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JohnnyBigPotatoes
Jun 8, 2012

ASK ME ABOUT SPENDING $732.49 ON DIABLO 3 GOLD AND THEN SELLING ALL THE ITEMS AND GOLD FOR $38.27 BECAUSE I WAS AFRAID OF THE TAXES AND IRS

Mitt Romney 2012
click here to find out more

Spalec posted:

People like to see pretty girls killed in unpleasant ways. It's the basis of a million horror movies and all those creepy-rear end videos on youtube of female characters getting killed in games like resident evil.

Lets not start that debate though, an argument on misogyny is a surefire way to get the thread locked.

There's a difference though. Pretty girls getting murdered in horror films (outside of poo poo like SAW) are usually gratuitously sexualised and get killed for being dumb or making dumb decisions. And it's often done in a humourous way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRJWz8QO8ag NSFW I guess.
The pretty but not overly sexual protagonist female (read Neve Campbell for Lara Croft) isn't stupid and usually escapes being murdererd and there's nothing remotely funny about a static blood stained camera lingering on showing us our lead character trying to pull a spike out of her brain. It's just unpleasent.

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JohnnyBigPotatoes
Jun 8, 2012

ASK ME ABOUT SPENDING $732.49 ON DIABLO 3 GOLD AND THEN SELLING ALL THE ITEMS AND GOLD FOR $38.27 BECAUSE I WAS AFRAID OF THE TAXES AND IRS

Mitt Romney 2012
click here to find out more

Paino posted:

Why did you have to go and mention the old TR's? Let me put my rose-tinted glasses on.

The previous games in the series had atmosphere and personality, this is an Uncharted ripoff that sells the "cute girl getting all survivaly and tough through hardships" cliché as if they invented it. Puzzle rooms were often majestic, intimidating and very hard to get out of (I'm old, I like videogames where there's a chance I'll fail). You could actually get lost in the old TRs.

Combat was pretty hard at times but not because it was good: it was mediocre at best and definitely not the core of the experience. I know it's difficult to believe, but back then people liked complicated poo poo that wasn't easy to solve!

EDIT: it may not be clear from my post, but this Tomb Raider is still a great game for the current generation, it's just a bit dumb like most AAA mainstream modern games.

I'm glad somebody said what I've been thinking because the general opinion seems to be that while a little sidelined in this game the tomb raiding is faithful to the 'classic' games and it's weird seeing this said in review after review when it's really not true at all. Unless my memory of 1 and 2 are playing tricks on me this game has almost nothing in common with them. What you describe; being lost in gigantic puzzle rooms is how I remember the games, yes there was combat but it was most definitley not the focus whereas in TR2013 it is absolutley the meat of the game.
The optional tombs (and I didn't do them all, maybe 5 or 6) have 1 single puzzle and then you get the treasure, how is that even remotely like the original gameplay? It's an okay actiony game but why isn't it getting called out for sidelining and diminishing what the series is known for? It shares much more DNA with Gears of War than tomb raider.

I'm not saying it's a bad game for what it is but it is a bit disingenous to call it tomb raider and it was a bit dissapointing because we're not exactly starved for choice in the third person action-shooty man game dept, did we need another entry into a bloated genre?

Also Lara; is she a paranoid shizophrenic? because her behaviour really suggests that she is having some sort of psychotic break with reality. As the game is from her persepctive we can fairly deduce that she absolutley revels in the brutality she visits on her genocidal oddyssey. Slow mo kills are performed in gratuitous detail, she doesn't seem interested in trying to evade her enemies and no or few non-lethal methods are available through upgrades. At first she expresses outwardly some remorse and uncertainty about what shes doing but this seems like it's for her benefit as if she's trying to reconcile her murderous actions before gaily charging back into the fray because this girl fuckin loves killing people. After a while she just seems to embrace the madness ("Come on then you bastards") and tellingly at around the same time her stealh kill goes from being a non lethal looking bow-choke to stirring peoples brains around in their head with her axe. She also shoots an injured man in the head and quips "You don't deserve to live". Whoa.
Her companions seem to slowly realise what's happening as their dialogue with LAra becomes stilted and non-confrontational (Reyes goes from wanting to leave ASAP on the boat to telling Lara she will wait for her no matter what oh god please don't visit some gruesome violence on me Lara you mad bitch).
Finally she is seen, alone, on the boat while a nervous captain tells her she'll be home soon. But Lara doesn't want to go 'home' she's had a clean break with reality now, shes stared into the abyss and she loves it. A survivor is born she tells herself defining herself in opposition to the hundreds who couldn't survive her. They didn't deserve to live anyway did they Lara you fuckin maniac.

