I'm going off-topic a bit, if I may, to talk about how I feel about this new entry in the series. I've gotta say I'm not sold on the concept. I played the last two. the reboot was decent and the last one while poorly optimised had a few good ideas but it was overall a flop in my book. I also think they should let go of the voice actress. everything about her performance was off-putting. hopefully, they'll do right by Lara this time around.

I agree about the voice actress but I can't imagine they'll scrap her at this point. She's obseeeeesed with breathy elongaaaaation of woooords. Overacting at its worst. But weirdly, the croft manor DLC her voice acting is way toned down but it's to the point it sounds super lazy and she can't be arsed anymore. There doesn't seem to be a middle ground for her. It's the one thing I'm excited about wrapping up this trilogy. It means future titles (assuming there even are any) probably won't include her. And it'll be infinitely better just for that.

you mean like the intimate side story in Mass effect. not sure if anyone would take the 3rd TR game seriously...
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I just want a good story, larger maps, insane visual lifts, and fun quests. i liked the buffs and De-buffs added in the second game too. it added more replay value.

I can't wait to see where the team is taking the series. it would be also nice to see some optional co-op added to the story mode. i haven't had good co-op since Halo and gears back in the day.

Wow, I personally did not like RoTR story, but you guys have serious misgivings about the other stuff in the game huh?!

On the story, as long as they don't turn this into the Spanish were in South America as part of Trinity or some BS like that, I am ok with it. There is a lot of vilifying/undermining the Spanish efforts of that time taking place in recent years.

Only on Wednesdays.

As far as the Tomb Raider reboot, the story and side characters are my biggest complaints. Jorah is damn near 400lbs. Why in the hell his fat ass climbing up a snow covered mountain? Every step he takes risks a avalanche. My guess he's doing it because he has a crush on Lara Croft. She's not offering Jorah any puddy, so what's the point? If I was writing the story, I would have them being in a occasional intimate relationship. It would add depth to their characters as far as motivation. I like my Rated M for Mature games Mature. David Cage is one of the few developers that shares my vision, which is why I'm so excited about Detroit Become Human.

loool! I think Jonah is playing the role of Lara's non-white buddy. But yea, maybe they will get married in this game or something and you will be happy with that plot thread resolved lol.

Jonah getting married?

the return of Kurtis!
https://pre00.deviantart.net/5fab/th/pre/f/2013/04...

after all these years where did he go?....that would be a trip.

exactly ! I couldn't have said it better myself

yes surprisingly that makes sense. I hated that character Jonah. and the way Lara's voice actress calls his name when distress in the beginning chapter of the game. that shrill, grating voice. "JOOOONAAAAAH".
In my opinion these are the areas that require extra effort on the part of the developer:

-animations
-gameplay innovations
-exciting set pieces (no more bear crap)
- music (it was fine but I wish they had Hans Zimmer on board)
- as mentioned by KORNdog it now seems almost impossible at this point, but changing the voice actress
-more linear level designs with more control and quality
-OPTIMISATION !!!
-sound design was terrible ! (the old guns sounded like squirt guns)

one more thing, this is much deeper and more personal than my previous post but one worth mentioning I think:
one thing that really got on my nerves was the fact that Lara refuses to accept her true nature. she has killed hundreds of people on all her expeditions and yet she is still depicted as an innocent girl who just wants to study the ancient ruins of the world. she was never given the choice to embrace this dark side of her personality, to face a dilemma, to feel regretful. her conscience never seems to trouble her.
the way the writers shove her down our throats is idiotic and somehow offensive. it is insulting to one's intelligence to be forced into ignoring this fact and going on like nothing has ever happened. she is a murderer at this point in the story and yet there's still no inner-struggle or conflict of some sort.
the fact that she is still indifferent to all this, and not haunted by those gory violent kills, even slightly, makes her a maniac and a lunatic.

my apologies to TR fans here, I don't mean to be harsh, but that's the truth

Technically, she is not a murderer. It could be (rightfully, in my opinion) argued that she has merely killed in self-defense or in the act of defending/rescuing others.

There is of course the question of why Lara keeps chasing after artifacts when she knows she will put the lives of her friends in jeopardy and also put herself in a position where she is hunted. But that aspect hasn't come up too blatantly yet since in the first game, one could argue that it wasn't her fault for landing in such circumstances. In the second game, it could be argued that she just wanted to understand her childhood tragedy with her father.

