And I sort of don't.
Me and Lara have had such a turbulent partnership from the outset even before I started to truly play the game. She was to be my first YouTube video upload! But it was not meant to be. My PC, the program I was using and my internet connection was against us from the start. But first impressions aren't always to be taken as they are. You must always give people the benefit of the doubt. I'm nice like that. I played the intro of this game repeatedly for 2 weeks until I got it to work. I was already sick of that damn beach, but I wasn't going to let it stop gaining any positive experience of the game, that was just outside factors preventing us from being together.
One of my many distractions. Val @ 3months Old.
I've never played a Tomb Raider game before and thought this would be a good place to start chronologically. Sense made?
You all saw my moments of joy and rapid escalation into rage at certain points. We all know this game is broken, those gods damn quick-time-only-work-within-certain-pixels-events were a joke. That creepy way she would appear on puppet strings would pull me out of the immersion that we were experiencing that island together. Was that the intention of the game makers? To make us feel like, we are not only witnessing the transformation into the Lara that you all know and love, but that we are experiencing it alongside with her or we are her? I have no idea. Oh boy did I experience that place. It was a very emotionally involving game but not for the game play but the bloody frustration just getting past those glitchy-as-fuck-events. Again, that's not the game really is it? that's the design of the thing messing with me, yes it's a factor as part of any review but it still didn't deter me from playing the game. You guys know I've uninstalled games quicker for a lot less shit happening. It also wasn't realistic for a Survival game either as discussed in a previous blog post clicky here clicky. Yet I still wanted to play it.
I love Lara but I can't stand Lara.
There is a duality to this game. There are in fact two Lara Croft's.
Gameplay Lara and Cut-scene Lara.
If you focus on only one of them you in fact are playing a completely different game. You are presented with a completely different character. It all starts after Cut-scene Lara kills that nameless shouty man. That rapey man. That's the moment when Lara's whole psychology separates to a one where she takes that experience and internalises it and a one where she takes that experience and intensifies it.
Gameplay Lara is competent and adaptive to her environment. She, or maybe it was me driving the character, is capable of smart survival.The only thing that holds her back is the progress of skills that get unlocked during the game, which I found to be too late to when you would actually need them. Melee weapon. First thing any character in any game is capable of wielding. She had the climbing pick attached to her leg the entire game but couldn't use it to defend herself, she could only dodge but not actually puncture anyone with it or climb certain walls until after certain events that Cut-Scene Lara had to overcome. But she was seemingly perfectly proficient in such skills BEFORE Cut-scene Lara had to learn it. This Lara's character development has been the most engaging and the most complete, in my own honest opinion, that would lead to the persona of the previous games' Lara Croft.
Cut-scene Lara is the portrayal of Lara that upset a lot of people, not only the fans of the previous games but also those who get upset about the portrayal of women in videogames. This Lara is a frilly dress short of the princess in the castle but she's no longer the physically unrealistic woman. I cannot compare this Lara to either of those things as I don't have experience with the previous games and I only learned of the feminist outrage after I played the game for a few hours. We were told this would be a different Lara and that they made her more gritty and believable but this Lara, again in my honest opinion, hasn't developed enough, well she has. but not anywhere near the persona of the Lara Croft's that came before her. She's the alternative reality Lara, who didn't really save herself in the end, I feel like *I* was the one to save her. Our experience of that island was not a shared one, but a one in which I had to drag her skinny little ass up that damn mountain so Gameplay Lara could take care of bidness.
I did feel like Cut-scene Lara was the person and Gameplay Lara was the split personality. You'd think it would be the other way around apart from as you get near the end of the game some aspects of Gameplay Lara have finally been accepted by Cut-scene Lara and that's when we see actual character development on her part. You can't repress parts of yourself that only causes internal conflict so once she became self aware, competent and we finally had enough XP to buy the skills we should have had hours ago, that Gameplay Lara was clearly capable of, she was no longer a burden for me to trudge along with just to finish the game but the strong independent stereotype-shoving woman they promised us!
Or did she just become the "man" and saved her own Princess? As pointed out here
We've all had a game like that. You go past caring and blank out the glitches and the plot holes and the impossible gameplay just to finish the damn thing and never play it again.
Well I did finish it. I actually finished it months after I was still bringing out videos for it. My PC messed up and I had to play through it AGAIN to catch up to where the videos left off (I lost my footage). Slightly cheaty of me, but that rage and frustration for the River sequence and Mountain village buildings falling down was all real. Extra real because I knew I had to do it again, and again because I'd have to do them again if I wanted to bring out more vids. After my last vid "Glasgae Kiss" an update meant I lost that particular save for some reason and I nearly lost my reason. So I finished the game proper, off camera as it were. It's kinda killed my desire to post videos. Hence the hiatus. You can't enjoy doing the YouTube thing if you don't enjoy the game you're playing. I couldn't face that damn beach again.
I don't know what really to say about those views who say She's a worse portrayal of women in videogames, than her predecessors, because it's a pretty dire situation she's in and yes the element of the princess was there but who could say they would have done any better if put in that same situation? Did she turn into a man as most of the strong male characters were killed off or were bad guys? I don't think saying that is accurate really. She didn't "become the man of the story" as each Gender is capable of expressing characteristics of masculinity and femininity, you don't just switch from one to the other but rather maintain a balance. (society likes to tell you otherwise but that's a whole different debate). In some situations it's more applicable to assume one of those roles in order to respond to it. Maybe the game makers intention was to present a Lara that could balance these aspects but forced us to watch her struggle to get to that point. We all experience every emotion. Regardless of what sex you are.
Lara, in the end, was just a human being that had a lot of bad shit happen to her and she had to respond to it or die.
I don't think I would have made it past that first guy in the cave on that damn beach.
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