appledog:
yeah the tomb raider game looks creepy as hell, like, really problematic
part of me understands that this actually does look like a pretty competent game, gameplay looks great, it actually does look very scary and fun, but i think
the narrative, and the way they’re approaching it by like literally beating lara croft over and over and over is so so so creepy and wrong and messed up, like, no one would ever treat a male vg protagonist in this way. he’d never be curled up under a rock, terrified, he wouldn’t be screaming and crying, and he certainly wouldn’t be nearly raped. if there actually was a video game that treated a male protagonist like that i’d fucking applaud whoever did it. but men in video games are gruff and stoic and unafraid of anything, so watching them portray a woman like this is really just demoralizing.
BUT on the other hand, maybe the trailers are just focusing on this legitimately very terrifying stuff. in a way it makes lara croft a very sympathetic character. maybe too sympathetic? (in that it’s actually unnerving to be in her position) but perhaps the way they approached the narrative, maybe they were smart. maybe they will make it into a story about empowerment. maybe? i’m kind of hoping against hope here. i don’t really have a lot of faith in most game companies when it comes to writing women.
I HAD THE SAME PROBLEM WITH THIS HONESTLY
When the first article came out in GameInformer (dubious quality magazine anyway) the article revolving around the first ‘new’ TR was all about saying how oh my gosh, before, Lara was an untouchable ice queen and had big breasts and was totally emotionally unavailable and unidentifiable with but this game was about breaking her down and bringing her down to our level or something and it felt like, okay, so girls that are strong and independent and kick gratuitous amounts of ass suddenly need to be brought down a peg? It was entirely gross, and I was just signing off on that presentation of the game. There’s no need for anything like that.
Why is there suddenly a need for strong female characters to be somehow weak and vulnerable? Lara’s been a role model to a lot of people over the years, and now the industry thinks some sort of core weakness has to be retconned into her past to make her an acceptable character. What are they doing? It’s disgusting! There’s a critical disconnect and they’re actually going backwards in terms of developing good female characters. This is like The Other M for Samus, a giant leap backwards.
