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[IbizaPocholo]

https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/11/17961496/tomb-raider-death-animations

Over the course of the last three Tomb Raider games, I have seen Lara Croft impaled on a spike. Watched a tree branch jut through her jaw. Seen her writhe in pain as her stomach is pierced by a metal bar. Watched her pelvis get obliterated under the weight of several boulders.

But while the franchise has changed a lot in its many sequels and reboots — sometimes for the better, with Lara having more realistic proportions; and sometimes for the worse, with actual tomb raiding becoming optional content alongside endless murder — these death sequences are one thing that have stayed the same.

And with all the advancements in tech — did you know there’s a real-time physics simulation dedicated to rendering Lara’s ponytail? — these scenes have become so realistic that they’ve almost tipped into being creepy torture porn.



Check (or not) the link for the full story.

 

[Xaero Gravity]

Oh for fuck's sake, Polygon.

I've already seen so many people label the games as sexist because of this.

 

[brap]

Fuck off. Can't wait till being a whiny oversensitive bitch is considered outdated.

 

[Boss Mog]

Another garbage "article" by a game "journalist". When this woke feminist ally thinks of how Tomb Raider improved over the years, the first thing that comes to his mind is the fact that Lara's body proportions became more realistic? The death animations are fine, they confirm Lara's fate if you mess up. This is not the stuff that a real gamer would be upset with, they would be more upset with how Shadow has you doing a bunch of fetch quests and other busywork to pad it up.

 

[bitbydeath]

She kills violently as well so you either take both sides of violence away or neither.

 

[DocEbok]

I stopped reading that site.

 

[-MD-]

I stopped reading that site.

I never started, they've been terrible from the jump.

 

[octiny]

 

[ChuckeRearmed]

Polygon became a playground filled with old moms

 

[plushyp]

Oh LOLygon.....

 

[YayNJ]

FUCK YOU POLYGON.

Good day.

 

[Deleted member 740922]

Polygon is outdated.

 

[crobb991]

oh fuck off.... yes some of them are a bit over the top... but its a fucking 18 rated game... so fuck polygon

so sick of the gaming press right now

 

[sublimit]

There are a million things that need to be fixed in these new games that are way more important than death animations.

With that said in the classics the death animations really fitted the gameplay because they were a projection of how you the player fucked up.Since the gameplay was 100% manual you felt responsible for Lara's death and therefore the animations had emotional impact. In the new games the gameplay is so scripted,inconsistent and automatic that you would basically feel nothing even if her head got chopped off. The death animations are only there to try to "shock" you but the only thing they succeed is being pointlessly distasteful since there is no real connection through gameplay between the avatar and the player.

 

[CatCouch]

I don't read Polygon at all anymore. Haven't been on the site in almost two years yet I know a lot of their articles because they get passed around. I guess that's the point. They tailor their writing to always cause friction and fights so people will keep their name trending. I can't even for a second take them seriously due to how often they write articles like this. It seems to be more than one a month now.

As for Tomb Raider, since the confident sex appeal is gone and Lara's character is quite dull I find the death animations and the horror aspects of Tomb Raider to be the most interesting parts. Without them I'd likely quit altogether.

 

[Lokimaru]

There are a million things that need to be fixed in these new games that are way more important than death animations.

With that said in the classics the death animations really fitted the gameplay because they were a projection of how you the player fucked up.Since the gameplay was 100% manual you felt responsible for Lara's death and therefore the animations had emotional impact. In the new games the gameplay is so scripted,inconsistent and automatic that you would basically feel nothing even if her head got chopped off. The death animations are only there to try to "shock" you but the only thing they succeed is being pointlessly distasteful since there is no real connection through gameplay between the avatar and the player.

Really? Is this why I've died a bunch of times fucking up jumps like I've done in other TR games? Let go of your hate! Or stop playing on Easy.

I don't read Polygon at all anymore. Haven't been on the site in almost two years yet I know a lot of their articles because they get passed around. I guess that's the point. They tailor their writing to always cause friction and fights so people will keep their name trending. I can't even for a second take them seriously due to how often they write articles like this. It seems to be more than one a month now.

As for Tomb Raider, since the confident sex appeal is gone and Lara's character is quite dull I find the death animations and the horror aspects of Tomb Raider to be the most interesting parts. Without them I'd likely quit altogether.

