Gametrender

Lara Croft, in the new reboot, is fighting tooth and nail for her survival

Lara Croft the "rape survivor" doesn't work as a story.

On June 13, it was announced that Lara Croft's backstory, in the rebooted franchise, was to

include an attempted rape; it was to be the player's role to fend off this assault. As mentioned in an

earlier post, most female gamers have described it as a sexist addition to the games, and Crystal

Dynamics have accordingly backpedalled. While I, as a woman, am relieved by this change, I'm also

relieved from a purely narrative point of view.

Full disclosure here : I didn't play the first Lara Croft games, because I simply didn't own a

PlayStation at the time; but I read the first few comics about her, by Image comics. In those, she was

indeed shipwrecked on an island and had to learn to survive on her own; it was just a single-page

montage, but the idea was so powerful that it stick with me for over a decade; so much so, that I got

excited about the new game just learning it would explore that fight for survival – from a feminine

perspective.

Think about it : from Robinson Crusoe to Tom Hanks in Cast Away, this narrative isn't new

when applied to men. In the case of Lost, there were female castaways, but it was more about the

collective effort than about any individual – and the survival part was never the main plot. This is why

the use of « Rape as backstory » feels so hollow in the case of Lara Croft. This is already a trope

teeming with unfortunate implications as it's used mainly for female characters; but here, it also

reduces an original story, as strong female characters go, to an easy shortcut to explain her bad-assery

without the writer having to actually work on and for it.

Now I understand narratives in video games are a bit different than in movies or novels; the

gameplay and the interactivity always come first, and rightfully so. However, these justifications don't

hold here. This is a well-known, decade-old character that a lot of gamers have a nostalgic attachment

to and whose story they'd get invested in.

More importantly, the whole purpose of this first game in the rebooted series is to explain how

Lara became a shorts-rocking, dual-gun-wielding chick who can somersault without a bra despite her

DD cups – and who has never shown any particular fear, resentment, or rage against men. In short, not

only are shortcuts not necessary, they undermine the fight-for-survival narrative and the preexisting

characterization.

But maybe, maybe the point of this rape was to make the story appear more mature? I believe

maturity is in the treatment rather in than the subject, but let's concede this point. Or maybe Lara Croft's

producer Ron Rosenberg was just getting carried away, exaggerated some minor plot point, and

thought it'd appeal to a larger audience to show Lara in need of protection. I certainly hope so, because

I'd still like to play that fight for survival story and see the character's growth happen at my fingertips.

Carole is a new contributor to GameTrender. She has worked in the video game industry for under a decade as translator, community manager, and content designer in Europe and Canada.