Recently the presence of a I notify at the beginning of the collection Tomb Raider I-II-III Remasteredwhich reads verbatim: “The games in this collection contain offensive depictions of people and cultures rooted in racial and ethnic prejudice. These stereotypes are deeply harmful, inexcusable and do not align with Crystal Dynamics' values.
Rather than remove this content, we have chosen to present it here in its original form, unaltered, in the hope that we can recognize its harmful impact and learn from it.“
Open heaven! Some players immediately shouted at the dictatorship of woke culture, to political correctness ruining everything it touches and to the end of freedom of expression and civilization as we know it. Basically it's just a warning placed at the beginning of the remastered edition of an old game, without any censorship of the contents… this alone should make clear the relevance of the issue and how childish the controversy is, but since we're talking about Tomb Raider is worth remembering some facts that have evidently been forgotten.
Real censorship
In fact, I don't remember such an outcry in defense of freedom of expression when the series was stolen from its author precisely because he didn't want the sexualization of Lara Croft. Toby Gard, the character's father, had intended her simply as a female Indiana Jones crossed with Tank Girl. Her goal was to create a strong female heroine, but the marketing department of Eidos, the publisher of Core Designs (the original development studio), had other ideas for her, so much so that they asked him to include a secret code to undress her. Gard flatly refused to do so, and for the first chapter of her he got away with it. But Tomb Raider became a huge success and the fans took care of making up for it, with Nude Raidera patch to undress Lara that had huge resonance.
Eidos then decided that Gard (the author, remember) was in the way and took away creative control over the character. Lara Croft was then entrusted to the marketing department, which made her become a kind of glossy magazine model, with sexy artwork, alluring poses and details at play specifically designed to highlight the most provocative and sensual side of her, just to tickle reproductive ambitions of gamers. Publicly Eidos sided against the pornographicization of Lara, but behind the scenes he worked to encourage it. Gard, deprived of the possibility of deciding how to make it evolve and given the havoc that was taking place, abandoned Core Designs in strong controversy with the new course. He will return to Lara Croft in the 2000s, to work on the Tomb Raider: Legend reboot, with the series now already in the hands of Crystal Dynamics, after the bankruptcy of Core Designs.
Of course, at the time, no one batted an eye at the theft of a character from its author. Furthermore, no one was torn about the poor “freedom of expression” when, let's remember, the Eidos marketing department was left to decide on Lara's future, which did the exact opposite of what Gard wanted, transforming her into a kind of sex undercover worker.
But today here are the defenders of freedom who grab torches and pitchforks because they are scandalized by a notice placed before the start of the remastered collection of the first three chapters, a notice which in fact distances itself not from the authorial choices, but from the violence carried out on the character by men of marketing, the main cause of the crisis of the old school Tomb Raider (under their impetus the series was unable to take half a step forward, becoming immersed in the formula of the original which was abandoned only when it was no longer recoverable).
This is an editorial written by a member of the editorial team and is not necessarily representative of the editorial line of Multiplayer.it.
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