![]() ![]() ![]() “Launching a franchise with a female archaeologist was seen as a novel concept,” Samit Sarkar, an editor at Vox’s sister site Polygon, told me. A flurry of user-made game patches with titles like “Nude Raider,” made solely for the purpose of removing her clothes to reveal her pixellated body, didn’t help that impression. With her “ polygonal breasts” and breathy voice, it was hard for some critics to see her as representing more than a digitized sexual fantasy. When Tomb Raider first appeared on the scene, swiftly followed by Tomb Raider II a year later, Lara Croft was critiqued as belonging to a long cultural tradition of science-fiction fembots. Lara Croft was the original “ cyberbabe” - but from the beginning, she was also a whole lot more But it’s virtually impossible to find an abiding cultural conversation about Lara that doesn’t ultimately return to debate over whether she’s an empowering character.Īnd it’s impossible to consider her as a character without also considering the role she holds within gaming as essentially the first, and still one of the only, female characters to helm an action gaming franchise. Over the years, she’s also served as an example of gaming evolution, particularly in terms of graphic design. Lara Croft has always been a cultural flashpoint, always in direct relation to her gender. Since Lara Croft blew up gaming culture in 1996 with the first installment of Tomb Raider, her character has been so predominantly defined by her sex appeal that two decades on, we’re still trying to extricate conversations about her from conversations about her breasts. ![]()
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