Tomb Raider reboot: Lara's new look.

Well, I suppose if they have different voice-acting and the attempted rape scene turns out to be a case of Trailers Always Lie, then it could still be a good game.

If you're thinking of the same thing as me in terms of "attempted rape scene", then no, that's definitely in the game.

But is an exploitation narrative really so wrong? They place themselves awkwardly in terms of actual exploitation, but they're hugely aware of what they're doing and trying to subvert. They're often quite strong feminist narratives (or narratives of racial empowerment), delivered in a subversive way.

It's not as if Lara's design hasn't always suggested this kind of criticism. As much as your interpretation of Lara aligns with mine, Accela, she's still problematised by being positioned as a sex object.

Speaking of attempted rape and Gordon Freeman, is anyone familiar with the rejected Half Life enemy Mr. Friendly?

edited 13th Jun '12 1:10:04 AM by Null

Maybe it's just me desensitized from seeing worse stuff, but I don't find the torture porn undertones so much as uncomfortable as it is ridiculous (like that beartrap scene for example). To me it's sort of like how Lara Croft in previous incarnations tries too hard to be badass action girl that she becomes borderline inhuman, this one tries too hard to convey human vulnerability. It's this dilemma where you can only go either one way or the other, completely black and white with no subtlety put on either side.

The attempted rape leaves me feeling uncomfortable though, somewhat partially because I'm still trying to decide what to think about it.

@http://kotaku.com/5917400/youll-want-to-protect-the-new-less-curvy-lara-croft

Meh, I'll probably mark this with horrible PR than anything until further judgement. Remember the ruckus Skullgirls had? Or that time Other M was named a on-rail shooter? Yeah, not gonna let that happen again. (The article's comment section does have an actually interesting debate going on to my surprise though)

lol no

edited 13th Jun '12 2:33:37 AM by ThatOtherGriffin

i was really rocking that trailer right up untill about the attempted rape.

yuck.

funnily enough though, my biggest problem is not the pointless shoehorning of attempted rape into a game which already seems to have so much intense crap she goes through, but the fact that, by the time that happens, shes covered in an absurd mount of dirt, wounds and dried blood. its actually repulsive at this point- which makes it seem like it was just a cheap tool for manipulating you into hating a villain we were most likely already going to hate.

...

course, this really has nothing to do with me since im still in the ps2 gen so i dont know why im here.

edited 13th Jun '12 3:50:26 AM by Tarsen

...Suddenly, this game doesn't look so inviting now.

I don't know about the rest of you guys, but I... can't help but feel that the attempted rape will most likely be played for the primary sake of titillation, and that honestly disturbs me.

Different article on the same subject matter.

Komodin, the scene's been posted to this thread, two of three pages back. I've seen it, and I don't think it was. Check it out, and tell me whether you agree.

It's really quite tame — far, far less sexist than several unremarked elements in other games. It's not even a quicktime event.

Edit: apparently there's another similar sequence that occurs in the game on top of this. Fair enough. I can't say it'd be much different, though the repetition is basically overkill.

edited 13th Jun '12 7:12:40 AM by Nicknacks

its not?

but...i coulda sworn komodins article said it was...?

well whatever.

what unremarked sexism?

no wait, it was demon's article that said it had qtes.

edited 13th Jun '12 7:22:19 AM by Tarsen

Read the article I posted on the same subject matter.

It's obvious the other article was spun around, the article I posted tells a very different story.

I remember the scene from the demo, it's hardly something most of us haven't seen before.

sorry demon, gonna have to stop reading the article at around there. its just too alienating for me.

edited 13th Jun '12 7:26:23 AM by Tarsen

Meh, to each their own.

Yeah, what Tarsen said. It's a bit too triggery for my liking.

Okay, don't you TLDR me on this one guys, please.

Oh Gears Of War was the example I was thinking of, but a lot of games reduce women to archetypal maidens in distress who aren't capable of looking after themselves, and who need to be rescued. Or others turn them into sexualised objects, like Arkham City.

