The famous game series “Tomb Raider” featuring one of gaming’s most easily recognizable characters Lara Croft has received its reboot. Unimportant to the technical performance of the game, rests the story, which has gone through its few changes during the development process.
The first kill performed by Lara in the rebooted series is one which has attracted a lot of attention towards itself, some of it positive, some negative. Game Zone shares that no matter of the players’ reactions, lead writer Rihanna Pratchett stays firmly behind her creation. Even though she shows a lot of support towards it, she still has her share of criticism on the end product. According to her, a different approach to the way the kill is presented could have had a better outcome. One of her suggestions for a betterment of the story is for Lara to throw away the gun after the first kill. This way, the inner conflict in the character would have been underlined and players would have had to play with the bow for some time more, before they are once again forced to use firearms.
Game Rant adds more information about the way the story’s ending had been changed. Rihanna Pratchett’s first draft of the story had far less murder than the released version, but it held the topic of sacrifice vs loss reminding the player that their character is after all, a human being, even if she is one of the most emblematic names in gaming. The first version of the game’s ending would have once again pitted the player in a difficult choice of self-sacrifice, which would have left a bitter taste on their tongue, no matter the choice they had made.
VG 247 shares a statement by Rihanna Pratchett that the original story did not have as much death, but then more and more deaths found their way into it. This made the play testers feel the original ending quite grim and heavy and Pratchett was forced to change it. This way the story lost some of the important parts of the narrative, which were building in the character through the whole story. Here comes the question of discussion between the developers, publishers and writers. One cannot do their job properly if the others meddle in it and where exactly did the problems and constant changes come to this game is unknown, but the first draft of the story and a more character oriented story have been lost, due to it.
