Their executive producer was discussing the challenges this young Lara has to face, which includes violent beatings and an attempted rape, and how this would make players want “to protect her”.

The internet exploded with rage, and I got sucked up in it a bit too – it came after I’d spent hours reading and listening to accounts of female gamers being threatened with rape just because they dared to play socially.

A day later, Crystal Dynamics retracted the “attempted rape” comment and said it had been misunderstood.  Largely, I am inclined to agree, but not with the use of ‘attempted rape’; that bit wasn’t misunderstood.  Having seen the footage, that’s exactly what it is, although it is nowhere near as gruesome as much of the internet’s collective imagination has fathomed it to be.

The scene in question is part of their E3 trailer “Crossroads” (you need to be signed in to YouTube to view it as it has a content warning on it).  Naturally, I will say that it will be triggering for some – as could the paragraph after next (& other parts of the rest of this post) when I briefly describe what happens – the specific scene occurs at 2:15 on the vid.

This Tomb Raider is going to be set before the others, and is aiming to develop Lara’s character into the strong, kickass woman she is in those core, original games.  She is stranded on an island with her crew but there’s also an all-male gang who have been stranded on said island for much longer and have turned extremely savage.  They kill Lara’s friends as she watches/hears without being able to help them.  She tries to sneak away, but is found.

The guy who finds her runs his hand down her body; she knees him in the groin and tries to run; he grabs her and tries kissing her neck; she bites his ear and possibly rips some of it off; runs, gets her hands free, gets his gun; they wrestle over the gun… she shoots him in the face.

Doubtless the full scene in the game will be much longer than what we’ve seen here, but it is, at least, nothing so crass as hammering the X button on the controller to push him out from between her legs.  All clothes remain on, which doesn’t make it any less atrocious of course – but it could be much more graphic for the player.

I think where Crystal Dynamics have been misunderstood is with their intention, and perhaps they’ve misunderstood their audience when talking about this assault.

Discussing why it’s difficult to develop a female lead, Rosenberg said: “When people play Lara, they don’t really project themselves into the character… They’re more like. ‘I want to protect her’. There’s this sort of dynamic of, ‘I’m going to this adventure with her and trying to protect her’.  She’s definitely the hero but – you’re kind of like her helper. When you see her have to face these challenges, you start to root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character.”

-from DigitalSpy

What I find most concerning/irksome/interesting is this idea that the player wants to protect Lara as opposed to be her. Having watched that trailer, I don’t want to be her helper and protect her, I want to jump into her skin and kick the daylights out of that guy.  Perhaps that’s just me.  What I think was ill-advised of Mr Rosenburg (the exec producer) was his move to discuss this damsel-in-distress notion at the same time as discussing the attempted rape.  It kinda oozes the idea that Lara is just an object for men: to abuse or to protect.

I suspect above all that Crystal Dynamics probably need to educate themselves on better phraseology and improve the content of their press interactions.  They don’t seem to mean that the assault and the assault alone turn her into the Lara we’re all familiar with: it’s the whole ordeal on this island.  I’m sure shooting a guy in the face not 5 inches from your own is going to be life changing, and on the flipside, for once a studio is at least trying to show the psychological effect of killing (as opposed to all the other games where you’re expected to believe the protag is completely unfazed by murder, despite being an office worker or somesuch beforehand).

But what about the inclusion of the attempted rape in the first place?

Good point.  After the initial furore, I wondered whether it could be a useful educational tool: to show the audience that rape is horrific, abhorrent and should never be permitted.  Depressingly, this is a message that doesn’t seem to have sunk in with some people in society.

Then I saw an interesting theory in a comment thread, in which one chap theorised that we could see this attempted rape symbolically.  Perhaps this potential rapist represents all the slavering, masturbatory porn-ifying by (mostly) male gamers of Lara in previous games; her escape could represent the escape from this pin-up mentality the franchise has been plagued with.  I thought that was an intriguing hypothesis at the very least.

