There's a huge problem with this franchise though that people misremember it badly. They were not great games.
The first game was good, but somewhat overrated (the PS1 era one). It was a decent port to 3D of animation-constrained platforming, competently made, even if the mechanic is inherently flawed.
I think that not contextualizing the gaming landscape at the time makes your statement harsher than they need to be.
Back in the '90s and early 2000s, gaming was like the wild west.
If you dive back into the games released at the time, there are a few key things that really set "
Tomb Raider" apart. For one, traversal and movement mechanics were groundbreaking.
The whole concept of navigating complex 3D environments was brand new:
3D platformers were just getting off the ground. Moving from 2D to 3D wasn’t just a simple graphics upgrade, it meant developers had to rethink everything. They were forced to come up with new designs, fresh ideas, and processes that had barely ever been attempted before.
3D technology already existed, sure, but not to the scale that the PS1 brought it to.
What Tomb Raider brought to the table was a realistic (
for the time) model of a 3D character performing a variety of acrobatics and somewhat complex animations. Using the available rigs at the time, they managed to create movement that stood out and made some noise in the industry.
Excalibur 2555 A.D 1997
Tomb Raider1996
Now I'm taking a really extreme example, but still, even "Resident Evil" would be considered garbage if we were to go down that road
Game developers were experimenting and, frankly, figuring things out as they went along. That’s why we got some of the most iconic and innovative games during the span of
that generation. And across the board, not just on PS1.
Whether it was "
Tomb Raider" or even something like "
Ape Escape" with its joystick controls,
or even "Mario 3D" which was mind-blowing, it was a very special thing to be a gamer at that time.
Lara’s animations and movement had everyone in awe. Despite the jagged edges and clunky controls by today’s standards, it felt like a
revolution back then. "Tomb Raider" had this immersive feel to it, whether it was climbing, swimming, or shooting.
And the level design was groundbreaking too for its time. It wasn’t just about blasting through enemies, it was about solving puzzles, exploring fantasized lost remnants of past eras, understanding a level gimmick to make it to the next, and Lara of course.
No doubt Lara's curves were a major part of why she stuck in people’s heads though, I give you that. Take the exact same game, have Lara replaced by a preachy, fully-covered A+ model in the other, and guess which one would do better...
"At four and a half months old, a human fetus has a reptile’s tail, a remnant of our evolution. Maybe that’s what I couldn’t escape; you can fight a lot of enemies and survive, but if you fight your biology, you always lose."
Lara, Xena, Sonja, and the rest? They weren’t just about looking good. Their characters inspired millions, and they did so by having something for
everyone.
Cultural relevance isn’t something that just happens randomly.
It had excellent level design and a sense of exploration and fighting a dangerous environment that you never see nowadays except perhaps in some Souls.
Yes, intricate levels, I mean the
Venice section(
TRII) when it came out was a thing of beauty.
These heroines came from a PHILOGYNISTIC male imagination. Come on, you really think that a bunch of artistically-inclined nerdy Jewish and Italian guys in comic book art studios in the 1930s hated women? Of course not. They worshipped them; they fantasized about them; they wanted to be with them. They were some of the most 'feminist' men of their time.
Italian men tend to be misogynistic, even now. I would know I'm of Italian descent.
The word "macho" isn't Brazilian after all.
Even in countries like America, a lot of opportunities were denied to women in the past because they didn’t fit the expectations of the time. Not judging or anything, but that's fact.
It's always hard to properly conceptualize how things were back then since we barely understand what the present even is, as Machiavelli reminds us.
The issue isn’t the way characters are dressed or portrayed. It’s about how certain forces keep trying to normalize thoughts, censoring instincts. There’s nothing wrong with writing bold or daring story-lines,
as long as they stay within fiction.
There's nothing wrong with wanting to celebrate femininity by crafting fantasized representation.
Art should be free to explore anything.
).