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Rhianna Pratchett, who is a writer, not an actress, says farewell to Lara Croft

AuthenticM said:
Here's hoping they can bring back the confident bad-ass Lara from the original games, the one who quips a lot.
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To put it lightly I was not impressed by the writing in the Tomb Raider reboot games. There's an interesting character study to be had there, but these games really fumbled it almost entirely.
 
Can't say I'm really sad about this. The characters(particularly Lara) and the story is so bland in TR2013 and Rise of the Tomb Raider.
 
purseowner said:
All respect to her, but the writing in those games was horrendous. Good news.
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Agreed. The last two games have been fantastic from a technical and level standpoint, but the stories have been ok to terrible and the writing, characters, etc all have been very sub par. Need more humor and adventure and less pathos.
 
NotTheGuyYouKill said:
ROTTR had terrible writing, so... okay.

And she's actually a pretty good writer, so I dunno what went wrong.
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For the first game she said the game designers altered her story for gamplay reasons, i.e. more than 1 hour without shooting anyone is a no-no so fuck character development and here's a gun. The characters are all awful though, and that's on her. Never played the second game.
 
danmaku said:
For the first game she said the game designers altered her story for gamplay reasons, i.e. more than 1 hour without shooting anyone is a no-no so fuck character development and here's a gun. The characters are all awful though, and that's on her. Never played the second game.
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Kids these days. This is embarassing
 
I'm genuinely interested in the opinions of people who found the writing to be good.

The games got a fairly healthy amount of awards for the writing IIRC, so there's probably a good point to be made there.

But I'm not seeing it, especially for the sequel. I found it borderline offensive in its cavalier treatment of native people and how they reacted to Lara's motivations.
 
Not going to put the entirety of the blame for the meh story on both tomb raiders on her but I hope the next writer is able to weave a more believable none bad trope filled tale.
 
Good riddance, she really took Lara no where in the first game. Heard that she still sucked in the sequel.
 
The story in RoTR was so bland and the characters that surrounded Lara in TR2013 (and the one they brought back into RoTR) were all awful. This is possibly only a good thing as they can get a better writer for the next game to do better characters and write Lara better (seriously, way too many "I have to... I hope..." internal monologues.)
 
I really enjoyed the reboot games overall but found their narratives to clash with the gameplay. Here's hoping the next game doesn't have such issues.
 
Certainly good news for the future of this franchise. Video game writing is a thankless job no doubt and you're at the mercy of the needs of the gameplay, but the quality of the writing of these two games was just really poor. Replace the actress while you're at it. Maybe it was just the combo of Pratchett+Luddington that just made things seem worse than they were.
 
As she said herself she viewed the old Lara as "a male character with boobs" and wanted the new Lara to show a strong human touch but to possess the reactions and personality of a woman. I think she achieved this in creating a character who was vulnerable, but never weak and feminine but never sexualised. A rare achievement in gaming.
 
If this means she doesn't have anything to do with the next game, I'll take it as good news. I liked the last two games in the series, but mostly disliked the story and characters - especially in Rise. The way they weakened Lara in that game and made everything about her father and his legacy is a tragedy. I guess they were going for deeper motivations and inner growth, but Lara never comes across as her own person, instead remaining Richard's obsessed daughter throughout the whole thing.
 
I liked the format and the gameplay of the lastest Tomb Raider but not really a fan of the characterization of Lara and the main story of the last one was not my favorite (I actually enjoyed the backstory of her exploring the mansion). I hope we get a more confident Lara or some more fleshed out side characters to contrast with Lara.
 
rochellepaws said:
As she said herself she viewed the old Lara as "a male character with boobs" and wanted the new Lara to show a strong human touch but to possess the reactions and personality of a woman. I think she achieved this in creating a character who was vulnerable, but never weak and feminine but never sexualised. A rare achievement in gaming.
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A character with a lack of empathy for the plight of native peoples does not show a strong human touch.
 
She's Terry's daughter, shut your filthy mouths!

Really hope that she gets to work with a more interesting material, LC was always just tits and badassery and trying to change that unfortunately kind of ruined the series.

Maybe some new IP where she can blast away? Or maybe, just maybe, something Discworld related... My eternal hope is to get an OW game situated in that world, heck, even Ankh-Morpork only would make the best game city ever!

Not sure how's her funny writing though...

EDIT. Rochellepaws put the thought down more eloquently than I <3
 
Lara was a relentless fucking asshole in the last game so I don't mind the change of pace. When your main character is as unlikable as the antagonists, without you purposefully setting it up that way, it's time for a change.
 
Characters and events from RotTR almost bored me to sleep. Incredibly wasted opportunity to make something great after OK foundation of TR2013.

Big change is needed for this franchise.
 
Interesting. I still haven't really been able to figure out whether she's a good writer or not so I can't actually judge whether this is a good or a bad thing. I mean... the Tomb Raider games she's worked on have had terrible writing and storytelling but that doesn't necessarily mean she's a bad writer. For one, she was just one of several writers responsible for the writing on these games (and at least with the first game she was brought on when most of the main plot and characters had already been set in stone), secondly we don't know what the writing process looks like at Crystal and how much creative freedom is actually afforded to the writers (and to Rhianna specifically). As for her work on other games, there's some good and some bad stuff. Heavenly Sword has a great story, interesting, three-dimensional characters, is well-written (but then, much like with Tomb Raider, I don't know what the writing process was like on HS and how much she contributed) but the first Mirror's Edge had a pretty subpar story (though we do know that she was brought on way too late for that project and could only really try to patch up what was already there so that's not her fault). I've never played Overlord which she was also the lead writer on IIRC (and I think she's said that she was given a lot of control and freedom on that project).

So yeah... I suspect that this won't result in the future Tomb Raider titles being better-written unless they change their writing process and/or replace their in-house writers (depending on which of those is the main culprit behind the reboot games' bad writing - process or personnel).

Gator86 said:
Lara was a relentless fucking asshole in the last game so I don't mind the change of pace. When your main character is as unlikable as the antagonists, without you purposefully setting it up that way, it's time for a change.
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Lara is supposed to be somewhat unlikeable (she certainly is more of an antihero than anything else) but yeah, reboot Lara certainly didn't feel like a character who the writers intended to be unlikeable and she was unlikeable for all the wrong reasons.
 
AuthenticM said:
Here's hoping they can bring back the confident bad-ass Lara from the original games, the one who quips a lot.
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Oh please this. I love genral the Gameplay (but less shooting more tomb raiding etc please), but the writing was just awful.
Also i really hope we get a Time Jump of a few Years. Lara should be a woman (in her Thirties) and not a Girl.
 
TR reboot and ROTR writing was indeed mediocre. Wonder if the next one will be better or worse.

Now if only ND never used whoever wrote Uncharted and actually used talented people that would be 2 wins for us this year.
 
Something about the characters and plot of the TR games have always been just boring and tiresome to me. I hope they hire a writer that can write a compelling story and interesting characters for the next game.
 
Messofanego said:
It's good news if Cara Ellison takes over in writing or narrative duties on a new Tomb Raider. And they bring back Toby Gard somehow.
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Toby Gard should stay far away from Tomb Raider. It was reportedly his idea to make Lara's search for her parents the focus in Legend. That alone should give you a good idea of how much he didn't understand the character anymore (despite originally coming up with it).
 
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