I think their move to include this assault is bold and their intention – presumably to explore the psychological transformation of such a famous female lead – is sorely needed, because we don’t have many fully developed standalone female characters (i.e. that aren’t just an option opposite a male version).  Above all, however, they probably need to be able to express themselves in a much clearer fashion and, preferably, drop this ‘the player just wants to protect her’ nonsense.

If, when it is released, we discover this attempted rape has just been used to crush her identity as a strong, independent female character, to put her back in her place as a subjugated product of patriarchal desires, then I will stand corrected.  For now, I think we should step back and see where this goes.

Overall, however, I fear Lara will never be free of the patriarchy that created her – in both her story and her creation as a game character. At least they seem to have designed her wearing a bra this time around.

Wider Reading:

• ‘Lara Croft and rape stories: breaking down the bitch’ – Laurie Penny, New Statesman
• ‘Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman. Especially when you’re made out of pixels’ – Charlie Brooker, The Guardian
• ‘Tomb Raider: why play up to the Madonna/whore dichotomy?’ – Tom Mendelsohn, The Independent (blogs)
• ‘Tomb Raider creators say “rape” is not a word in their vocabulary’ – Kotaku Australia
• ‘Ultraviolence in videogames: a defence’ – Oliver Cragg, The Independent (blogs)
• ‘Video games and the Male Gaze – are we men or boys?’ – Brandon Sheffield, Gamasutra

Mostly.

Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy were the issues.  I don’t want to sound like a broken record but boobs on display in a high risk profession such as being a Gotham City criminal is not exactly clever – is it?  Harley was very nice to see as a significant part of the story that is out to scupper your plans, but her being called some less-than-charming things by the Joker’s own thugs was tedious to say the least, and when you actually fight Harley herself she is defeated ridiculously easily – in a cutscene no less.  Disappointing.

“Please don’t punch me in the chest, Batman. It’d be terribly inconvenient and I might have to reconsider my outfit!”

Ivy, when you first meet her, is lounging about in her cell – apparently the only female inmate – not wearing prison issues but her own clothes displaying her sizeable bust.  Later, in her boss fight, for some reason she decides to float about attacking you in what – as our ed described to me in an email – “appears to be a giant laughing vulva-plant which flaps open periodically to reveal she still isn’t wearing a great deal…”.  Super.

I’m pretty sure she gets referred to as some less-than-charming things too by henchmen.

Fast forward to Arkham City, which I got in another sale (but it still cost me £20), and now you can play as Catwoman too!  However, she appears to have fallen foul of Rule 1 of Sensible Female Armour: her suit is only ever zipped up to just below her breasts, allowing for ample cleavage.  When you fight thugs as Catwoman, you get called a ‘bitch’ but for some reason, if you’re Batman, you don’t get called a prick, a wanker, a bastard or even a knobend.  Really, people?

The assassins of Rā’s al Ghūl’s order are all for some reason scantily clad sex icons – as is his daughter – and the concept art is mainly essentially the sort of softcore you might find in lads’ mags.  In fact the vast majority of the concept art involving any female character is pretty oversexualised and repugnant.  We get to meet Ivy again, too, but it seems she still hasn’t bothered to find any clothes since the laughing vulva-plant incident.  And Harley is wearing even more revealing kit than last time.

Great graphics, but do we really need to see that much breast?

Now, even if we leave aside all of this sexist nonsense, Arkham City is somewhat disappointing anyway.  I finished the storyline in less than a day; the ending snuck up on me and was rubbish.  I won’t say what happens, but… just… what?!  That’s even before I get to the complaint I have with the huge continuity hole left at the end.  I was so disheartened by it that I did a Ragequit of Disappoints and haven’t gone back on it since.  Even though I still have lots of side quests and puzzles to solve, I just haven’t found the heart to go back to it.

Arkham Asylum was worth the £5 but City was definitely not worth the £20 – let alone the standard retail price in the range of up to £39.99!  The first game offered something new and interesting with a gorgeous noir feel much akin to Nolan’s reimagining of Gotham on film, if not grittier.  The second game whizzed past all too quickly, with no real indication that one should slow down, do side quests, do the puzzles and so on, lest you face the atrocious storyline ending.

