Tomb Raider (2013 Reboot)
Detailed thoughts and impressions on the way.
I went into Tomb Raider with tepid expectations. By the end, I had a newfound respect for it. It still isn’t exactly my kind of game, but I did get some enjoyment from it and I understand why people like it so much.
Stuff That Tomb Raider Does Well:
1) Graphics
Tomb Raider is a very pretty game. Being nearly 10 years old, its age does show somewhat when held up against modern offerings, and even against more recent Tomb Raider games. But it's still brimming with visual splendor today.
2) Production Values
Tomb Raider is full of exotic set dressing and locales straight out of an action movie. I know it’s basically singing to the tune of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS3, 2007), but they still set out to fill this game with a multitude of interesting scenes and vistas. These efforts really shine.
3) User-Friendliness
While playing Tomb Raider I never got stuck or unsure of what to do next. The pacing was also very conscientious of my time. I was able to take things in little 15 minute chunks with reasonably distributed save points.
It did irritate me a little that the save points – called “campfires” in-game – never actually telegraphed themselves as such. The words “now saving” never appeared on the in-game HUD, either. This lead to at least one misunderstanding where I thought I saved my progress but actually hadn't, forcing me to clear a section over again. After that I got paranoid and kept double checking that I had actually saved. But ultimately I got the hang of things and never experienced the problem again.
4) Character Animation
Lately I haven’t been playing many modern games so I might just be out of touch when I talk about this part. But I couldn’t help but notice how Lara Croft moves more like an actual human being during gameplay.
I’m accustomed to characters in 3D games turning on a dime, or unceremoniously “teleporting” from one character animation from another. But in this game Lara interpolates between actions more naturally. It’s as though she has a “turn radius” and inertia while running, which helped suspend my disbelief and felt kinesthetically nice for some reason.
5) Combat
This game’s combat is basically Gears of War (XBOX 360, 2006.) On normal mode it wasn't particularly challenging, but it still felt visceral and gratifying. The game does suffer from some tonal dissonance since it can’t always decide whether Lara is supposed to be a tender creature braving the elements or a cold-blooded murder factory. But killing droves of foes is a well-established pastime in video games, so there’s no disputing that Tomb Raider delivers there.
Also, I don’t know why a bow and arrow in shooter games always feels so raw and primal, inexplicably inflicting far more damage than bullets. Anyway, Tomb Raider’s bow is no exception to this. It felt so great I often preferred it over firearms.
Stuff about Tomb Raider That Doesn’t Do It for Me:
I need to preface this part by saying that Tomb Raider is a best-selling game and was so successful that it lead to at least two sequels. A lot of talented people worked themselves to the bone to get it out the door, garnering rave reviews and making a lot of gamers happy. So, I’m not writing this next part to be a contrarian asshole. It isn’t lost on me that I’m the outlier for failing to warm up to this game. I’m mostly trying to put to words what’s going on inside my own head, not to speak ill of a video game that millions of people enjoyed.
It’s actually quite out of character for me to be playing Tomb Raider in the first place since I play more old games than modern ones, with my sweet spot lying somewhere between 1985 and 2005. The modern stuff I play is mostly either A) first party Nintendo games B) crowdfunded nostalgia-bait games C) free to play battle royale games. (Sue me.)
This raises the question as to whether my lack of enthusiasm for Tomb Raider’s storytelling just means that my tastes are stuck in the past. I don’t believe this to be the case because the type of game Tomb Raider is trying to be has been around for a few decades and I’m not crazy about this type of game even when it’s from my preferred time period. I prefer Quake (PC, 1996) - which hardly has any story at all - over The Operative: No One Lives Forever (PC, 2000), which spends considerable time and energy contextualizing why you are playing.
