Rise of the Tomb Raider
The 2013 reboot of Tomb Raider officially brought me back into video games. I played a few games here and there, but for the most part my video gaming was somewhat extinguished beyond a game of Angry Birds.
So when I heard of this new take on Lara Croft I did something unimaginable and purchased a copy the day it came out, and experienced a game like none other I played before. More than just exploring, hacking, shooting, and climbing, the Tomb Raider reboot turned Lara into a real person, and for the first time I felt an emotional connection to a character in a story that I was directly involved with.
More than just a person in a movie that I have no control over, Lara was someone whose life was intertwined with mine. My decisions and quick reflexes drove this story forward. Video games have changed, and definitely for the better. It was a good time to come back into the fold.
And today is definitely an exciting time for video games, because we finally got our first taste of the upcoming Rise of the Tomb Raider trailer.
We see a hooded Lara sitting in a therapy session, listening to her therapist discuss ways to help her overcome these shadows that loom over her. The way she clutches the chair, rubs her hands, and quickly stomps the heel of her foot shows us that this is a woman that has experienced something truly horrible.
Spliced in with several exciting cuts of her falling into water, being chased by a bear, jumping off a cliff, silently killing someone, and we get a sense of the darker journey she has taken since the beginning of the last game. She is troubled, and coming to terms with whom she is destined to be.
What some people complained about the last game being more about Lara and less about actual tomb raiding might hopefully now see the reasoning behind such a drastic turn in the series. Thanks to the wonderful re-imagining by Rhianna Pratchett, I no longer see Lara as a big breasted killing machine. I see a strong young woman who is fighting the world around her and the demons inside as she slowly discovers herself, much like the tombs she explores.