Benefits of the second game, however, do exist; the world is larger, you get more gadgets and there are no area transitions between outdoor locations.  Plus you do get to play as Catwoman, even if she is just eye candy to be abused by burly henchmen. (Are there really no female crims in Gotham?)

Both games do fall down woefully at the Treating Female Characters with Respect hurdle.  Would it truly be so hard to think logically about the design of these people?  Does Batman walk around without his Kevlar body armour, flexing his pectorals, with a big “SHOOT HERE” target on his chest?  No.  No, he does not.  So why should Catwoman, or Ivy, or Harley?  Basic boob-sense would say maybe a comfy sports bra would be better than leather basques and flimsy shirts with only one button done up.  At least then the breast tissue wouldn’t detach during all this acrobatic criminality.

Also, Catwoman has anti-gravity boobs.

Are your boobs bulletproof? Apparently, Friday's are!

First of all, my sincerest apologies for disappearing into the far reaches of the internet but that terrible thing called Real Life decided to poke its nose where it wasn’t wanted.  I will tell you all about the Eurogamer Expo, and I still have those goodies to give away, so please forgive my extended absence!

Today, I present to you my observations of the post-apocalyptic female form, with visual examples from RAGE, the recent id Software release.  In case I didn’t mention it before, I am a bit of an id fan – seeing as how Doom was the first proper game I ever played – so criticising them was a bit of a forced exercise for me.  But criticise I must!  When I first saw the trailers and preview footage for RAGE I noted the presence of female characters(!). However, they were distinctly boobed-up and inappropriately attired for life in a wasteland environment, especially given all the violence also included in these vids.

I’d noticed this before in other post-apocalypse/global bad thing games, like Fallout: New Vegas and definitely in Borderlands.  It is also apparent in fantasy RPGs like Dragon Age, as well as sci-fi/horror titles like Dead Space.  All these women are stereotypically ‘beautiful’, i.e. there is not a blemish in sight, their waists are tiny, their boobs are pert (and, more often than not, on display), their eyes are big and shiny, etc – you get the idea!

However, my quibble here is not just the fact that it is disgustingly demeaning, shallow and pathetic but also that it is totally unreal and impractical.  What were the developers thinking?!  I’m sure women may seem all alien and scary to design, but when it comes to internal vital organs, like the heart and lungs, they’re in the same place as a man’s.  IN THE CHEST.  So, why would any vaguely intelligent female survivor of the apocalypse waltz around with the most vulnerable part of her body un-armoured and on display?  How are they not all dead?  In this world full of bandits, territorial gangs, mutants and some evil authoritarian organisation out to kill them, how is it all the bullets/knives/arrows/rockets/etc have missed the gaping void in their armour exactly where their hearts are?

So there’s that part of the issue.  Secondarily, if we look at these women in these games, they look as if they could be glamour models in this day and age.  Now, not to cast doubt on the practicality of models in general, but how many of them, do you think, would even survive the initial global devastating event, let alone eke out an existence fighting and killing fellow humans?  Personally, I intend to build a labyrinthine nuclear bunker under my house when I can, but I accept that I’m abnormal and most glamour models won’t be thinking of these things.  My point being, I am not that kind of pretty and of all the people I know that might survive a wasteland environment none of them are model-esque in their features.

Nor are any of them stupid enough to wear armour that exposes their chest.

So this leads me to wonder whether all of these devastating global events were actually designed so that – in the most Bill Bailey of ways – they killed all the trolls, leaving all the beautiful ladies (in danger) behind.  If so, how then can we assume these women survived?  Proffering sexual favours with the alpha males for protection?  It’s an ogre-ish thing to consider, but what other explanation is there for only the glamorous women surviving?

Destinee, Jani and Mel model the high fashion of the dystopian future.

I doubt that the developers ever think this sort of thing through, as they’re too busy patronising their male audiences with images of huge tits to realise it’s more than just sexist and misogynist.  For games that desire heightened realism, they haven’t thought it all through very well, have they?

And that’s before we even go near the fact that all these women are caucasian.