That being said, the general experience is that this sort of exposition on "oh, look at how many lives I took" in action/adventure video games do not usually translate to enjoyment. Ninja Gaiden, a series I love very much, tried this route and it pretty much destroyed the franchise!! The fact was, no one played Ninja Gaiden for the deeply philosophical story. In that vein, I don't think most people really play Tomb Raider for a deeply philosophical story either. People just want a serviceable story around solving puzzles, environment exploration, and combat. When the game tries to delve into more philosophical subject matter (like its laughable attempt at analyzing the "divine", "faith", "religion" etc. in the previous game) it falls flat. So I have no doubt that if it decided to explore some trauma issues due to her past experiences, it will only drag it down further.

While I don't think it's the REASON anyone plays tomb raider. The fact is the Devs have taken it down that road and it's now on them to do it properly. If they're trying to ape uncharted as they clearly are, my expectations are that they need to do it well, currently they haven't. It was them who tried to show a girl killing for the first time and how it affects a person psychologically. Sadly they did it with a follow up gameplay segment where you close quarter execute people with pick axes and arrows. The fact they've just ignored that psychological conflict in the sequel and have now expanded on the idea of Lara being a bow and arrow armed hunter of human prey just makes it more of a joke. Sadly there's nothing they can do about it now. She's a sociopath and she will continue to be one.

Back to what I want from shadow of the tomb raider though

I want them to ditch trinity (it's a tedious story arch no-one cares about and it only exists to have a human enemy component to the combat) and I want them to ditch the mystical powers approach to the story. Uncharted had similar problems but they gradually moved away from it. I don't want yet another magically powered ancient army (they've done it twice already and it's boring)

I remember strangling many soldiers from behind in self-defence. :D
I knew this would come up. yes one can argue that she has killed in self-defence on several different occasions however killing in general has never been an issue for her. she has never hesitated to kill, and I'm not talking about flanking enemies and avoiding contact, a choice made by the player, I'm talking about story-driven sections where she is given a meaningful choice to reflect on all the violence she perpetrates.exactly my thoughts !

all in all, I believe Tomb Raider will be most effective if designed as a survival experience

Well technically, it won't be self-defense. However, it still does qualify under protecting someone i.e. act of defending/rescuing others :)

This does become a rather blurry issue in the second game because she is actively putting herself in danger. But then again, perhaps it made sense from her perspective because she was trying to "save the world".So you do want something like Ninja Gaiden Razors Edge haha? If she did that, I think the game would be pretty bad. Imagine a Nathan Drake contemplating on all the people he killed or pushed off ledges. Does that sound like an interesting plot?

I think with all these games, there is an understanding that you are playing the good guy who is justified in regards to the use of force. The first thing that these games usually try to sell to you is that you are somehow morally justified for the acts you are committing. Otherwise it will be a mental drag to even keep playing the game.

However, in the event that we do get into exploring these moral/ethical issues in-depth, I think the biggest issue is that most developers (and most of the population) do not have much experience of rigorously analyzing a situation within ethical frameworks. For most people, ethics/morality do not go beyond what they deeply feel on a given day. For many, the only ethical principle they know is the golden rule, which really isn't saying much. That is why for most people, every ethical issue starts to look like a moral/ethical dilemma these days lol. whenever they run into decision that causes emotional conflict, things start to look like a dilemma.

That is why I personally would like Tomb Raider to just be a shooter/exploration simulation with a story that is more of a thriller/mystery/puzzle solving rather than a morality piece. I do not think that we live in an age where we can expect a writer to actually create and analyze a moral situation effectively. Even if they were capable, I do not think we could say the same about the audience.

I ve talked about the story,setpieces,mechanics before but the biggest complain i see from people and i kinda agree is the less killing dudes and more complex/challenging platforming and puzzles. I would also like more survival elements and please make exploration more meaningful than collecting 100+ collectables.
Generally I think being this weird mix of Indiana Jones style adventure but then sometimes also addressing the morality of her actions and trying to be realistic doesn't work well, at least in how they tackled it so far. You can do it well and find a balance ofcourse but I would much rather if they went all in either direction. The realistic /gritty survival path or the over the top fighting trex stuff.