The Tomb Raider reboot reads as a somewhat uncomfortable neutralisation of a feminine power narrative present in the originals, or possibly a more positive example of exploitation narratives.

I think the key factor here is that you're playing as a strong woman who's on the path to becoming an even stronger woman, and that you're, presumably, protecting other women.

That's what seems to shift the framing of the issue. Some players are going to protest the inclusion of rape in any form, and frankly that's fair enough. I personally don't agree that there should be a blanket moratorium on the use of the dramatic device; making it taboo brings up a myriad of issues, while an attempt to actually engage with the issue might actually make some headway into creating a gamer culture that's slightly more aware of the actual concept. And we all know education is needed on this issue.

But I can understand why people might not feel that this issue has a place in gaming, or in literature at all. But I made the same argument that I've made to people who've said that politics don't have a place — it's already here. We should be pushing for better presentations on the issue, and not for an impossible ban.

And, look, that article linked about wanting to "protect" Lara? It's bullshit. Not for the facts its giving us, but for some of the data. Outside of some extreme examples I can't think of, you _always_ want to protect the main character in a game — particularly a third person game.

Those articles are sneaking in the inference that this kind of reaction is particularly abnormal or extreme in this case. It's not. You're always being encouraged to protect female characters in games, as part of that whole male gaze/patriarchal bias they've mostly got going on. You're also always being encouraged to be taken on the main character's journey and be their "helper", that's not unique here. These kinds of games, like Uncharted or Gears Of War, feature minimal player choice. You're always being guided, helping the protagonist move from A to B and move the plot along. This isn't any different.

The guy from Crystal Dynamics is wrong, basically. He's trumpeting the two things that games have always done as something that's unique. The actual unique thing, the thing that makes this game so interesting and potentially feminist, is that they're both combined into one. You're the object to be protected, but you're protecting yourself.

(Or you're being aided to protect yourself. There's very little difference here. The main difference is that she's female and therefore more easily Othered and distanced than someone like Nathan Drake would be. It's easier to talk about him being "you", because we've all be educated to see ourselves as white, male action protagonists. When it comes to British women, there's a bit of a disconnect.)

What's particularly disingenuous to me, is that a lot of these third party sites who are reporting on the Kotaku article are just quoting its source. Their titles have been clearly placed to be edgy and encourage a certain brand of criticism, thus shedding themselves of the defence that they're actually impartial news media, but they're not actually taking a stand themselves. It's the worst kind of propaganda — they're letting their readership frame the debate, and then they're going to reflect the replies they get in their responses and the temperature of internet criticism in general. They don't have an actual stake in this at all. Fuckers.

But, like I said, potentially a very feminist game.

well...

i play games for enjoyment (or out of obligation, but in that case i usually hope for enjoyment somewhere along the way), and rape scenes in general are awkward and uncomfortable.

its one thing to play a game that is emotionally intense, its another thing entirely to play a game that is incredibly emotionally draining that then tops it off with a vile act intentionally depicted in an intensely uncomfortable way. its not my definition of fun.

you say it might help raise awareness but, i dunno. i think just talking about the subject and its devastating consequences is enough. especially is you consider: people misunderstand things very easily.

like, if im to understand correctly, several people in this thread and lots of people outside have mistakenly thought the scene was supposed to be tittilating (although i have no idea why) when it evidently wasnt. hell we even have a trope for this

on top of that, lets go back to how intense and upsetting the scene is supposed to be; if it lives up to expectation and it really is intensely uncomfortable for any normal player...how is anyone whos been in a remotely similar situation going to feel? what if theyve been in a worse situation?

i didnt explain or word it particularly well but...you get what im trying to say? well hopefully you do.

They could feel pretty crappy, I imagine.

Ignoring that issue for the sake of argument, surely the intensity of the experience is part of the game's drawing power? A problematic issue that can't be separated from the narrative's empowerment trajectory. The "narrowly escape from sexual assault experience" would dehumanise sexual assault as spectacle as much as it'd generate empathy and empowerment — in a way that's perhaps just as intense as I Spit On Your Grave would, given the genre's inhabited nature.

