OK, I've started playing the new Tomb Raider reboot and have gotten a few hours into it. In terms of gameplay, it is fairly similar to the PS3 exclusive Uncharted. For those who don't play games, the premise of the story is a young archaeologist, Lara Croft, is traveling in search of adventure, and it is a 'coming of age' story in which she learns about herself, discovering her inner courage and bravery to eventually become the Tomb Raider of legend.
The first problem I have with this story is the premise. I have watched one of the 'making of Tomb Raider' videos on the game disc - first of all, all the presenters they have in this video are all men in their 30's and 40's. The initial presentation of Lara infantilises her, much more so than most 21 yr old women that I know. The question I have is why are men interested in presenting a story of a showing such an infantilised woman as the protagonist? Yes, it can be a coming of age story, but does the female protagonist have to start off in such a weak fashion?
When you compare this to the first Uncharted game, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Nathan Drake, the male protagonist is cocky and brash. The first scenes open with him finding a treasure in the ocean, then his boat is besieged by pirates. Nathan then gets straight into the jobs of shooting and killing all the pirates, accompanied with witty one-liners.
Even in the first hours of the game, Lara keeps expressing doubts and negativity about herself:
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At one point in the game Lara suggests to the research team about going to a certain geographical area, as there is more chance of achieving their goal. Two of her mail shipmates back her up. After the ship they are on wrecks on an island during a storm, Lara immediately takes the blame for 'landing them in that situation' (WTF?).
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After the shipwreck, her shipmates are in all different locations on the island, but they have a walkie-talkie, one of which she has found. At one point she makes contact with a male ship mate, and asks him to rescue her.
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In a conversation with another more senior male archaeologist, they are discussing the powerful female ruler Himiko, whose ruins they are searching for. At one point Lara says "A woman with power is often thought of as a witch". (Really? Is that what men think???)
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At another point in the story, Lara finds another of her male ship mates who has been attacked by wolves. Although she did not cause the injuries she says “Sorry they did a real job on your leg.” (WTF is she apologising for??? How about "They did a real job on your leg.")
In addition to this, there are a couple of physical stoushes that Lara has gone through so far in the story. In each of them I noted that she looked like she was a victim of physical abuse. Compare this to Nathan Drake, where he would just have lots of flecks of blood on him. And this is why more women need to be in gaming so that the stories about women are more authentic, and not an infantilised version or women that men are comfortable producing.
The thing is, I always try to do a fair bit of research on the games that I buy so that I can make a considered decision. I had read a number of player comments on the game, and many of them (mostly male it appeared) also made the same obvious comparison that I did to the Uncharted games (although not with the feminist slant that I have written about here). The worst thing that one poster said was "Uncharted with boobs', a dreadfully sexist comment.
Your thoughts?