Lara's sexiness was just apart of who she was like a Model or Actress, But she never made a big deal out of it or flaunted it to get her way. She relied on her Brains and Skill to win the day not how she looked. That's why I stayed. Funny how the people who bitch the most about Lara's looks tend to be easy on the eyes themselves.

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

Is the author 5 years old? You're telling me that there's an adult who can't handle a little violence?

I hate how pussified modern culture is becoming, first they go after sexual content, now violence?

If you really can't handle this kind of content, play something else, no one's forcing you to play Mature rated games intended for a mature audience, the problem is you.

 

[Cato]

Can we ban links to polygon? Or ban the word polygon outright ?

 

[RoyBrown7777]

What's the problem?

Can we ban links to polygon? Or ban the word polygon outright ?

Nah I love seeing stupid shit like this.

 

[Zewp]

I don't think it's sexist (or whatever slant Polygon is taking, because I'm not bothering to give that shitty site a click), but the death scenes in the new Tomb Raider games were a little weird and out of place. It's really weird that they spent that much time and effort on scenes that most gamers just want to get past so they can get back to playing.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider I ended up getting a bit annoyed with them after a while. Seeing Lara get brutally impaled when I make an error while platforming is only funny so many times before it gets a bit old and tiresome.

 

[VulcanRaven]

Polygon is a great site but I don't agree with this. Tomb Raider has had this kind of animations in the past so I don't think they should be removed. They are part of the series.

 

[Lokimaru]

I don't think it's sexist (or whatever slant Polygon is taking, because I'm not bothering to give that shitty site a click), but the death scenes in the new Tomb Raider games were a little weird and out of place. It's really weird that they spent that much time and effort on scenes that most gamers just want to get past so they can get back to playing.

In Shadow of the Tomb Raider I ended up getting a bit annoyed with them after a while. Seeing Lara get brutally impaled when I make an error while platforming is only funny so many times before it gets a bit old and tiresome.

One would think that would compel one to "Get Good" at not dying. Honestly I prefer the Impaling to just rag dolling away like uncharted. Reminds me off the deaths in Dragon's Lair and other old school games and is a clear indication that Ya done fucked up. Hell these are tame compare to the Fear Effect Deaths. Also real Torture Porn is Dying when you haven't saved for two hours.

 

[JimboJones]

We need to bring back early 2000's ragdoll physics and corpses that blink until they fade away.

 

[VertigoOA]

Can we ban links to polygon? Or ban the word polygon outright ?

This would benefit society

 

[sublimit]

Really? Is this why I've died a bunch of times fucking up jumps like I've done in other TR games? Let go of your hate! Or stop playing on Easy.

....

 

[Cato]

We need to bring back early 2000's ragdoll physics and corpses that blink until they fade away.

Stair Dismount for the win.

 

[Orta]

Oh fuck off you over-sensitive shit stirring twats.

I wish somebody would impale them on a stake and drop boulders on their twitching corpses.

 

[Zewp]

One would think that would compel one to "Get Good" at not dying. Honestly I prefer the Impaling to just rag dolling away like uncharted. Reminds me off the deaths in Dragon's Lair and other old school games and is a clear indication that Ya done fucked up. Hell these are tame compare to the Fear Effect Deaths.

Wouldn't simply losing time and progress be enough to compel someone to not die in a videogame, though?

Please don't misunderstand me, though. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with extreme violence in videogames. Horror is one of my favorite genres and extreme violence and gore are to be expected (and even encouraged) there. I would be lying if I said I didn't intentionally let the Alien catch me in Alien Isolation more than a few times, just to see what new death animations I could find. But it fits the theme of the game, you know?

But the violence in the new TR games has always felt weird and out of place to me. Not just in how Lara dies, but also in how they tried to humanise her character by showing her empathetic and fragile side, but then the game encourages us to play as a murderous little gremlin who kills everyone/everything in sight in the most brutal ways possible. The older Tomb Raider games also saw you getting impaled on spikes or killing lots of people and animals, but it was never quite as gratuitous as these games are. It was more "shoot these dudes until they die", not "wait for this dude to come close so you can smash an ice-pick through his skull and then use it to drag him into the bushes".

Again, not saying there's anything wrong with the violence itself in TR, but it makes the games feel very thematically inconsistent. I get the feeling that Square Enix is currently using the violence as a bit of a crutch to set their games apart and make up for the areas in which the games are a bit more lacklustre. I'm fine with a TR game in which Lara kills everything in sight, but then the character profile should match that.

 

[Caayn]

I'm kind of surprised to see that this article is written by Mark Brown. I usually find myself in agreement with his Youtube videos. But not in the case of this article.

