Is Lara Croft's Character Taken For Granted?
I’ve been a big fan of Lara Croft since Tomb Raider first hit the shelves in 1996 but more recently I’ve noticed an alarming number of articles hinting that Lara is part of the "problem" of the male demographic dominating gaming.
This Shortlist article I came across on the seat of a bus shortly after E3, took the biscuit for me. Of course, the writer did no research whatsoever, making out that Fallout 4 will be the first in the series to include female playable characters, but what really stands out is this sentence:
“there is a bigger ongoing issue – aside from the amply-chested Lara Croft (a character with obvious appeal to men)”
...basically, the assumption that Lara Croft was designed for men to look at is one of the biggest issues facing gaming today...So to put all this nonsense to bed I’m going to explain why, in my humble opinion, Lara Croft is the best female character in video game history and these people who are attempting to smear gaming should look elsewhere, because they’ve got this all wrong.
Lara’s life hasn’t been short of trauma, at age 9 she was in a plane crash with her mother and the pair were stranded in the Himalayas. While Lara was eventually rescued, Amelia, her mother disappeared through the portal in Tomb Raider Legend. Lara also lost her father when she was 15, a man obsessed with finding the truth about Amelia croft, which probably led to his death, though Lara still had immense admiration for him.
Despite all this trauma early in her life, Lara’s resolve and aspirations for becoming an archaeologist and adventurer never wavered. She found a mentor and possible father figure in Werner Von Croy, though Lara was perhaps misguided as Von Croy’s arrogance made him nothing like her father Richard Croft. When she was only 16 she accompanied him to retrieve an artefact from a dangerous ruin in Cambodia. The fact that Cambodia was where her Father disappeared suggests either she too was becoming obsessed with finding the remains of her father, or just how dedicated she was to continuing his work. The characters are so strong in the opening level of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, underneath Von Croy’s arrogance we can tell he feels threatened by a 16-year-old Lara and while Lara respects Von Croy her witty comebacks suggest she knows he is past his prime.
The very first scene from the first Tomb Raider game goes a long way to show the strength of Lara’s character when the womanising Larson tries his pick-up line. Not once has Lara showed any interest in men, nor has she ever needed help from one and what happens to Larson, who underestimates Lara time and time again? He gets a flying kick to the head and in the Crystal Dynamics remake, Tomb Raider Anniversary, when he insists on getting between Lara and the Scion artefact, she kills him outright. While she does show remorse for the first time killing a human being, this is perhaps the defining moment that sends Lara down a dark spiral culminating in Tomb Raider: Underworld when she seems willing to sacrifice anything to find the truth about her Mother.
Pierre DuPont also underestimates Lara, he has an opportunity to kill her but when Lara challenges him to be the first to the artefact he probably thinks “Of course I’ll beat this woman to the Scion...I’m a man aren’t I?” Well what happens to sexist man number 2? He gets brutally stomped to death by centaurs...
I feel like the transition of Lara’s character from Anniversary to Underworld plays out very naturally. Human enemies are introduced in Tomb Raider: Legend but they are mercenaries out to kill Lara, she is just defending herself. What really starts to change her is Amanda, Lara’s friend from college who blames her for being trapped in a ruin they explored together. When it is revealed that Amanda is partly responsible for Amelia Croft's disappearance Lara’s obsession with finding the truth about her mother comes full circle in Tomb Raider: Underworld when she cuts off communications with Zip and Allister, characters whose presence we were quite used to in Legend, become absent and they feared for Lara’s sanity so much that they believed she was responsible for blowing up her own mansion. Ultimately though, Lara always ends up doing the right thing such as when she destroyed the Scion (the artefact her father spent years looking for) rather than retrieving it to make sure the Atlantean army could not return, she is fundamentally a good person.
So how does the Tomb Raider re-boot shape up to the early Lara Croft? While many people, including game director Brian Horton, big up the new direction as a more human approach to the character, I have to disagree. Disregarding the fact that Lara can now break the laws of physics as shown in the awful Rise of the Tomb Raidertrailer, it always seemed to me that Lara’s intelligence and knowledge was a massive part of her character. While she may be intelligent still, the gameplay of the Tomb Raider reboot doesn’t present an opportunity to use this intelligence but instead focuses on gunning down hundreds of people. I can’t remember a single puzzle in Tomb Raider. They made Lara more of a blank slate and asked the player to project their feelings on to her. What would you do in her situation? I think the new games do well to shine a light on how great the character of Lara Croft was, with her witty comments and thoughtful mystery solving skills which actually came more to the forefront in the surprisingly under-rated Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness.
So we’ve talked about Lara’s character in relation to the story but what about the creators behind Lara Croft. Well...Lara’s creator Toby Gard, expressed a desire to counter stereotypical female characters and has spoken out against the overly sexualised marketing of the games published in places such as the Official Playstation Magazine. I assume that in his eyes, that isn’t what Lara is really about and he’d be right.
I have to ask, what is it about the in-game Lara that is “over sexualised” as many people try to put it? She has always worn clothes appropriate to the situation, she has no interest in men whatsoever, her general banter is more witty than suggestive. Is it because she has breasts? Are they even that big? I’ve never noticed...does this have any bearing on the character of Lara Croft at all? The answer is of course, no. and here I have to refer to another article: “What Lara Croft would look like with realistic proportions.” Emphasis on the word realistic.
The article features an image created by Bulimia.com as part of a "Video game characters with average body types" image set which edits images of video game characters to give them larger sized bodies. An argument can be made that the amount of thin female characters is unrealistic. But is increasing Lara Croft's weight actually something that would make her design more realistic?
For starters Lara is an incredibly athletic person, she has a giant assault course in her garden, also, the vast majority of girls I have met while not necessarily under-weight, are way closer to the picture on the left. So no, realistically, Lara would look nothing like the picture on the right and though I understand that this image was made in support of sufferers of bulimia...misrepresenting a “realistic” female body as one that is over-weight is just as stupid as the other way around.
In summary, Lara Croft is not a sex symbol, nor is she a male fantasy, she is a female power fantasy. Not only can she kick any guy's arse that crosses her path, she’s incredibly intelligent, speaks over a dozen different languages and is just downright cool! Any woman or man might fantasise about being her. Which other female characters do you think stand up to Lara's legacy? Let us know in the comments below!
(Disclosure: This article was originally created for Gamesnosh.com)
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