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Comment by Apocryphon | Hacker News Reader

I have absolute no interest in any of the new Tomb Raider games nor the franchise in general other than as a retro curio, but that decision seems little more controversial than say, recasting James Bond.

It’s far from the only case of developers doubling down on a rebooted character redesign. Kratos didn’t get a physical image shift but isn’t he like a responsible dad now or something?

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Bond had to be recasted, there was no physical way around it. But recasting Lara Croft is as unnecessary as recasting Homer Simpson.

The character is mo-capped, you can't really maintain that consistency (which tbh, which I'm not sure existed to begin with) if you want to minimise jank in the character's facial animations.

Lara has always been a weirdly uncanny valley character who existed in the coming of 3D graphics but is less realistic than say, Cloud and other Final Fantasy characters who actually have 2D renderings with realistic proportions. Just her face is sort of oval and unreal.

Her face has actually a rather simple comic style. See e.g. here: https://www.dsogaming.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Tomb-Ra...

I think actually using cell shading could suit her rather well. Similar to how it is done in recent Zelda games. The "unreal" look comes from combining her simple face with realistic lighting of a normal render.

Compare how Homer looks now to how he looked in season 1.

Recasting Lara Croft is more like recasting Duke Nukem into a skinny woke guy. Makes no sense IMO.

Duke Nukem is a good example. He also had somewhat exaggerated proportions, but it suited him, because his face didn't look realistic either. Just like Lara, who also had a slight comic-like look. It's absurd to imply (like Michelle Goulet in the article) that having female characters with exaggerated proportions automatically means "disrespecting" woman. She also says that designers may "throw in all the sexuality you want" while insisting at the same time that characters must always retain realistic proportions. Impressive double think.

Anyway, the meme that boys at the time commonly viewed Lara Croft as "sex object" is absurd. We did not. Sorry to say it like that, but that's just some feminists like Goulet being a bit paranoid. Boys would have fantasized about someone like Jennifer Lopez, not Lara Croft.

> Anyway, the meme that boys at the time commonly viewed Lara Croft as "sex object" is absurd. We did not.

You may not have, but everyone else did. Designer Toby Gard literally designed her to appeal sexually to male gamers in order to offset the fear that they otherwise wouldn't want to play a female main character. Early Lara Croft had ridiculous proportions. Her outfit is a t-shirt and booty shorts, for goodness' sake. Gamers of the time were obsessed with the idea of a "Nude Raider" cheat.

https://gaming-urban-legends.fandom.com/wiki/Nude_Raider

"Ever since Tomb Raider's release, its heroine, Lara Croft, has been seen as a major sex symbol in the video game industry, and that has been a large focus of the franchise's marketing."

And yet, Lara Croft wasn't your love interest, Lara Croft is you. She's your avatar under your control, risking your life and limb, in a fantasy setting. So that seems like a powerful dose of unreality to gamer boys, who get immersed in the world and personally identify with the heroine.

Surely there have been incremental instances of this before and after Tomb Raider was released, so choose your profile photo, build your avvie, and have at it.

The article has quotes from Toby Gard, who did nothing of the sort and resented the publisher turning her into a sex appeal thing.

I believe that's regret speaking. He created Lara Croft as a sexual caricature then got upset when she was also marketed that way.

> In a 1997 interview with culture and fashion magazine The Face, [Toby Gard] was audaciously asked about Lara’s 'unfeasibly large knockers'. […] "Slip of the mouse. I wanted to expand them fifty percent and then — whoops, one-hundred and fifty percent. Darn."

https://www.thegamer.com/tomb-raider-lara-croft-design-bug-m...

> The Face: "Is Lara a feminist icon or a sexist fantasy?" Toby Gard: "Neither and a bit of both. Lara was designed to be a tough, self-reliant, intelligent woman. She confounds all the sexist cliches apart from the fact that she’s got an unbelievable ﬁgure."

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254239896_Gender_an...

Those are some nice sources!

Even if the movement is legitimate and has important goals to achieve, self fashioned movement spokespersons whom made a living about being angry can't stop being angry at things, what else are they supposed to do, mission accomplished, pack up and go to the unemployment queues?