I didn't find it out of place considering the darker and mature tone in the games. I was happily surprised when I first saw it in the TR2013 game, a game developer who isn't too afraid to show that is gruesome.

When I tweeted about this issue, and how I’m uneasy about these death animations sticking around, I got a number of interesting counter-arguments. Those grisly deaths, said some tweeters, should make you not want Lara to die. A sort of psychological trick to make you play better.


But, uh, not dying is kind of the whole point of the game. I don’t want to die, because I want to get to the next part of the game.

...
Plus, highly viewed YouTube compilations of Lara’s deaths suggest that they might actually have the opposite effect for a certain subset gamers, who will actively try to kill Lara to see all of her unique death animations. Gotta catch ‘em all.

Reading and knowing that it's written by Mark Brown is rather surprising. He always talks with praise about little mechanics or details that help push a player to do better. But here he's talking about reaching the next part of the game as if it were a checklist that needed to be completed. Yes the end goal is to get to the next part, but that's not the only goal. If it was the only goal then the game could simply be one long hallway where the only thing you do is press the analogue stick forward or I could simply skip it all together and watch the cutscenes online. The path towards that end goal is what matters.

The death scenes in the new TR trilogy never caused me to trigger death scenes on purposes. They helped push me further towards the edge of my seat while playing simply because I knew that there would be something gruesome waiting for me if I failed.

 

[Red Crayon Aristocrat]

Can we ban links to polygon? Or ban the word polygon outright ?

Sites like this only care about clicks, they'll say whatever stirs up the most shit and gets the most attention.

If being our side made the most money they would be and once upon a time they were, but instead trolling us gets the most attention.

Just ignore garbage sites like this.

 

[Zeusexy]

https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/11/17961496/tomb-raider-death-animations

Over the course of the last three Tomb Raider games, I have seen Lara Croft impaled on a spike. Watched a tree branch jut through her jaw. Seen her writhe in pain as her stomach is pierced by a metal bar. Watched her pelvis get obliterated under the weight of several boulders.

But while the franchise has changed a lot in its many sequels and reboots — sometimes for the better, with Lara having more realistic proportions; and sometimes for the worse, with actual tomb raiding becoming optional content alongside endless murder — these death sequences are one thing that have stayed the same.

And with all the advancements in tech — did you know there’s a real-time physics simulation dedicated to rendering Lara’s ponytail? — these scenes have become so realistic that they’ve almost tipped into being creepy torture porn.



Check the link for the full story.

As I said in a previous post, use archive when linking pussygon. Don't give 'em clicks, that's all they want.

 

[Xaero Gravity]

 

[Zewp]

Really? Is this why I've died a bunch of times fucking up jumps like I've done in other TR games? Let go of your hate! Or stop playing on Easy.

I think you misunderstood what he was saying. In the old Tomb Raider games your death 'scene' was a direct result of gameplay. Look at the gif up in the thread, the player has control until the very last moment. You can jump on any one of those spikes and that would be the one that impales you. It's not prescripted.

The new Tomb Raider games wait until there's a situation from which the player can't recover (eg, jumping off a platform with a bottomless pit beneath it) and then switches to a pre-recorded death scene. It doesn't matter what you were doing, which direction you were jumping, where Lara was going to drop. You're always going to get the exact same death scene in that location. You didn't literally jump on those spikes. You just triggered a script that plays a scene in which Lara accidentally falls on those spikes.

What they're saying is that this causes a disconnect between the player and the character and I'm inclined to agree. I'm not a fan of games taking away control from the player to play a more "cinematic" animation/scene etc. This can manifest in many ways, like how in the original Thief trilogy you had to manually blackjack your enemies whereas in Thief 2014 you just hit a button and the character does it automatically in a "cool" scene where you have to relinquish control. I feel more immersed in the world in the former case, whereas the latter causes me to feel a disconnect.

 

[drotahorror]

I said this in another thread concerning Lara's death animations in the new trilogy

And honestly it's pretty low effort. There's no actual impalement through her virtual body, there's no point of entry or exit, it's just a polygonal object (the spike) that clips through another polygonal object (head).

There's no blood, no gore. If they were really glorifying it or wanted to get nasty with it, they could. This is a cheap death scene that in actuality would be terrible and graphic. This shit in-game is tame af. But the picture it paints in your head is so much worse than what they depict.