A modern corollary to Quake's approach would probably be Superhot VR (PC, 2016), where faceless human figures made out of red glass aim guns at you, forcing you to bob and weave like Neo in the Matrix to not die. Superhot VR is praised to high heaven, yet it never aspires to dethrone The Godfather or something lofty like that. I also liked Superhot VR more than Tomb Raider 2013. So, again, it isn't just that I prefer old games over modern ones.
I think the heart of the issue is that when a game expends a certain percentage of its production values in service of trying to do movie stuff instead of video game stuff, I have trouble turning off my “movie brain” and turning on my “video game brain”. I’ve noticed many other gamers don’t seem to experience this.
This engenders a communication breakdown between myself and other gamers. Gamers often say, “That game had a good story.” This does not seem to mean the same thing that moviegoers mean when they say, “That movie had a good story.” What gamers seem to mean is something I would personally phrase closer to, “That game was full of spectacle and it made me feel powerful.”
Bearing that in mind, Tomb Raider succeeded in orchestrating a fireworks show of spectacle and making me feel powerful. But it failed to win me over with its story. The first reason for this was its clunky exposition.
1) Clunky Exposition Via the Radio Buddy
I've seen the “radio buddy” trope in games as early as Sin (PC, 1997) but it seemed to become really prevalent after Gears of War (XBOX 360, 2006.) Anyway, the “radio buddy” is when your video game character is in touch with someone over the radio who tells them what they need to do next in the game. I guess there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the radio buddy trope. I'm just personally not crazy about it because:
1a) The Radio Buddy Tropes Is So Overused Now That It Qualifies as a Cliché
“Cliche” is when a storytelling element is used so often that it becomes tiresome. A college level film student screenwriting textbook would consider these lines to be cliché:
“I have a bad feeling about this.”
”I always wanted to say that.”
“It's quiet. Too quiet.”
To be fair, there was probably a point in time where those sounded fresh and evocative. That is until everybody started using them. Then they got worn-out and dull.
Personally, I lose myself in a piece of storytelling when I forget that what I'm experiencing is a story. When I see or hear something that I have seen or heard a thousand times before, it reminds me I am experiencing an artificial story somebody created, deflating my suspension of disbelief.
1b) The Radio Buddy Trope Is Usually Symptomatic of Writing Which Tells Rather Than Shows
Telling:
Bob came home from work. He was very tired. “I am so tired.” Bob said. “I just want to sit down and rest.”
Showing:
Bob came home from work. He took off his coat and reached over to hang it on the coat rack, but he missed and it fell on the floor. Bob made no effort to pick it up. He just trudged toward his easy chair.
The first paragraph spoon-feeds information to the reader, instructing them how to feel. The second paragraph tries to depict the way a person behaves when they are tired without ever using the word “tired”. Hopefully the audience reaches their own conclusions, thinking, “Bob must be tired.”
Generally when people think that something was their own idea, it feels more significant, even if a writer was leading them to that conclusion on purpose. It has a way of making people feel they experienced the scene themselves, deepening their suspension of disbelief and making them forget it's all fake.
Fallout 3 (PC, 2008) is an RPG where you emerge from a subterranean bunker after a nuclear war has ravaged the earth. One time, while wandering the wasteland, I came across a planetarium in the ruins Washington DC. Inside, an old display of the stars and planets creaked to life and a recorded voice began speaking. I'm paraphrasing but he said something like, “Humanity has always had their eyes on the stars. Who knows what the future of space travel will hold?”
A harrowing feeling crept over me. I knew that in Fallout 3's world, humanity had come just short of destroying itself. The peace and prosperity necessary to get personnel and equipment into space was all but gone. But the stars and planets were still there, indifferent to mankind's problems. It made me feel insignificant, small, and scared.
I don't recall this sort of environmental storytelling in Tomb Raider 2013. Tomb Raider was so preoccupied with corralling me to the next thing, Lara was so eager to proclaim her thoughts to no one in particular so that I could conveniently glean exposition from her, and her radio buddy was so dutiful in instructing me what to do next that I never had time to be alone with my thoughts and process how I felt about everything.