JohnnyBigPotatoes
Jun 8, 2012

ASK ME ABOUT SPENDING $732.49 ON DIABLO 3 GOLD AND THEN SELLING ALL THE ITEMS AND GOLD FOR $38.27 BECAUSE I WAS AFRAID OF THE TAXES AND IRS

Mitt Romney 2012
click here to find out more
Nobody has to feel bad because the protagonist isn't the good guy and try to shut down the discussion. It's fun to play around with different interpretations of games isnt it?

People are saying what the devs clearly intended was for Lara to be a sympahetic character but what they intended is irrelevant; let's look at what we have: Lara very swiftly becomes an S-tier, A'est of Apex predator without mercy or remorse (you can argue her inital navel gazing inner conflict is genuine, I believe it isn't) who racks up a death toll in the hundrededs and this is justified!? That's some heavy duty self-defense.
I mean there's one particular sequence that sticks out for me; Lara is silently stalking through the woods at night, she has superior night vision to her prey who have to rely on flash lights which ironically let you pick them off one by one with your weapon of choice. This is some predator level poo poo, this isn't a fair fight or anything remotely like self defense. These shclubs never stood a drat chance.
Half the time when you're attacking them they're screaming in fear, Lara is not acting in defense of self or others, she loves to kill people, they come in waves and she destroys them all.

The funny thing of course is the juxtapostion between her vulnerable exhortations and her hyper violence. Like in one scene she's hanging upside down sort of daintily screaming 'oh no, get away from me' whilst pulling off sick headshots. I laughed quite a bit.

JohnnyBigPotatoes fucked around with this message at 05:53 on Mar 13, 2013

JohnnyBigPotatoes
Jun 8, 2012

ASK ME ABOUT SPENDING $732.49 ON DIABLO 3 GOLD AND THEN SELLING ALL THE ITEMS AND GOLD FOR $38.27 BECAUSE I WAS AFRAID OF THE TAXES AND IRS

Mitt Romney 2012
click here to find out more

Reveilled posted:

Yes. But this discussion isn't actually about ludonarrative dissonance regardless of your attempts to steer it in that direction. The discussion is about whether Lara is a villain or not. To establish that, you need to show that Lara's actions in the game are villainous. Lara takes actions in this game in gameplay and cutscenes. If you are alleging there is a dissonance between the gameplay and the narrative, then let us dispense with the subset of Lara's actions that are not taken a purely narrative context while she is out of the player's control. This leaves the subset of actions where she takes actions in cutscenes. Regardless of any other feature of the narrative, in order to demonstrate that Lara is a villain, you need to show that she is taking villainous actions in this subset of events of the narrative, as they are the only portions of the narrative where Lara, the character (as opposed to the player or the writer) has control over what happens.

I am assuming from the fact that you have not done this despite a request to do this in every single reply I've made to you that you cannot do this. So your assertion that Lara is a villain is completely baseless.

How would you describe pointing a pistol at a helicopter pilots head and threatening to kill him and by extension yourself and the other passenger if he doesn't do what you ask? Heroic?
That was the first scene that came to mind, another is leaving an injured man to die for no apparent reason (The cutscene shows two(?) enemies approaching and this seems to convince Lara the odds aren't in her favour. What rot, she can quite capably deal with far more than 2 guys at once.
Look, you're asking for proof that she acts 'villanious'. That isn't a useful term, what is useful in determining the ethics of Lara Crofts jungle adventure is that at the culmination hundreds of people are dead at her hands. Do you honestly believe she had to kill every single person in self-defense? She is a predator amongst prey. She isn't interested in seeking non-violent solutions to her problems. She ignores the many, many overheard conversations amongst the guards that outright tell her that a lot of these guys are just stuck in a situation out of their control. The game does a great job of putting you into the mindset of a bloodthirsty lunatic as when you see guards standing near natural explosive gas leaks you don't think 'here's my chance to slip away quietly' you immediately see the opportunity to blow them to smithereens and deliver Lara's summary justice.

Anybody ignoring this is because it doesn't fit their predetermined idea of Lara as a 'hero' so mental gymnastics ensue and pretty unpleasent justifications for genocide come out. Also to criticise the game is not to denounce, I enjoyed the game, I think it's a lot of fun. The best Predator game I've ever played in fact.

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