Tomb Raider Will Stop Raiding Tombs

Video Games

Lara Croft is getting another makeover, but this time, it’s more of a personality transplant than cosmetic surgery. The website Tomb Raider Chronicles got ahold of an excerpt from the rulebook for the upcoming Tomb Raider tabletop game, Tomb Raider: Shadows of Truth, and it promises a Lara Croft redefined for “modern audiences.” It’s basically the same obnoxious woke crap Crystal Dynamics put before the Tomb Raider I-III Remastered release where they accused the franchise they want to appropriate to make money from of being racist and colonialist and a bunch of other terms college students throw into essays to get extra credit. The original X post with the rulebook excerpt that Tomb Raider Chronicles used appears to have been deleted, but Melonie Mac has your back:

Us classic fans have seen the writing on the wall all along, the devs have outright been telling us this for years and some people still want to be delulu about it

Crystal Dynamics' Lara Croft isn't really Lara Croft, she's some woke "truth seeker," not a Tomb Raider https://t.co/jk811YjOsa pic.twitter.com/0UuE7EqW3p

— Melonie Mac ✝️🎮🖤 (@MelonieMac) April 9, 2024

Doesn’t that sound like fun? You get to cry over white guilt and ask a bunch of natives who worship idols how you can be a better citizen of the world! Who wants a swashbuckling adventure series that invokes Indiana Jones when they can have a diversity lecture on Western imperialism that invokes an intersectional feminist rally? It feels like they’re trying to change Tomb Raider gradually, with each new product they put out another chip at Lara Croft’s persona. That warning message in front of the remastered trilogy was to try to put you in the mindset that you should be ashamed of the series’ origins – you know, the ones that made it popular in the first place – and this is a tabletop game, which is really just an offshoot of the main leg of the franchise, the video games. This way, they can test the waters without ruining something that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce while slowly conditioning fans to see Lara in a new light.

This modern trend of changing characters to the point where they’re unrecognizable really separates true fans from pretenders. For example, look at Mary Jane Watson in the new Spider-Man games from Sony. Even beyond her downgraded looks, she’s no longer an actress or fashion model but a budding reporter. She’s not fun, never wanting to party or dance the night away because she’s too focused on her journalism career – the one that used to be Peter’s. She isn’t a fashionista anymore, dressing in basic jeans and shirts. And she’s no longer got that playful, sexy demeanor, instead being smug, condescending, and constantly angry with Peter, whom she doesn’t even seem to like very much. These are fundamental character traits that have been radically altered to make her more in line with what the developers want her to be. Isn’t it fair to say that this is simply not Mary Jane Watson anymore? Now, what do you say about Lara Croft being a tomb raider who no longer raids tombs, a collector of rare items who thinks collecting rare items is racist, and an adventurer who apologizes for going on adventures? Is that still Lara Croft? And if you think it is, how much did you ever really like the character? I think it’s safe to say the folks at Crystal Dynamics never did.

I don’t think anyone with half a brain believes that changing Lara Croft like this will go over well; unfortunately, like the movie business and every other damn thing, the gaming industry is increasingly being run by ideological lunatics who care more about activism than money. But it also seems to me like they believe they can alter gamers’ opinion of Lara over time with incremental changes like this. I doubt they’ll succeed; this agenda appears to have reached its tipping point, and people are too wary of it now, and they’re beyond fed up with it. But that won’t stop Crystal Dynamics from trying. I’d say it’s going to be a rough decade or so for Tomb Raider fans, but that implies it’ll be any different for anyone else.