I think a distinction should made. What's going on here won't be rape. There's no intercourse. It'll be sexual assault at worse, and has only ever been described as sexual assault.

Also: what should happen if a player refuses to prevent Lara from being assaulted? Does the narrative cut to black, or does nothing happen? Would this lack of resistance on our part mean that Lara failed to fend off an assault, or does it mean that she didn't resist? Will they even be possible to fail?

The whole quick-time issue is problematic at best.

edited 13th Jun '12 8:51:22 AM by Nicknacks

well, if a player refuses to do the qte, thats their personal choice and maybe something they should...think on.

but the thing about qte's is that they're not always expected. for example, my natural assumption with any attempted rape in media is "its not going to happen, obviously, they wouldnt do that to her" (obviously im not reffering to movies)

and then suddenly buttons pop up on the screen for a very short time frame and you accidentally miss it (or even fumble it due to panic) and suddenly you get a very very very disturbing fade to black (i hope)

i guess the QTE is supposed to help create the feeling of "you can do something, you can and will stop this", but the end result is that it has to create a lose condition because of it, which is where the problem comes in...

I've changed my mind slightly about that particular scene over a period of time. I'll see how I feel about it when the finished product comes out.

edited 26th Nov '12 1:15:12 PM by HellmanSabian

Yeah, my problem is with the potential for a losing scenario. And unfortunately, the only way to really tell what could happen would be to lose.

I don't have a problem with assault, sexual assault or rape happening to the protagonist of a game, considered in a vacuum. It's not inherently bad. I do have a problem with turning it into a mini game.

edited 13th Jun '12 9:17:45 AM by Nicknacks

You know, when info of this game was first released I was kinda offput by pretty much every image and video of the game involved Lara getting horrifically injured. I just assumed that they where starting Lara off in a rough place and she'd get a better and better foothold as the game progressed. But literally everything I've seen of the game since has still just Lara getting hurt over and over again.

It's to the point that I can barely take it seriously anymore. That E3 gameplay trailer brought Everything Trying to Kill You to a whole new level. Even the trees hate Lara.

As for the Attempted Rape? Well, like I was saying... They're really putting Lara through the ringer and I felt incredibly awkward about it even before that. It's like it's just another part of a Trauma Conga Line thrown in because, hey, she needs to be hurt right? Ugh.

At least those Ryona fans will be happy.

edited 13th Jun '12 10:14:27 AM by ShirowShirow

What bothers me about the rape attempt is that it just doesn't seem necessary. Does it really serve any purpose for Lara to have experienced sexual assault, in addition to the absurd amounts of trauma she's going through? So many writers, both in books, TV, and games, like to throw in a rape in the backstory on the grounds of "oh, it's another bad thing that happened, and it'll explain her issues/make her stronger/whatever."

But rape or sexual assualt is a completely different kind of injury from getting injured or shot or smacking into a tree. Rape is pretty much the worst kind of violation and desecration of your person and self-worth. For these IDIOTS to throw in a rape attempt just so Lara can have one more bit of angst, especially since they probably won't handle it with any kind of sensitivity, is insulting. Rape isn't simple. It's not a "instant broken badass, just add sexual assault." It's what I consider the most hurtful thing you can do to a person, and I am disgusted that they're adding this unnecessary bullshit to what already looks like a torture porn fest.

You sound like you've already played the game and know what they've done with it.

Let it be clear that I'm not defending anything here. Well, other than the 'wait and see' approach. The issue seems divisive (and evocative) enough that I'd like to, at least, see/experience it for myself in it's entirety and intended context.

EDIT: I also haven't watched the trailer yet. Thought I'd get that out there in the interest of full disclosure.

edited 13th Jun '12 3:33:21 PM by disruptorfe404

-_-;

To me its less about the rape and more that it just feels like the developers are putting through Croft through as much shit and pain as possible.

I mean in just a few short trailers we've seen her get impaled, almost raped, beaten up in general, and fall through a forest.

My guess is upon landed she will be mauled by a bear who will then attempt to rape her, while hawks fall from the sky attempting to rape her as well.