Disbelief can only be suspended so much and games like Uncharted 2 have shown that it is possible to effectively tell a story through a language barrier. There is an option to let most other characters use their native language but then it just makes it even more jarring when Lara communicates back using the cockney-tinted Queen’s tongue. The aforementioned South American city of Paititi has been sheltered from outside forces, which makes it awfully peculiar for the locals to speak perfect English. That cause is still there near the end, but buried beneath the spectacle of its explosive final scenes.īut the story also has its fair share of smaller, niggling issues particularly surrounding language. This all culminates in the ending that transforms the villain into something less interesting than the grounded character with a sympathetic, personal cause. This marks the game’s transition from an incredible, self-aware Tomb Raider to a passable, comfortable one. Personal moments and genre critiquing take a backseat as the player is shuffled from one tomb to the next without as much of the thought-provoking self-analysis that had carried the game up until that point. Shortly after the players reaches Paititi, the oft-advertised hub, the focus shifts from Lara back to artifact hunting. Shadow of the Tomb Raider Review: Raiding the Pastīut these strengths only work until about the halfway point when the game seems stubbornly hellbent on crawling back to its established ways. This even extends to the villain, who is not a mustache-twirling, cackling caricature, but a reasonable figure vaguely reminiscent of Killmonger from Black Panther. Through clever symbolism and dialogue, the game makes Lara-and, by extension, the player-question whether or not breaking into ancient structures and stealing relics is the right thing to do.īy acknowledging the optics of a wealthy, white British woman plundering sacred structures made by people of color, it twists the genre and gives it a fresh take that fits more in line with today’s standards. It’s an unexpected, post-modern interpretation of the genre and sets up Lara’s reckoning with the colonialist foundation the series has built itself upon. By putting the literal and metaphorical knife in Lara’s hands, it correlates her colonial fantasies and the active destruction: her need to plunder has literally torn the world asunder. Instead of saving the world, she immediately puts it into danger after stealing a ceremonial dagger from its rightful place. This new look props up the dissection of her treasure-snatching habits. This is in stark contrast to the first two games where we were told to care about the ill-fated crew and not shown. While neither are particularly charismatic thanks to the clinical, mostly humor-free writing, the more introspective looks into their characters fleshes them out in a way that gives a decent insight into their motivations. Shadow of the Tomb Raider slows down and lets Lara and Jonah, her buddy since the 2013 entry, speak plainly about their thoughts and insecurities. And while this game has plenty of that, it takes a look inside Lara’s heart and mind in a way this series should have embraced from the beginning. Her father is emblematic of that issue, as the franchise’s multiple tired attempts to force him into every story always felt like cheap attempts at installing empathy. Tomb Raider hasn’t ever overcome that notion of following Lara’s inner self as much as Lara follows cryptic clues. ![]() Advertisement Shadow of the Tomb Raider Review: Behind the Raider
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