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The Rise of a Violent Lara Croft

The Rise of a Violent Lara Croft

The Lara Croft that we grew up with is dead. I’m not just being dramatic, she’s actually dead. When the Tomb Raider series started going south, its devs and writers decided to kill Lara off in 1999’s The Last Revelation . Games since then have been working around the Tomb Raider canon in attempts to revive Lara Croft in a way that is relevant and exciting to players, but none have done so well as the latest prequel that came out in 2013. The imaginatively named Tomb Raider was unique not only because of its bold reimagining of a younger, more desperate Lara, but because of its violence and mature tone.

Now the anticipated sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider , is set to release first for the Xbox One on November 10, and it too will bear an M rating. Press and gamers present at this year’s E3 came away from the demo talking about how intense and frightening the game could be; how mercilessly it would punish you for making a mistake. Apparently the death sequences can be pretty gruesome and one player recalled falling and being impaled. He spoke quickly and wide-eyed as if it had happened to somebody he knew.

Is Crystal Dynamics indulging a little too freely in its creative control here? The Tomb Raider franchise never focused heavily on violence before it took the reins. Instead, the games have always been about exploration, platforming and puzzle-solving. Sure there were skirmishes here and there, but even then the gunplay took a back seat to acrobatic dodging and flipping. Now we see a young Lara Croft, covered in dirt and blood, cutting open animals for survival and shooting her foes through the neck with arrows. Is all of this really necessary? Of course, the answer is yes.

This new direction is exactly what Tomb Raider needed; it has people talking. The nature of the game changed so abruptly that fans were caught off-guard, and that’s the perfect headspace to occupy as we attempt to empathize with the younger, budding bad-ass that we see struggling for survival. Gone are the days of the wealthy and sophisticated tomb looter. The new Lara is cornered, vulnerable, and isolated in an environment that is just as likely to kill her as any living enemy. There is a sense of desperation and caution here that is compelling. That’s what makes the Dark Souls games so terrifying: there is nowhere completely safe. If you do not pay the utmost attention to your surroundings, they will end you. While that may be a turn off for fans of the older games, no doubt the changes will breathe fresh life into a franchise that was stale and withering.

The Rise of a Violent Lara Croft

Die-hard fans will always resist change, even if it’s innovative and exciting. The fact is that the old Tomb Raider formula simply doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. Shimmying across cliff edges and jumping across gaps doesn’t excite us like it used to. Once you’ve experienced the adrenal thrill of shoving your assassin’s blade into the throat of a high profile pontiff, auto-locking onto a target and pressing R seems a chore. Once you’ve navigated the white-knuckle misadventures of Nathan Drake, anything less cinematic is likely to bore you. If Lara Croft is to stand the test of time she must wade into this racket of hyper violence and expertly choreographed quick time sequences and somehow make our hearts pound in a way that is memorable. Come November I’m confident that we’ll see her rise to that challenge.

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