No video game character has ever been introduced to the public as fully-formed as Lara Croft was back in November 1996. Building on the then-unique gameplay hook of a fully-explorable 3D world, publisher Eidos Interactive and developer Core Design fleshed out Lara’s personality with expensive cutscenes and stoked the gaming public with a relentless advertising blitz. Their Tomb Raider was an instant icon and an overnight sensation, and to hear them tell it, they did it almost by accident.
Toby Gard was the Lead Artist at Core Design, and his early sketches of Lara Croft actually depicted a male treasure hunter that shared more than a few similarities with Indiana Jones. Fearing the litigious wrath of George Lucas, Gard flipped the gender of Tomb Raider‘s hero-in-progress. And at some point in the pre-production process, Gard’s finger slipped when adjusting a “Breast Size” slider, and the slim Laura Cruz turned into the busty Lara Croft.
I’ve long suspected that this part of the legend is fiction, but the rest is history…
Insert Quarter is a glimpse into gaming’s past, present, and future through an exploration of historical, retrospective, and contemporary reporting.
Tomb Raider was one of the first games to feature a female hero, but Lara’s genius-level intellect and supermodel silhouette complicated the public’s reaction to her. Helen W. Kennedy explored these two very different sides of Lara Croft for Game Studies in 2002:
As the title suggests, the feminist reception of Lara Croft as a game character has been ambivalent to say the least. The question itself presupposes an either/or answer, thereby neatly expressing the polarities around which most popular media and academic discussions of Lara Croft tend to revolve. It is a question that is often reduced to trying to decide whether she is a positive role model for young girls or just that perfect combination of eye and thumb candy for the boys. It is also increasingly difficult to distinguish between Lara Croft the character in Tomb Raider and Lara Croft the ubiquitous virtual commodity used to sell products as diverse as the hardware to play the game itself, Lucozade or Seat cars. What follows then is an analysis of the efficacy and limitations of existing feminist frameworks through which an understanding of the kinds of gendered pleasures offered by Lara Croft as games character and cultural icon can be reached. I will begin by analyzing Lara primarily as an object of representation – a visual spectacle – and then move on, considering the ways in which the act of playing Tomb Raider as Lara disrupts the relationship between spectator and “spectacle.”
Lara Croft: Feminist Icon or Cyberbimbo? On the Limits of Textual Analysis
The constant push and pull over Lara’s true nature gave the public something to debate for the next decade. In that time, Eidos would publish seven sequels, a remake of the first game, and helped Paramount produce a pair of films starring Angelina Jolie as Lara. But after 2008’s Tomb Raider: Underworld, the series went on hiatus, and Rus McLaughlin looked back at how the franchise (and Lara) had evolved for IGN:
Lara Croft is the First Lady of gaming, the face on a fifty billion dollar franchise, a character so iconic she handily eclipses the very games that feature her. She’s a beacon for post-feminist independence and a sophomoric pin-up fantasy, all in one ass-kicking, mouth-watering package. Sex, danger, mystery… Lara carries it all, and she does it all with English class.
Because past the magazine covers, commercials, comic books and Hollywood blockbusters, Lara’s just a simple girl who’s happiest when crawling through a crumbling Aztec temple loaded with instantly lethal booby-traps. Her adventures might be straight out of the best pulp cliffhangers, but when Lara Croft leapt her first bottomless chasm, the future had arrived, and every other blood-and-guts action hero had catching up to do.
IGN Presents: The History of Tomb Raider
Backed by a new publisher, Square Enix, Lara returned with a new look and a new backstory in 2013’s Tomb Raider. She was still the descendant of English royalty, but this Lara Croft was younger, and not always the smartest person in the tomb. Fans and foes alike also noticed that her famous bust could be described using letters much closer to the beginning of the alphabet than ever before.
But was this Lara a new and improved version of the character? Carol Pinchefsky debated the question for Forbes shortly after the game’s launch:
The good news is, this version of Lara, while definitely off-balance and vulnerable, is one we can empathize with, and doesn’t project an aura of needing help. Quite the opposite, in fact: The game does an absolutely superb job of balancing her between inexperience and determination. Lara might be wounded and afraid, but she’s going to press on regardless. We do root for her, but she also demands our respect.
Lara has long been considered one of the most well-regarded characters in videogame history. Now she’s one of the most real.
A Feminist Reviews Tomb Raider’s Lara Croft
Tomb Raider (2013) was followed by Rise of the Tomb Raider in 2015, and a rebooted film series in 2018. The franchise, and the public’s opinion of Lara Croft, are definitely in a better place now than they’ve been since all the way back in 1996. And new developer Crystal Dynamics wants to keep it that way.
Joshua Rivera looked back at Lara’s most recent adventures for GQ in 2016, and he found a game character who resonates with the public, men and women, in a way that few do:
[T]he history of Lara Croft and Tomb Raider is also a story about how mainstream video games have seen the women portrayed in them, if they were portrayed at all. A lot of it is downright embarrassing, but it shouldn’t be forgotten. And now video games know a bit better. They have more women involved in making them, more eyes keeping things in check, feminist critics and the wider public to consider thanks to social media. [Rich Briggs, Brand Director of Crystal Dynamics] won’t outright divorce the franchise from its more sexualized past, but he doesn’t list it as one of its core pillars, either.
“Every day I have to worry about getting it wrong,” Briggs says. “And I think that’s why we hold ourselves to a very strict line of quality, and making sure we are always presenting Lara as a relatable and human version of the character that we know and love.”
The Rise and Fall (and Rise) of Lara Croft, Tomb Raider
When Sony’s Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune was first unveiled in 2006, it had to win over a public that preferred to refer to it as “Dude Raider.” In time, Naughty Dog’s everyman hero was able to overcome that unfortunate nickname, but now that Drake’s retired, it looks like Lara Croft will continue to continue to evolve as gaming’s top treasure hunter.