As I write this, it occurs to me that I can't remember Fallout 3 ever using a radio buddy.
1c) Sometimes Tomb Raider's Radio Buddy Doesn't Even Make Sense
One scene comes to mind where Lara Croft is shimmying across the side of a bridge. Atop the bridge are bad guys with guns who will kill her if they notice her. There are gaps in the bridge Lara must leap across, exposing herself to view. Lara's radio buddy is nearby with a sniper rifle telling her over a walkie talkie when it's safe to dart across without being seen. He says, “Now, Lara! Quickly jump across while they're not looking!”
The walkie talkie is clipped to Lara's belt. Lara is not wearing a bluetooth earpiece. Her friend's voice is emanating out of the walkie talkie. If it's loud enough for Lara to hear, wouldn't the bad guys on the bridge – who are within earshot – be able to hear it too, rousing their suspicion and exposing Lara's whereabouts? The game's predilection to brush this inconvenience under the rug took me out of things.
1d) Radio Buddies Tend to Have Weak Characterization
I'd like to bring up Woody and Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story. Even in silhouette, these two characters appear totally unique. Buzz is stout, broad shouldered, and confident. He moves with military precision. Woody is lanky, with floppier, more rope-like body movements. These endearingly recognizable qualities extend to Tom Hanks's and Tim Allen's voice performances. If I were to hear a line of dialog from one of these characters, I wouldn't even need to lay eyes on them to identify who had uttered it.
I rarely get this quality from video game radio buddies, including Tomb Raider's. You could replace the radio buddy from Crysis, Gears of War, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, etc. with the one in Tomb Raider or vice versa and I'd hard be hard pressed to notice. In all these games, the radio buddy's characterization only goes as far as barking expository information in a tone falling somewhere between convicted about something or other and vaguely angry. The sentiment seems to be that the cadence and amplitude of their voice should be enough to get my blood pumping and make me care about whatever's going on, not the endearingly specific qualities that make them who they are as characters. Also it smells like the “
As You Know, Bob” trope.
I'm done talking about Tomb Raider's radio buddy so I'll segue from characterization to Tomb Raider's:
2) Cast of Forgettable Characters
The following is a clip from the Red Letter Media review of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace:
“Let's ask some real people about the Star Wars characters and see what they say. I posed a simple challenge to them. Describe the following Star Wars character without what they look like, what kind of costume they wore, or what their profession or role in the movie was. Describe this character to your friends like they ain't never seen Star Wars. The more descriptive they could get, the stronger the character. [Let's start with] Han Solo.”
“He's a rogue.”
“He's very arrogant, charming.”
“Roguish, if you will.”
“Han Solo is totally dashing.”
“Wannabe dashing. He fancies himself a playboy.”
“He's a smarmy, cocksure womanizer.”
“Scoundrel.”
“He's pigheaded.”
“Completely sexy in a bad boy sort of way, like he's going to ride the line.”
“He's got a bit of a dark streak to him with shooting Rito in the bar.”
“But also deep down has the heart of a thief with a heart of gold. That's his character, really.”
“[Next let's talk about] Qui Gon Jinn.”
“He is... stoic?”
“I don't remember that character.”
“Well he has a beard.”
“Qui Gon Jinn and uh... he was...”
“... Stern?” Tomb Raider has a cast of characters which came across to me like a group of Qui Gon Jinns. They all did things and had spoken dialog and had innumerable close shaves with death. Some of them even died. They're all fine insofar as they are merely in service of getting whisked along from one spectacle to the next and making the player feel powerful by praising Lara Croft – i.e. the player – for how brave and powerful she has become since getting shipwrecked on the island where the game takes place. Yet I never really got to know any of them. I'm not sure if they fully qualify as characters. They're more like archetypes that wear costumes and recite lines of dialog.
3) Quick Time Events (QTEs)
Tomb Raider has scripted segments where scary things will happen, such as falling off a cliff, getting attacked by a wolf, or nearly getting hit by a crashing airplane. To survive these parts, the game prompts the player to press a button with the correct timing.
