For better and for worse, the “Tomb Raider” franchise is an absolute pillar of video game history.
First released in 1996, the game clearly sought to do two things:
- Make an “Indiana Jones“-esque globetrotting, treasure-hunting adventure.
- Capitalize on the collective puberty of millions of teenage boys with an attractive (for the pixelated age, anyhow) female protagonist.
The games, which all feature deliberately proportioned British explorer Lara Croft, have generally married those two concepts together to create a lasting franchise that is still pumping out new titles nearly 30 years after its original release.
Now, in 2024, and over a decade after the 2013 release of a highly-regarded reboot — which would ultimately anchor a new trilogy itself — “Tomb Raider” is going back to its roots with a “remaster” of the original trilogy.
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(For the unfamiliar, a “reboot” is typically a wholly new game/experience, built from the ground up, while a “remaster” takes what is already there and tries to make it more modernized.)
You can see some examples of how the game was remastered below:
Now that the game is out in the wild (the remastered trilogy released on Valentine’s Day 2024), fans of the franchise who eagerly booted it up were greeted with a curious message — and apparent reminder that they never should have enjoyed the original trilogy.
Crystal Dynamics has condemned the “offensive depictions of people and cultures rooted in racial and ethnic prejudices” in #TombRaider I-III Remastered and says the stereotypes portrayed are “deeply harmful, inexcusable, and do not align with our values.”https://t.co/LJlvtNYxKk pic.twitter.com/sSATXmf3Jt
— Tomb Raider Tweet (@tombraidertweet) February 13, 2024
Booting up “Tomb Raider I-III Remastered” (yes, the title is really that cumbersome) will lead to this somewhat ominous message:
“The games in this collection contain offensive depictions of people and cultures rooted in racial and ethnic prejudices,” the opening statement from developer Crystal Dynamics reads. “These stereotypes are deeply harmful, inexcusable, and do not align with our values at Crystal Dynamics.”
It should be noted that Crystal Dynamics was purchased by Embracer Group, but this particular game was made by Aspyr, which is another Embracer subsidiary.
The statement would continue: “Rather than removing this content, we have chosen to present it here in its original form, unaltered, in the hopes that we may acknowledge its harmful impact and learn from it.”
While the last sentiment is noble — censorship as a practice is a poor substitute for offering historical context — the entire statement is a bit of a head-scratcher.
This writer was the correct gender and age for the 1996 game’s target demographic and, while certainly not a big fan of the franchise, I genuinely can’t think of anything that would be particularly offensive in this game.
Do you think that warning screen was necessary?
In fact, even a thorough perusal of the original trilogy on Wikipedia and Google yields almost no “controversies” regarding race and ethnicity.
The best that I can come up with from having played these games during the Clinton administration might be the stereotypical depiction of Pacific islanders found in the third game. That game features Croft taking a detour to a tropical island inhabited by cannibalistic tribesmen dressed in grass skirts.
Insensitive and dated? Probably.
“Deeply harmful” and “inexcusable”? That’s a bit of a stretch.
Ironically enough, perhaps the most controversial aspect of any of the original three games is one that has nothing to do with race, ethnicity or stereotypes.
The biggest controversy from those original “Tomb Raider” games actually isn’t even in the game — remastered or otherwise.
No, the biggest controversy about those mid-to-late ’90s games was the infamous playground chatter about a secret code in the game that would let you play as Croft sans clothing.
(These rumors were sparked by a PC mod that did undress Croft in the original games. That mod was eventually taken down following litigation.)
Back then, in an era before rampant internet and well before X/Twitter, fans of the games only had playground chatter to spread rumors. And rumors swiftly spread through playgrounds that, with a certain code, you could, in fact, play the original Tomb Raider games with Lara Croft in the nude.
That was not true at all, but it’s not like Community Notes existed back then. So the rumors ran amok and were honestly the most lasting controversy of the original games.
And in a brilliant bit of PR, the team behind the original “Tomb Raider” games actually did include a clandestine code in the sequel.
Only, it didn’t strip Croft down. It, instead, blew her up, ending your play through with an instant death.
“Tomb Raider I-III Remastered” is out now on just about every modern console.
