E3 2012: Tomb Raider and the Breaking of Lara Croft

A long year has passed since E3 2011, when a young, inexperienced and nearly broken Lara Croft crawled shakily from the stabby innards of a mysterious island and into our consciousness. One year later, we find her limping ahead into a heaving wilderness poised to play the grindstone to her plentiful rough edges, forging a raider of tombs one unsteady step at a time.As the sun sags into the horizon, falling temperatures and bitey showers send her into stinging shivers, a serious signal for shelter. This is Lara as Survivalist, no longer simply a 21 year-old college graduate, every step taken could mean life or death in this place.

It’s a colorful living world, the island, lost to itself and a host of creatures eager to devour her, animal and otherwise. Collecting herself, she must act now. Time is short. She’s freezing, visibly shaking, her thick breath following her as she stumbles upon the remnants of a campfire and anxiously steps up to this next test of her will. She cobbles together a kindling frame as her own personal Jack London moment materializes: she has one match. It’s woman versus the wild.

 Thankfully, she lights the fire. The gadget-toting, back-flipping, T-Rex killing heroine nowhere to be seen, our young Lara is reduced to a wet, exhausted lump. Exhaling, going limp, she rests.Her breath collected, she’s recast again, this time as Lara, Hunter and Gatherer.Prying a bow from a corpse strung up in a tree, she’s armed and ready to hunt, to eat. Lucky for her, the nearby stretches of bush teem with deer. Unluckily for her, the myriad packs of deer-hunting wolves nearby look tired of venison.Lara as Hunter is sympathetic. She’s isolated, alone and hungry, unsure of herself but resolved to survive. The deer doesn’t understand what’s about to happen. Neither does Lara, at least not fully. After downing the animal, she apologizes thoughtfully. She is a character coming to terms with her reality and the connections between her life and the taking of others. She eggs herself on. “I can do this.” She gores the deer and sets up to eat. She’s different, one more step towards becoming… her.

Rested and fed, she manages to raise Roth with a recovered walkie-talkie. A British treasure hunter who commandeered the Endurance (her ship), Roth reassures her and reminds her of what she always told herself: “All you have to do is keep on moving.”And move she does, eventually into earshot of… music? On the island? Droning chants draw her to a shack and down into a plunging tunnel deep underground. The last time she spent any time in the gut of the island, it nearly killed her several times over. She’s more together than before. And armed. She quickly finds herself chest-deep in water again, wading through god knows what. Emptied into a preservation room of sorts, she edges her way past large hock shanks of meat hung on hooks. Lovely.More walking, more clausterphobic sticky tunnels, more ritualistic totems, and she’s soon back outside among the shrines, the wolves, and worse: a wobbly creep named Mathias who’s suspiciously warming himself by a fire with her missing friend, Sam. Something is not right, and his coy ruse quickly dissolves into a stand-off that Lara can’t win. Were she the seasoned athletic sure-shot of the Tomb Raider games of yore, she’d have easily dispatched Mathias with a stylish slow-mo bow shot - blindfolded - from behind the back. This time, he gets away, her shaky untested hands unable to fire a shot with Sam so close in his clutches. Well, that, and she steps into a bear trap.Trapped, the carnivores descend. With no intentions of becoming Lara, Wolf Dinner, she gets to work with her bow. Quick time events ensue, arrows fly, wolves die. She’s now Kill or be Killed Lara, and she does what needs doing.Thankfully, she’s reunited with a crowd of fellow Endurance castaways, together they agree to search for Sam and attempt to find out what’s happening on the island. Perhaps as a subtle nod to her lack of refined instincts, she heads off with the most sketchy guy in the group, the badly bleached and bespeckled Dr. Whitman. She thinks about it, too, but she goes ahead and makes the bad choice.If all of this sounds a bit like watching and not playing, worry not; there’s plenty of video game in all of this. Sometimes you just notice it more than others, in this case I’m speaking of the XP system tied to upgrading your survival skills. Called Ingenuity Upgrades, you can apply XP you earn doing things like hunting or collecting ‘salvageable goods’ to improve your stuff and skills. Fortifying your virtual Lara with the mettle to survive seems natural, but the implementation pops up at the darndest times. It’s interesting that these mechanics are actually noticeable by comparison to the rest of the game, which feels curiously ungamey. Other things like the animation for “salvaging” boxes – the boxes fall, break and disappear - looks strange. But with no HUD, a tiny reticle and the errant quick time event, it’s more a testimony to the up-to-your-nostrils feel of the game than a real knock against these more obvious notes, but it all stood out just the same. Same with her accent, which still wobbles questionably between believable young British and awkwardly moany young British, it just shakes up the experience a bit.

Anyways, exposition unfolds as Lara and the not-so good doctor push onward up the mountain. Talk of witchcraft, myths, and a Lost Kingdom build as he conveniently leads them to a certain shrine rather easily. Four men emerge from the shadows in the expected set-up. Binding Lara, they proceed to burn the place down. Lara’s latest role, this time as Prisoner, brings with it all new anxieties. She manages to sneak away amidst the blaze and smoke, looking for her friends and a quick way out from the men filled with bad intentions.Snaking through the shadows in a quick tense stealth section, Lara makes her way past several guards only to reach a bottleneck. Nowhere to go, she hides - trapped, like cornered prey. She’s back where she began - no options, no tools, no weapons, hands bound. Wounded, gasping. A woman on the edge.The leader finds her, urges her out at gunpoint, awkwardly moving his eyes and fingers over his game.

Then Lara snaps.Wiser, harder, more desperate, Kill or be Killed Lara takes over. With a knee to his crotch and a bite to his ear, she frees the gun. Struggling, he grabs it, now her. They roll, push and pull. More quick time events lead to a shot fired, malforming his skull with a thwap, twisting his face into something else, something broken. Something dead.

Like a spent cartridge flung to the ground with a boom and a flash, smoking and red hot. Torn down, spotted with blood and death, she gathers herself to her feet. Steadying her sidearm, she’s steely eyed and purposeful. There’s no apology for this kill, but there is reflection. She’s hardly sorry though.

The 21 year-old gone, a decided woman emerges like the sole survivor of a slasher film, stumbling from the grip of the kill night - Lara, the Killer - and into the morning sun of a Tomb Raider game.