If Polygon means the disconnect the player encounters because it's scripted then I agree (didn't read the article, I just read Zewp's reply above). But that would mean completely dynamic death scenes with plenty of violence and gore.

 

[Zewp]

If Polygon means the disconnect the player encounters because it's scripted then I agree (didn't read the article, I just read Zewp's reply above). But that would mean completely dynamic death scenes with plenty of violence and gore.

Sorry, my post might have been a bit unclear. I was referring to Sublimit's views on the scripted nature of the scenes.

I didn't read Polygon's article either and I suspect their issues with the death scenes were probably more along the lines of "muh sexism" and the like.

 

[Gavin Stevens]

Nice to see polygon is still writing stories but clicks and not for interest.

 

[Breakage]

There's even a "Yikes" in the article.

 

[GreenAlien]

I like the death animations. They make me to not want to die again and try harder. They make me care more about Lara than without them.

 

[JimboJones]

There's even a "Yikes" in the article.

lol, as cringy as the quote was that the "yikes" was directed at, seeing "yikes" is starting to become just as cringe inducing these days.

 

[Deleted member 738976]

Lara Croft for Mortal Kombat guest character.

 

[Larxia]

Polygon will always keep looking for dumb stuff to complain about, that's why you should never try to satisfy these people, no matter what you do they will always push even more and find new things to fuel their political correctness quest.

 

[JORMBO]

The death animations have always existed in the series. Lara being impaled on the PS1 just looks a lot more violent with today’s graphics. The game is rated M. I hope developers don’t listen to overly sensitive writers like this guy at Polygon. There are tons of other gameplay problems with the new TR games this guy could have written about, but he decided to make a clickbait article instead.

 

[Grimmrobe]

This very forum helped Polygon rise by talking about them endlessly when they launched...

Meanwhile, I know half a dozen real hardcore sites that never get linked on here.

You sleep in the bed you made.

 

[radewagon]

Again, not saying there's anything wrong with the violence itself in TR, but it makes the games feel very thematically inconsistent. I get the feeling that Square Enix is currently using the violence as a bit of a crutch to set their games apart and make up for the areas in which the games are a bit more lacklustre. I'm fine with a TR game in which Lara kills everything in sight, but then the character profile should match that.

Ludonarrative Dissonance: the conflict between a video game's narrative told through the story and the narrative told through the gameplay

This is a common problem. It's what happens when you recognize that MOST game design centers around physical threats to the protagonist and that those threats are countered via violent methods. Basically, most video game protagonists are mass murderers and many narratives have trouble reconciling that fact when building their stories. It's not a problem with games like Metal Gear or Assassin's Creed because in those games, it's clear that being an effective murderer is part of who those characters are. It's also not a problem with games that have cartoonish violence. The effect of this dissonance, however, as you have easily noticed, starts to become very obvious when a game with realistic-ish violence has a narrative about a likable and compassionate protagonist like Lara Croft or Nathan Drake.

 

[888]

Bet they wouldn’t have written this about Nathan Drake.

 

[MayauMiao]

Polygon itself is out of date piece of crap. Thank goodness everyone is moving to youtube creators for quality newsworthy content.

 

[Cranberrys]

I can't stand Polygon. They want some nice and politically correct video games with no violence, no white people in foreign countries, no badass women… So yeah Lara Croft is like Satan to them. A self centered bad ass, sexy woman with guns and who isn't afraid of using maximum violence when the need arise. She's everything they hate. She's not a nice and likeable character from the get go like Nathan Drake and she is way more violent than him. I suppose Uncharted is the maximum level of violence tolerable to Polygon. The last TR trilogy is way to gritty for them, especially in Shadow where Lara is close to Dutch in Predator. Anyway, I love the new TR Trilogy and I have no problem with death animations which are part of the series since the very first episode.

 

[Javthusiast]

These ''journalism'' sites = Make a clickbaity this is a problem topic out of everything we possibly can.

Thankfully I never read them to begin with. Only see those articles come up in forums or in youtube videos making fun of them.

 

[Sub_Level]

I agree with Polygon. They should take out the grisly death animations. But how about they take the grisly out of the rest of the game too? Lara shouldn't be covered in bruises, mud, cuts, and bandages. She shouldn't be hesitating every time she makes a jump or kills people.

Lara should be a 10/10 in short shorts with dual pistols who isn't afraid of anything.

 

[SLoWMoTIoN]

Lara should be a 10/10 in short shorts with dual pistols who isn't afraid of anything.

FF Cups RIP