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Tomb Raider

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Re: Tomb Raider

#111
post #45
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

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.

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...

Re: Tomb Raider

#112
post #72
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Tomb Raider

#113
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it is so important for those people who love to complain about such stuff. Though I suspect most of the people complaining about her proportions didn't even play the games themselves. You can make your point without claiming that people who have a different view just “love to complain”. It might be worth asking yourself why they're complaining instead of dismissing their views — you wouldn't want someone else to…

But I think it's true in that case. At least Goulet's arguments mentioned in the article are very bad, as I wrote elsewhere in this thread.

Even if the arguments are bad, this does not mean the person making them just loves to complain. Have you never made a bad argument?

Re: Tomb Raider

#114
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Re: Tomb Raider

#115
post #107
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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".

Re: Tomb Raider

#116
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But I think it's true in that case. At least Goulet's arguments mentioned in the article are very bad, as I wrote elsewhere in this thread.

Even if the arguments are bad, this does not mean the person making them just loves to complain. Have you never made a bad argument?

But it does seem like motivated reasoning. I never hear men complain about the unrealistic depiction of men in women shows. Neither with good nor with bad arguments.

To be fair, most women didn't complain about Lara Croft or Princess Peach either. It was just some (influential!) minority of feminists who complained about this, got amplified by sympathetic journalists (who mostly lean pretty far left), and the rest is history.

Re: Tomb Raider

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the arguments are bad, this does not mean the person making them just loves to complain. Have you never made a bad argument?

But it does seem like motivated reasoning. I never hear men complain about the unrealistic depiction of men in women shows. Neither with good nor with bad arguments. To be fair, most women didn't complain about Lara Croft or Princess Peach either. It was just some (influential!) minority of feminists who complained about this, got amplified by sympathetic journalists (who mostly lean pretty far left), and the rest is…

> I never hear men complain about the unrealistic depiction of men in women shows.

Err, really? I'm a man and I complain about this all the time, and so do some of my friends. In any case, even if you've never heard people talk about this, I'm sure there are objections to the depictions of men that _you_ could imagine. If you think these objections are underrepresented, talking to those around you about them would be a positive influence.

> It was just some (influential!) minority of feminists who complained about this, got amplified by sympathetic journalists (who mostly lean pretty far left), and the rest is history.

Already in this sentence you're discounting the fact that these complaints resonate with people. I'm not sure in which way you think these feminists are “influential”, but let's say journalists widely covered certain arguments. Do you mean this media coverage somehow brainwashed people? Surely not, because you would be denying the agency of readers. Clearly there is something in these arguments that legitimately appeals to people. Isn't it interesting and important to find out what parts of the arguments resonated with someone and why, even if you think the end result is wrong?

For example, I disagree with those who voted for Brexit to happen. But if I just dismissed them as brainwashed idiots, that would be very foolish of me. These people voted this way for a reason, and I need to understand which part of Brexit resonated with them, even if I think they came to the wrong conclusion, otherwise I can never understand them and I can never advocate for an alternative that will meet their needs as well.

> (who mostly lean pretty far left)

Again, why does this matter? There is no need to resort to football team factionalism, to make things about politics instead of policies. Do you think the arguments are good? Great, then these people have a point. Do you think these arguments are bad? Okay, that's fair, make your opinion heard so that you can add your voice. Tell us in more detail about why those policies are bad, not about why _the people making those points_ are bad. It would be rash of me to psychoanalyse why are you are making certain arguments without even knowing you, let alone to say that you are trying to influence people as part of some conspiracy. (Sorry if I'm portraying your view in an overdramatic way but it did sound like you were saying something like this a little bit.)

> motivated reasoning

Motivated by what? Do you really think a love of complaining is a more likely motivator than a desire to right a perceived injustice?

Re: Tomb Raider

#119
post #98
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, TIL, thanks. But they all should look like Big Boss then? Considering the reply to your comment that Venom underwent plastic surgery... Kojima may be a genius game designer, but he's an awful writer IMO. None of his lore makes sense, and is only convoluted for it be served in exposition dumps in hour-long cutscenes. Death Stranding is a prime example of that. I enjoyed playing it, but can't remember a thing about…

> But they all should look like Big Boss then? Not quite, because they were not all direct clones the way we think of cloning in real life, because in the Metal Gear universe, they could do "selective cloning". I forgot the details of how exactly they described it (and I haven't played beyond MGS3 yet). But in MGS, Liquid and Solid have a conversation about it, where Liquid insinuates that they took the "best genes"…

Actually, Solid being the better clone and Liquid being inferior is unreliable narration on Liquid’s part. He was led to believe so, but Revolver Ocelot contradicts him later on.

Revolver Ocelot: "Yes. The inferior one was the winner after all. ...That's right. Until the very end, Liquid thought he was the inferior one."

Re: Tomb Raider

#120

Why do I recall seeing pictures of an actual human female model posing for the artists at the studio? I swear there was one, thought they had quotes from her back in Game Developer or somewhere.

Maybe this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36178155

Yep: https://www.google.com/search?q=rhona+mitra+tomb+raider+mode...
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