Apparently Lara Croft Can No Longer Be Strong and Sexy

As somebody who’s admired the original Tomb Raider series of computer games with Lara Croft, I’ve been as disappointed as the next person that modern programmers in charge of the franchise repeatedly only show interest in watering down her sexuality, and as the following news from the Straits Times reveals, they still go to all that trouble just to make a point about something that affected some, if not all, of the comics adapted from the game: Lara may have beaten a path for more female heroines and encouraged young women around the world to pick up a controller, but in the early days, the publicity for the game leaned heavily on her shapeliness. With the market for video games now expanded well beyond the stereotype of adolescent boys, the team behind the new game says this time they are focusing on Lara as a strong character. “The way we’re rebuilding Lara, we’re trying to respect the fact that she’s female and we’re just trying to make her powerful, not as an object of sexual attraction,” said the game’s art director Arek Tomaszewski. Eight years after the last instalment Shadow Of The Tomb Raider and ahead of an all-new entry planned for 2028, Tomb Raider: Legacy Of Atlantis a...