Of course they will keep finding new details or interpretations to complain about.

The article touches on this topic. Why should Lara Croft be changed towards a more realistic female shape when pseudo-Schwarzeneggers abound in games?

’On the other hand, the same male gamers had for years been seeing images of almost equally unattainable masculine perfection on their screens, all bulging biceps and chiseled abs. How was this different? Many sensed that it was different, somehow, but few could articulate why. Michelle Goulet of the website Game Girlz perhaps said it best: Lara was “the man’s ideal image of a girl, not a girl’s ideal image of a girl.” The inverse was not true of all those warrior hunks: they were “based on the body image that is ideal to a lot of guys, not girls. They are nowhere near my ideal man.” The male gaze, that is to say, was the arbiter in both cases.’

Yeah, that argument is simply misguided. It's like me demanding, as a man, to change male characters in Sailor Moon, Felicity, or 50 Shades of Grey. Those male characters behave (and sometimes look) like female fantasies of men, not like men view themselves. But that doesn't give me any right to demand changing them, after all, they are created for girls/women. I'm not the intended recipient!

For the same reason it is absurd for feminists like Goulet to demand changing Lara Croft. Those feminists weren't in the main audience in the first place. They could have ignored Tomb Raider like most guys ignored Sailor Moon.

The difference is that there are tons of male characters in anime and Hollywood movies, but there were no female characters in games except this one.

Well, is it more likely that the lack of female main characters caused few girls to play videogames, or that the lack of videogame playing girls caused the lack of female main characters? Arguably the latter, since boys form also the majority at most games without any main character. Boys just like video games more, it's not that alleged sexism sacres the girls away.

> most games without any main character

Candy crush? Bejeweled? That farm thing on FB a while back?

Male dominated genres that don't usually have main characters: 4X, RTS, racing, rhythm, shmup, competitive puzzle, realistic sim

Female dominated: casual puzzle, social sim

The rise of mobile games made those last two extremely popular, but that wasn't the case back when Tomb Raider was released.

10 years before Lara Croft, there was Samus Aran.

You could also mention all the female characters in fighting games and beat 'em ups, but those are not main characters...

Nowadays there are more women in gaming, but when Lara Croft first appeared, it would have been odd to expect anything but a male gaze from a popluation of nearly 100% male developers and customers.

And "male gaze" wasn't a deciding factor anyway. Lara Croft wasn't even viewed as a sex object like some singers or actresses.

If you think this you weren’t a middle school boy when Tomb Raider came out :)

Oh man, I still remember the day my parents found my drawings of naked Lara. Not that I was any good at drawing, I just used the old technique of tracing the original pictures on a thin piece of paper, adding a dash of teenage horniness in the process.

Did you not see the Maxim "photoshoot"? Lara and Aki Ross from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within were both covergirls of Maxim, rendered in underwear or swimwear. Or, perhaps you disregard the fact that the most persistent rumor about Tomb Raider 1 & 2 was the "nude code"?

Lara Croft was the nerd equivalent of Marilyn Monroe and Madonna, at the same time. She was the gaming sex symbol.

Gamers would be interested in a nude code for any attractive female main character of any well-known video game whatsoever. Just like men would like to see even a politician like AOC (like any reasonably attractive celebrity woman) in Playboy. But that doesn't make AOC a sex symbol.

Lara Croft is more like a mixture of Indiana Jones and Duke Nukem: Hot body, badass (two guns at once), and cool sunglasses.

https://64.media.tumblr.com/b3ac6a261a46a4be130b8a908f1f5e8e...

Yes, her figure is one property that makes her stand out, but the others were equally important. In fact, sexy video game woman are nothing new, there have been many before Lara, and with far more revealing outfits. An example is the character from the Brandish series:

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Brandish_Cover...

https://cdn.mobygames.com/covers/3676084-brandish-2-the-plan...

I don't even know her name. It was never a well-known character. It seems gamers don't care a lot about mere "sex symbols".

Given how DNF has seemingly sank that franchise, don’t give them any ideas!

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