I can tell that people like these QTEs because they are orchestrated to raise tension and make the player feel more involved in what’s going on. They also showcase the game’s production values, with set pieces and visual spectacle rivaling a Hollywood production. Despite all this, I rarely felt any tension during these parts.
I’m really not saying this because I want to be an argumentative stick in the mud. Rather, I think that Lara Croft’s close shaves with death are intended to raise my heart rate, they just fail to do that because within the context of an interactive video game, I know that they were all preordained to happen. They are never serendipitously occurring because underlying simulations within the game caused them to take place.
I am fine with manufactured crises in a movie because movies are perfectly linear and can never diverge from their timeline. Guardians of the Galaxy is going to be exactly the same experience no matter how many times I watch it. There is simply no other way to create tension in that medium aside from scheduling disasters to happen on purpose.
But to me, video games are supposed to be a medium where the butterfly effect can influence my play-through into being unique from all other possible permutations. Tomb Raider’s scripted QTE’s seem symptomatic of the belief that if video games adopt the cosmetic trappings of films, then it will somehow elevate video games to the same glamor as films.
This is likely why getting my arms shot off and losing all my weapons' systems in Mechwarrior 2 (PC, 1994) puts me on the edge of my seat in a way that Tomb Raider 2013 never will. Mechwarrior 2's graphics look like Legos, making it visually simpler than Tomb Raider 2013. But Mechwarrior 2 also has damage modeling which impacts the performance of your mech depending on where you get shot. This makes Mechwarrior 2 mechanically deeper than Tomb Raider 2013 even though it appears to be more primitive on a cosmetic level.
The first time Lara nearly plummeted to her doom, I admit that I was alarmed. But when that would happen every single time Lara needed to traverse from one place to another, it wasn't miraculous anymore. It had become her primary method of locomotion. Lara leaps over death-defying heights as routinely as Spider Man, yet each and every time the game portrays this as though I'm supposed to clutch my pearls and say, “Oh no, she almost fell! Will she make it this time?” Of course she'll make it. I've lost count of how many times she's made it.
This seemed to tie into an overall inconsequential feeling pervading Tomb Raider. Lara sustains brutal injuries, all of which are preordained like the QTEs. She cries out in agony, staggers around, and carries on with similar theatrics. But there's no lasting penalty for any misfortune that befalls her. One part stands out to me where Lara falls down a tree, hitting every branch on the way down. Lara clutches her stomach, hobbling one step at a time as the player camera blurs to signify her delirium. She proclaims something like, “I need medical attention.” Then upon crossing paths with an enemy, Lara effortlessly draws her bow and penetrates her target with arrow after arrow.
Have you ever fired a bow and arrow in real life? It's
difficult. It takes tremendous upper arm strength just to fire it once, much less in rapid succession. I'm not even sure I could do it in good health. It would be downright impossible after falling out of a tree and getting injured.
I guess what I'm getting at is this: is Lara supposed to be a vulnerable creature who bleeds and gets broken bones, or a superhuman action hero who can deflect bullets with her wrists? It would be fine by me if the game would just commit to one or the other, but I just can't accept her as both.
4) No Levity at All
In the video game Portal 2 (PC, 2011), the main character - Chell - awakens from many years of cryogenic slumber. Wheatley, the robotic custodian of the science lab where Chell woke up, is checking her over to make sure she has survived. He comments,
“You might have very minor case of serious brain damage.” I'm well aware that dissecting a joke and explaining what makes the joke tick kills it dead so I'll spare you step-by-step deposition on why that made me laugh. The point is that a played Portal 2 almost a decade ago and I still remember that line more vividly than dozens of gun-toting, gravelly-voiced game protagonists reciting platitudes that sound profound until you stop and think about about them for longer than 5 seconds.