Yes, I would actually prefer it going the over-the-top T-rex killing, fighting Centaurs, type deal too! That is the type of TR game that actually made me love the games in the first place. I think the TR-anniversary,Legend, Underworld games cleverly avoided the moral question for the most part by making most of the enemies Lara faced non-human.

Morality and survival were two central themes, upon which the dev team tried to build the story. no one would expect a game such as Uncharted to explore ethics and morality unless they built it into the story and the core mechanics of the game. if Lara were in fact just an explorer and every bit as innocent, she should have been presented as such throughout the game and not just in the beginning chapter. (Helldblade is the perfect example of a game with such a theme meticulously studied and implemented, I actually felt for Senua) I don't feel I have to sympathise with a maniac just because she's all lost and alone, far from home, trembling by the fire that she started after killing several soldiers just to collect dead boughs from the area. we would never have such an issue with the uncharted series because Nathan has never been never presented to us as such. everybody including he himself knows that he's a thief and we have been, time and again, reminded of the fact. one would never feel forced into sympathy for Nathan mainly due to the fact that it has never been ND's intention to depict such a character; also he doesn't beg for it. Lara, however, is always a damsel in distress and there's no arc to her character. The developers were so adamant in presenting Lara as a survivor with morality attached to the story as a key theme, while after killing dozens, her psyche still seems intact and she still retains the innocence. that's the mentality of a deranged individual right there.

in conclusion, morality and survival should not be explored unless the developers commit themselves to the two. using the idea as a gimmick in a desperate attempt to capture a larger audience is inexcusable.

I very much agree with you that one shouldn't explore morality if one isn't willing to commit to it. That being said, my personal opinion is that no one has actually done it right, including the games you mentioned. Most morality themes in media these days, as I said in a previous reply, are very shallow. They are usually nothing more than "dilemmas" caused by an appeal to conflicting emotions.

I am also not very sure that Nathan Drake is presented to us as the scum of the earth. Rather, we are always shown Nathan in contrast to a villainous character who makes us root for Drake. It is a cheap trick, but that is pretty much what it is.

At the end of the day, that is why I said that no developer/writer today seems competent enough to handle the subject. Even if they were, the audience just isn't capable of grasping the nuances of the subject either. So the best thing is to just leave it out and concentrate on making a fun game (in terms of unraveling a mystery, game mechanics, and puzzle content).

I should also mention that I do not understand why you (and others) are interested in the psychological scarring to this degree. If we want that sort of realism, then why are we ignoring the physical scarring? Or while we are on the topic, we could even ask what chances a teenage girl has of surviving alone in an island full of hostiles who have already become hardened by living there for years. Lara should most certainly have not made it out of Yamatai.

The fact of the matter is, we have already made many leaps of the imagination to buy into the premise so that we can enjoy some nice game mechanics and proceed with unraveling the mystery of the island. It just doesn't make sense to insist on psychological realism when one has already made such huge leaps of the imagination to begin with. If one suddenly starts insisting on strict realism, then I don't think anyone would like playing a game that actually has that. Why? Because that is called real life! You are already playing it 24/7 and I doubt anyone wants to keep playing that same game in a virtual world lol.

As I mentioned in my prior post, I think people expect it because the devs introduced the idea of it. If they avoided that aspect altogether Lara would just be a no-nonsense bad ass like Chloe Frasier or Nathan Drake. Killing is just part of their selfish gains and we’re introduced to the fact both characters will lie, cheat and kill their way to success. They’re charming sociopaths. The same way someone like the joker is. But then they’ve never been depicted as anything but that. They never had that "first kill" scene where they struggled with the consequences of their actions because as you’ve said. It’s not something I think would be entertaining for the pulp finchion action game, nor do I think many writers could handle it in a fitting manner.

Lara used to be the same sort of character as those 2, she was an unopologetic treasure hunter who happily killed people and endangered species for the sake of the next bit of treasure, and it was fine, but the origin reboot made it about something else. They introduced the attempted rape scene, the first kill scenes, the psychological and physical affect of that...but then followed it with a no-shits-given death march through the island where you upgraded your abilities to include close range brutal kills and ripping out throats with arrow tips. They made it jarring. If they didn’t want this expectation, they probably shouldn’t have pushed the narrative in that direction in the first place.