Rise of the Tomb Raider

I agree that it shouldn't, and I wouldn't have a problem with lesbian characters if we had more gay males and straight women. I just have a kneejerk reaction right now to lesbians as a faux attempt at getting points for being progressive while conveniently still writing characters intended to appeal primarily to the Males Age 13-25 demographic.

edited 27th Oct '14 11:01:32 AM by TobiasDrake

I have similar reaction sometimes. I just don't automatically assume every lesbian in media is a faux attempt to be progressive. I have to see how they are written, as well as how the rest of the work.

In the case of Tomb Raider, the written who supported the idea is a woman herself, with no past story of employing such cheap tactics (as far I know). If the initiative to make Lara a lesbian came from her, I would have no reason to believe it isn't a genuine attempt to improve diversity in game.

I would like to point out the potential for it to be a lesbian relationship and Lara herself being bisexual since bi-erasure is sort of a thing.

A bisexual character who only ever engages romantically and/or sexually with a single gender might as well not be a bisexual character at all.

edited 27th Oct '14 12:23:58 PM by TobiasDrake

That is not necessarily true, although it depends on your definition of "engage".

Here we go, found a source on Remember Me, which was supposed to feature the female protagonist's memories of a male love interest, but that portion of the game had to be cut because,

This is the toxic attitude behind the logic that you can't have a female protagonist, and if you do have one, she cannot, under any circumstances, have a male lover. This is why it's easier to write the player as a lesbian than a straight woman, and easier still for female player characters to simply go unattached, romantically or sexually.

As an aside, the same article goes on to laud Lara Croft's role in the reboot, because she really is a fantastic female protagonist, issues of protagonist sexuality aside. I don't expect her to be the character to break this mold necessarily, but I do have high hopes for her role in this sequel.

edited 27th Oct '14 12:41:22 PM by TobiasDrake

Oh, yeah, I remember reading about that bullshit. Particularly the "the player can't kiss dudes in game", which I found just baffling.

Anyway, I understand that writing a lesbian character can be an easy cop out to avoid this issue (which sucks since we need games tackling this instead). However, I don't agree every lesbian player character must necessarely exist solely for that reason. Context matter. Furthermore, I haven't found enough evidence that writing lesbian player character is used for such a cop out. I get the feeling the publishers are just as allergic to homosexual female protagonists as to active heterosexual ones.

At any rate, I would be all for Lara having a love interest in the new game. Male of female. Either way it would help to push the industry forward;

edited 27th Oct '14 1:15:26 PM by Heatth

Then how exactly do you portray a bisexual character at all then? If there has to be a love interest for a bisexual character, then said love interest is going to have a gender. You can't exactly romance two people of either gender at the same time to say 'Look! Bisexuals!' without running into A LOT of unfortunate implications.

I don't necessarily want to see Lara have a love interest, but if she were to have a female romantic lead that could work as a great foil for Lara in some way, it would significantly break ground for some untapped areas that The Last of Us only scratched the surface of (since Ellie's female love interest died and her sexuality never is readdressed). Bonus points if there no fanserivicy nature to the relationship at all and it justifies its existence through the nature of the plot.

Like, ok, we know that the new game starts with Lara having A LOT of psychological issues from the first game. Maybe she starts the game in a not so healthy (not exactly abusive, but not healthy) relationship with someone else and, as she hopefully recovers mentally, she leaves that relationship to peruse someone who would ultimately be a better person for her to be with?

Well you could make the bisexual character polyamorous, but that has its own controversies attached.

By letting the character be attracted to multiple people.

Frankly, the One True Love concept often found in storytelling, in which a character can only desire a single person for their entire existence, is fundamentally irreconcilable with bisexuality. If anything is responsible for bi-erasure in fiction, it's this. It's okay for relationships to fail. It's okay for characters to have sex outside of romance. It's okay for sexual tension to go unfulfilled.

Until we reach a point in storytelling where characters can have desires outside of the one person who they were predestined at birth to fall instantly in love with and be with until the credits roll, bisexuality is going to have a hard time establishing itself.

edited 27th Oct '14 2:57:27 PM by TobiasDrake

Which requires multiple people to be potential love interests. Its hard enough in MOST writing to have at least ONE decent love interest and story going. And Love Triangles are cheche and not remotely related to what Tomb Raider is as a game; One love interest is already hard enough to work into an action game like Tomb Raider and develop well, multiple would be a nightmare.

