Tomb Raider dev reiterates defence over rape controversy – Video Game News

Despite adding context to the alleged rape scene in the upcoming Tomb Raider Reboot the game’s developers, Crystal Dynamics, have pointed out that nothing else happens apart from what everyone has already seen.

The latest controversy to have plagued the video game world surrounds the reboot of the Tomb Raider series, more specifically, the scene where there is an attempted rape of the series protagonist, Lara Croft.

The game is set to be an origins story allowing gamers to journey through how Lara went from being a nobody wearing pants to a dual pistol wielding, shorts wearing gaming icon. However, it seems that some sections of the media seem to have missed the point of the attempted rape scene and have been on the case.

The head of the studio, Darrell Gallagher, hoped to further clear things up, after Ron Rosenberg’s, the game’s executive producer, earlier efforts.

He explained that the rape scene was not going to set the tone of the game itself but was just a moment that would drive home the struggle that Lara has to go through. He said, “We were not clear in a recent E3 press interview and things have been misunderstood. Sexual assault of any kind is categorically not a theme that we cover in this game.”

Gallagher went on to explain that the terming of the particular scene in the game was inaccurate and it should be interpreted as a person being pushed to the limits and the result of that was that she is forced to kill another person.

He elaborated, “One of the character-defining moments for Lara in the game, which has been incorrectly referred to as an ‘attempted rape scene’, is the content we showed at this year’s E3 where Lara is forced to kill another human being for the first time.”

Gallagher continued, “In this particular section, while there is a threatening undertone in the sequence and surrounding drama, it never goes any further than the scenes that we have already shown publicly.”

That should end the controversy as the particular scene in question may be suggestive but nothing graphic or explicit is actually shown, that is, apart from the game’s protagonist taking a pistol and shooting the person who was assaulting her.

The controversy follows hot on the heels of the Hitman ‘The Saints’ trailer fiasco, which had a number of parties up in arms over the portrayal of women as being nothing more than cannon fodder for Agent 47, the game’s protagonist.

However, once again it should be taken into context and many argue that it actually is the opposite of being sexist as Agent 47 kills members of both genders indiscriminately, be they male or female.

It will be interesting to see how the controversy finally ends and if the people complaining have ever played a video game in their lives.

Source [CVG]