I'm usually noncaring about the whole idea that no video game has ever truly been well-written, but the narrative failures of Tomb Raider really just drive that point home and make me wish it wasn't so.

Admittedly I'm only ~10% into the game, maybe it'll improve, but I'd bet hard money that it won't.

Megasabin
Sep 9, 2003

I get half!!

Corin Tucker's Stalker posted:

To be fair, a lot of people (myself included) are tired of traditional video games passing themselves off as something more. Games like Tomb Raider and Max Payne don't actually earn the story they're going for because they don't put in the work to make the gameplay match the tone. If people are willing to look past that then that's cool, but the split between the fiction and the reality of the player's actions is noticeable.

This is complete nonsense. The gameplay matches the tone just fine which people have pointed out several times. She is not the confused helpless protagonist, she is portrayed as in the first hour. She is not a normal person, she adapts to a hostile situation quickly, and this is supported through the dialogue and cut scenes. Other than people just stating "she's a naive innocent girl (which the game points out shes not), why does she have no issues killing people", I have yet to see anyone make a convincing argument.

If you are referring to gameplay not matching up with how hurt she gets, which is what DW was talking about in his post you quoted, that ridiculous. This is essentially Action-Movie The Game, just like Uncharted was. Action movie stars taking gigantic beatings, and how often do they actually show pain? Maybe in a scene or two for a couple of seconds, but then they shrug it off, and keep going. On top of that they have an entire other aspect to balance around ing games... the actual gameplay. I mean honestly what are you looking for? Do you want Laura to crawl on the floor in pain for minutes at a time, or maybe sporadically the character should pass out from pain, and the player should be forced to stare at the sky for 5 minutes. You have to keep the gameplay fun, and having Laura feeling the real effects of her injuries would hamper gameplay horribly.

Corin Tucker's Stalker
May 27, 2001


One bullet. One gun. Six Chambers. These are my friends.

Megasabin posted:

This is complete nonsense. The gameplay matches the tone just fine which people have pointed out several times. She is not the confused helpless protagonist, she is portrayed as in the first hour. She is not a normal person, she adapts to a hostile situation quickly, and this is supported through the dialogue and cut scenes. Other than people just stating "she's a naive innocent girl (which the game points out shes not), why does she have no issues killing people", I have yet to see anyone make a convincing argument.

I'm talking about the tone that this video game story (and many others) tries to pull off in a broad sense. A convincing, meaningful story arc with a relateable character will never be accomplished when the body count is in the dozens. This is true of action movies as well as video games.

I'd be fine with this game actually just being a bonkers action-fest. It straddles a line that many others have, though, where it wants you to really be impressed by its character work while simultaneously just being an action game.

ImpAtom
May 24, 2007

I really think the first two hours or so of the game really hurt it because they feel like a completely different game. Even little things (the cultist running after you shouting about how he wants to help you doesn't make any sense in the context of the rest of the game) and even the design feels like something divorced from the final product. You fight animals (which you don't really do after those first two hours), there's hints at a hunting mechanic which ends up being meaningless, stuff like that. If they revealed they kept the first two hours from an older version of the game before they reworked it I would completely believe it.

Once you get over that hump the game settles into a fairly consistent tone. (Which, to be fair, is not at all what the advertising hints but we've gone well over the advertising being a pile of butt.) I don't think it's really trying to have a meaningful story once Lara gets into full swing.

Edit: I am reminded. Did anything actually come of the gollums in the caves? They just kinda... vanished.

ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:29 on Mar 7, 2013

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Fluffdaddy
Jan 3, 2009

Three dudes run in, you murder them. Then, 6 more dudes come in, but this time two are melee, 1 is a fire tossing dude, 1 has a machine gun and the other two have arrows. You kill them. Then a QTE starts and you fall down. After that, you get a scene with Lara pumping her self up or grimacing in pain, then you sit down at a fire and upgrade your poo poo.

This is literally the entire game.

It is fun, but it could have been greater with fewer enemy corridors and more cool climbing sequences and puzzles.

The best scene in the game is when Lara makes that harrowing climb to the top of the radio tower near the end of the first act. The sequence is super uncomfortable, in an exciting yet harrowing way. Then you get to the top and you feel triumph because you conquered that scary rear end climb.


In a vacuum, this scene is outstanding. Unfortunately it is surrounded by unimaginative shooty bits.

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