Also small overlap with rule of conservation of detail; If Character A shows romantic attraction to Character B, then we expect that said romantic attraction will have some significance to the plot or be brought up again in some way; why bring it up at all if its not important?

I can think of one easy way to do this but idk how it would be received by the fans. Lara tries to build a relationship with Sam and it fails because Sam just can't look at Lara the same after Yamitai and Sam just ends all relationship with Lara, Lara later meets New!Male!Character and shows signs of attraction to him.

Sure, its fine for sex to happen outside of relationships and sexual tension to go unfulfilled, but it seems odd to show these things at all unless they're important in some way to the story.

Personally, I don't see why she exactly would need to have two love interests to be declared bisexual. I don't see the problem with Lara/Sam being a thing and Lara herself defines herself as bisexual where we don't entirely need to see her with a man or showing attraction to a man since she states for herself what she is. If that makes sense?

Anyway, Anyone read this? http://www.amazon.com/Tomb-Raider-Story-Lara-Croft/dp/1465415475/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1402346896&sr=8-1&keywords=9781465415479

It supposedly bridges the gap between TR'13 and Rise.

...now I can't stop thinking that a bisexual-centred love triangle would actually be both a really interesting game and a pretty forward-thinking design choice, regardless of whether the protagonist was male or female (as long as they aren't a completely blank slate e.g. Bioware). A female protagonist would make the player choose between playing a straight character pursuing a male love interest (conventional and not, respectively) or a lesbian character persuing a female love interest (the other way around). A male protagonist would make the player choose between a straight female love interest (all-conventional) and a gay male love interest (no-conventional). I'm imagining a sort of combination of Deus Ex and dating sim... :P But I should probably take that to one of the game ideas threads.

MS has bought the rights to publish, market etc RotTR. There goes our hopes for a PS 4 version.

edited 10th Dec '14 2:43:37 AM by LordofLore

Surely there's at least a slim chance of being a timed exclusive still? I mean, does this invalidate Phil Spencer's earlier comments that this game will be timed exclusive? And why did the head of Xbox Marketing say this and not the head of Microsoft as a whole?

edited 9th Dec '14 7:27:36 PM by Nettacki

Well that's a real shame. I loved the first one but I guess that's the end of the series for me.

Well, that sucks I suppose. I don't care for PS 4 myself, but I feel the pain.

Still hopes for a PC version, right?

SE states the deal still has a duration. We might've a Dead Rising 3 case where the moment the deal is up SE will reveal that the game is also coming to other platforms and they just couldn't say anything due to the contract. Can I say that I hate MS for going to all this trouble just to get 1 exclusive game for at most a year on a console? All information we get is contradicted by other sources.

Also, considering that the deal was probably struck to give Microsoft good publicity and more sales, its been met with nothing but disdain from the beginning. Why increase the hate and fan the flames? NO ONE wants this for Tomb Raider. Well, no one in the playerbase anyway. It makes no sense.

It makes perfect sense. People will complain for the next year or so, and then they'll buy the game. Microsoft knows this.

edited 10th Dec '14 7:25:03 AM by TobiasDrake

No such thing as bad publicity, as they say.

I'm still unclear on what the correct information is here though. Is it XBONE exclusive or not?

edited 10th Dec '14 10:43:32 AM by artfulscruff

The exact same as with Dead Rising 3 it seems: Microsoft is publishing it but they only have it as an exclusive for about a year. During this time the creators can't say that they are already working on PS 4/3/PC versions without breaking their contract.

Well there's no Playstation Dead Rising so there's little hope.

Capcom isn't as fond of releasing their games for all available consoles as Square Enix are.

Well, whatever the facts are (and speaking as a PS 4 user), this sucks any way you slice it. It's only the actual level of suckiness that is in question.

Either they'll complain for a year and buy it anyway...

Or, they'll complain for two years, watch the game on You Tube, the sales will be abysmal, and then it'll drop on PS 4 and PC and people will hand over their money finally.

Things have two different ways of going.