I'll bring up just one more example of levity from the trailer for Half Life: Alyx (PC, 2019). Russel tosses a handgun Alyx's way, reassuring her,
“You’re going to need a gun! Don’t worry, it’s unloaded.” The gun lands on the hood of a car and discharges, firing a stray round. Russel says,
“It’s unloaded now!” I can't remember a single time that Tomb Raider 2013 made me smile this way. While writing this, I caught myself wondering why I was so critical of Lara Croft conveniently forgetting her injuries while I never seemed to mind when Arnold Schwarzenegger flippantly shakes off gunshot wounds in movies like Commando. Maybe it's because of silly double ententes like, “Let off some steam, Bennet!” or “I let him go.” I guess that sardonic humor reminds me that Arnold's escapades take place in an idealized world that doesn't follow the same rules as my own.
Tomb Raider never seems willing to make such concessions. I sense that Tomb Raider wants to be taken seriously with such white-knuckled intensity that it can't relent long enough to show any real humanity. To be fair, getting run through with a metal rod, wading through metric tons of decomposing human remains, and nearly get raped by a gun-toting mercenary are all raw, visceral experiences. But when these misfortunes befall people who can neither laugh nor make me laugh, it leaves me feeling emotionally anesthetized.
5) Uncanny Valley
Tomb Raider looks great when the camera is over Lara’s shoulder about 15 feet away. When it gets up close and personal on the characters' faces, the technology just isn't up to it. Facial hair, whiskers, etc. are quite obviously painted onto the male characters' diffuse maps. UV stretching is apparent when the characters' flex their facial muscles too far. Sometimes their eyes appear glassy. Their clothes have folds in them, but these never shift or change as the characters move their bodies. Their outfits are seemingly sculpted out of stone.
This wouldn't matter in a video game, but Tomb Raider 2013 isn't content to just be a video game, it also wants to be a movie. So it zooms invasively close to the characters' faces, making them crank out performances while the camera follows the same cinematic blocking as a drama. I sense the underlying logic to be, “Movies do these things, therefore our game should do these things, too.”
Earlier I mentioned a scene where a mercenary started to get rapey with Lara Croft. Lara is hiding then the mercenary finds and catches her. He pins her to a wall then moves his face up close to the side of her neck, creepily smelling her. Alarm bells went off in my head, and not just because of the abusive undertones. What I mean is that I could no longer accept these computer generated people as actual people. Don't ask me how I could sense this, but somehow I could tell Lara's attacker wasn't actually breathing. He was making primal breathing sounds, but on some ineffable level I could tell he didn't actually have any lungs and what I was hearing was just a sound clip of a man breathing. It really took me out of things.
Closing Thoughts
The nice thing I can say about Tomb Raider is that it was relaxing, which is an admittedly weird take since this game was meant to be more like a roller coaster. But since I felt that nothing was really at stake, I also felt that nothing could actually go wrong, which had a calming effect on me. I'd liken it to watching a rainstorm through my windowpane, or carnivorous animals on TV.
It's worth pointing out that real life often presents us with problems that have no clear answers, and sometimes even the most judicious choices don't lead to success. So, there was something reassuring about Tomb Raider's world where I could get impaled on a tree and it didn't really matter. All I had to do was press the reset button and try again with almost no inconvenience posed to me.
Maybe I need to view games like Tomb Raider 2013 as neither films nor video games, but instead a high tech, 21st century version of the action figure play sets I used to see advertised during Saturday morning cartoons. Nobody really expects a plastic figurine who repeats catchphrases when you press a button on their back to have thoughtful characterization or motivations. Action figures aren't supposed to have intricate, thought-provoking game rules or damage modeling. They're meant more as props in service of make-believe – the insertion of oneself into the shoes of a larger-than-life hero and the escape from one's mundane day-to-day life and responsibilities through the power of imagination. Taken in that light, Tomb Raider strikes me as a ho-hum video game, a soulless movie, and a phenomenal action figure.