Tomb Raider Forum

MEAGAN MARIE: The final question from the community is from Lara’s Generation. They ask, “Did you focus on keeping the storyline realistic?” I interpret that as… Can you speak to the balance of realistic and fantastical elements in the narrative? You obviously want to ground the character, but then to some degree, she’s perhaps tougher than a normal human, even though she is human. How do you balance the believability with the suspension of disbelief?

RHIANNA PRATCHETT: I think gamers always go into a game with the suspension of disbelief. Thankfully, that’s sort of inherent in the way we play games. Throughout the game, Lara actually suffers. You see the cuts and bruises. It’s more realistic from that point of view. But going back to the way she reacts to things, particularly situations like the first kill… It’s much more realistic and human. We wanted to show that her actions fed back into her character. In any other entertainment medium, action equals character, but so often in games you get this schizophrenic situation where a character is one thing in cutscenes and then goes on to perform mass genocide during the levels. That never feeds back into the character. It’s like it never happened. We wanted to bring that back into Lara and think about what it means to take a human life. Actually show her doing it and reacting badly to it and dealing with that throughout the game as well. She is not comfortable having to do that. She does wrestle with that throughout the game. So the internal journey she goes through is every bit as challenging as the external journey she’s going through.