Index

• Intro
• The cast
• Lara
• Jonah
• Jacob
• Konstantin
• Ana
• Sofia

Intro
I really like the rebooted Lara Croft character as she is far more a ‘person’ than any of the previous versions of her. The Lara Croft of this series is even a more likable character than the one from the movies, which was more a feminized James Bond type than a female version of Indiana Jones.
I would like to explore this some more, especially as this development also marks a gradual change in the gaming industry in that becomes increasingly more possible to tell a proper story within a game, as the Walking Dead has already shown and, I will refer to it, is shown in Resident Evil: Revelations 2.  I welcome this, not specifically because this is what I think what games ought to be, but in that it allows for more and varied ways to narrate a story and giving a game more depth.
But it is also fascinating as it also might introduce  us to a  virtual world in which people can be what they like to be, instead of being what they are. A concept not everyone will be happy with as it, for instance, recalls the matrix where people live in a virtual world controlled by machines to the advantage of the machines. Instead one can imagine that people might actually voluntarily enter the matrix because it allows them to be what they want to be and to overcome their own limitations.
Story telling isn’t dependent on improved animation techniques, but it helps a lot. Rise of the tomb raider, excellently voiced, makes good use of Lara’s expressions to make realistic her personality.

The cast
Lara has many expression to make her alive. Note however that the same expression can be used to mean something different depending on the setting. Frowning for instance can mean anger, fear, attention, tension and anguish. Lara’s mouth is another way of making her feelings expressive. The third part is her eyes, wide, open, squinting, closed. Add animations to it and our association. I show the cast of the most important characters below and give an impression of their looks. The characters, although important to the story are, with the exception of possible Jonah and Ana(we come to that later) unimportant really to the development of Lara. Not even Jacob.

Lara

In the above screenshot Lara talks to Jonah. Her almost childish enthusiasm, young appearance and brown hair with brown eyes invokes the spirit of a child. What presents will I get?

Lara being duped by her driver. Notice her facial expression and that of the traitorous driver. She frowns at him(low eyebrows, squeezed in the center).He has sold her out and he is ashamed so he looks away from her. Duping Lara is not going to turn out well for him.

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Lara tells Jonah to kill the main bad guy, he doesn’t so he gets it. Note Lara’s expression.

Jonah

Lara’s companion is Jonah. We suspect he has a crush on her, he is devoted to her and smiles the whole time in her presence. Just like a puppy.

 

Jacob

Jacob is one of the other important characters. If you don’t get who he is early into the game you haven’t been paying attention. He might have been a love interest, but this is a PG rated game and we want to keep her for ourselves, don’t we? Also his resemblance to a key figure in a certain dominant faith in the western part of the world is probably not coincidental. Pay attention please.

Jacob is important for the story and the background but actually not a very important part of the story. This story is mostly centered around Lara.

Konstantin

Konstantin is the bad guy so he has to be a maniac. And that means a religious nut and selfish cold killer. Oh he has a good side too: he loves his sister Ana.

Ana

Sofia

Sofia is daughter of Jacob. She is Irish a descendant from the people that fled from Byzantium to the Siberian Wilderness.