Thoughts On Rebooting Tomb Raider

THOUGHTS ON REBOOTING TOMB RAIDER

INTRODUCTION

Question: What do Star Trek, James Bond and Batman have in common? The answer is that they are all franchises that received a reboot in the 21st century. And to that list we might also add the videogame franchise of Tomb Raider.

NEW LARA

In 2013 Square Enix published a game developed by Crystal Dynamics that was the tenth title in the Tomb Raider franchise. Tomb Raider number ten was not, however, a sequel but rather, as mentioned before, a complete reboot. As such, its titular character is not quite the Lara that thrilled PlayStation one owners back in the 90s, becoming a cover star on 'The Face' and promoter of brands like Lucozade. No, this is a younger, less well-endowed Lara who has never fired a gun at another person in her life, let alone performed her iconic double-pistol volley. In playing this game, the player is treated to an origin story that explains how this young girl became the all-action character in whose company videogamers have collectively spent some 340 billon hours.

THE SETTING

This journey begins on a ship, the Endurance, which is taking a young archeology graduate called Lara on a journey to find the lost kingdom of Yamatai. Travelling with her is Samantha Nishumura, the daughter of a family who are descendants of the ancient Yamatai people and who are funding the exhibition; Dr James Whitman, a celebrity archaeologist; Conrad Roth, a former Royal marine who is friend and mentor to Lara; Joslyn Reyes, who is a somewhat sceptical mechanic; Jonah Maiava, a fisherman who is open-minded with regard to spiritual matters; a bespectacled electronics expert named Alex Weiss, and, lastly, the helmsman of the Endurance, who is a tough old Glaswegian named Angus 'Grim' Grimaldi.

Following a hunch of Lara's (and going against the wishes of Dr. Whitman) the ship and its crew venture into the notorious 'Dragon's Triangle', east of Japan. Once inside this Triangle, a terrible storm overcomes the vessel, leaving the seven crew members stranded on an isolated island. As for Lara, she finds herself isolated from the rest of the crew and, following an encounter with a savage stranger, regains her consciousness to find herself inside a cave, tied up and suspended upside down from a length of rope. It is from here that the game proper begins.

As the player takes control of the Lara character, they discover what I think is one of this game's best features, which is the very positive female lead role. As I said before, this is not quite the Lara Croft of the 90s but rather a younger version, much less experienced but with the potential to become that woman should she find herself in a situation that brings out those qualities. And this remote island is just the kind of place to forge her survival and tomb-raiding skills. The exposition establishes that, with the guidance of Roth, Lara has sufficient survival training to take on the dangers of this island. With the player's help, Lara bravely scales the dizzying heights of the island's cliffs, makes her way gingerly across trees that have conveniently fallen across ravines, and figures out solutions to problems. Throughout these trials, Lara maintains a positive 'can do' attitude, psyching herself up for some life-threatening feat by telling herself "you can do this!".

THE STRONG ANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE

Why are videogames so popular? I believe that one reason is they present us with environments that reflect the strong anthropic principle. For those that do not know, there are two versions of the anthropic principle. The 'Weak Anthropic Principle' claims that, since we could not survive in an environment that is hostile to our kind of life, we should not be surprised to look around us and see a world that is hospitable; just the right distance from the Sun to give it liquid water, with an atmosphere we can breathe and with a magnetic field that shields us from the sun's lethal rays. The Weak Anthropic Principle implies that there are many, many worlds in the universe and, since we cannot survive on an inhospitable world, obviously we look around us and find our surroundings are not lethal to our kind of life.

The Strong Anthropic Principle goes a step further and claims we find ourselves in such a friendly habitat because something deliberately designed it that way. Now, when it comes to the real universe the question of whether there was some kind of Creator who either designed it all or set off some evolutionary process that resulted in us is open to question. But when it comes to videogame environments we know for sure that they do have a design team behind them. I think this is what is appealing about videogames: They present us with environments that provide challenging but not impossible tasks. Tomb Raider is a fine example of this. The game hints that Lara needs to find a way to get to some distant location, and you know that there must indeed be a way to get there. Lara will find some convenient ledge or tree root or something that will enable her to climb a bit higher. Where there is an impassable gap Lara will find a convenient post or something to lash a rope to so she can cross. Despite all the dangers it seems to put her through, the environment does not really want her to fail but rather to succeed. After all, it was created by games designers who want the player to succeed (although not too easily, or else what achievement is there in completing the game?).

THE ENEMIES

In playing this game, the player does not just help develop Lara as the girl who can overcome the challenges of the wild, but also as the expert in lost civilisations who can piece together the ancient history of some long-forgotten civilisation and who can take on enemies in human form. As the player guides Lara through the island's many settings, they help her discover various pieces of evidence that shed some light on the island's previous inhabitants, which include Portugese traders, United States Marines and the Japanese military.

As for the island's current inhabitants, they are a violent bunch of criminals, mercenaries and shipwreck survivors who follow a man named Mathias who has established a cult who call themselves the Solarii Brotherhood. They have established a brutal society on the island, based around worshiping Himiko, an ancient queen who once ruled the Yamatai people. These are murderous thugs and, if Lara is to survive, she has to hone her combat skills and become adept with her bow and arrow, her guns, and her ability to scavenge useful tools from her fallen enemies and the natural materials of the island.

If I have one criticism with this game, it is that it pretty much forces Lara to become a merciless killer who takes out great numbers of rivals like it's no big deal to her. This is in stark contrast to her first kill (presumably the only time she has ever had to take a human life). Lara is quite distraught at having had to perform such an action, even though it was clearly in self-defence. It seems a bit out of character, then, for her to soon be mowing down dozens of men in a hail of bullets, deliberately setting them on fire, and generally leaving in her wake a body count that even Rambo might think was a tad excessive. The game attempts to excuse this behaviour by making it clear that these are very bad men who deserve what is coming to them, but even so I would have preferred it if the player always had the option to sneak past these enemies rather than have to engage them. Early sections of the game hint that this will be a possibility. In one part, Lara has to crouch behind walls so as not to get caught in the flashlights of the men who are searching for survivors. But once she has armed herself any option to stick to the shadows or distract the enemy and slip past unnoticed seems to go out of the window. Still, this does at least provide an amusing exchange between two enemy combatants.

"It's only one little girl".

"One little girl? She's kicking our ass!".

SET PIECES

Lara certainly does kick ass. She might be a young and vulnerable Lara, one who is developing rather than fully possessing those gun-toting, tomb-raiding skills that thrilled 90s videogame players. But she is only vulnerable in the cartoony, action-hero sense of the word. This young archeology graduate can run through exploding shanties, scramble through caverns as they collapse around her, slide down a muddy incline pursued by a crashing plane, and all manner of other really quite thrilling set pieces that would surely kill any actual human being who encountered such furiously explosive action. Not that I am complaining about this, you understand. Nobody plays an action game to be an ordinary person; they play it to feel like they can take on anything and beat anyone. They play it to be the hero, and with Tomb Raider's reboot, a hero is exactly what the player helps Lara to become.

Thanks to Crystal Dynamics for the images