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Tomb Raider is a fascinating series, it has multiple games across three separate continuities, 3 films, 3 comic series and 2 animated TV series. Over the course of the series run a few characters have made their mark within the series be it Lara's long standing nemesis Natla, her faithful butler Winston, her hacker friend Zip, her surrogate brother Jonah, her parents Richard and Amelia Croft and of course her best friend Sam Nishimura.
Many of the characters have gone on to become long standing recurring characters with some even coming close to rivaling Lara in popularity while others really haven't made it past their first appearance. Lara's first real love interest Chase Carver only really exists in the comics and even then only appeared in 14 issues and has been forgotten by both the series and the fandom at large.
But then you have characters that are somewhere in the middle. They're not quite loved but they're not really hated. They have a following in the fandom but not enough to truly make an impact on the series.
To look at my favorite character in the series, Sam, she was intended to appear in only one game and to die at the end of that game, with no real plans to include her afterwards. As we know that didn't happen and Sam is now viewed as the second most popular character in the series with only Lara surpassing her. Sam has appeared in more fan fics and fan art then any other character. There were plans to include her in Rise and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, was going to be in the sequel to the 2018 movie and will be a major character in the second season of Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft.
Sam is something of a Breakout Character. While Lara remains the most popular character of the series and the lead Sam possibly becoming the Deuteragonist of, at the very least, the Netflix series highlights just how much of an impact she's had. As I've mentioned before she's being used to hype up the next season of TLOLC with the first promotional image being of Lara and Sam together and even using the phrase "The One and Only Sam Nishimura" makes it clear that the studio is well aware of Sam's popularity and is using that to get fans invested in the next season.
The same cannot be said for another character, who was clearly intended to be a breakout character but was quickly shelved with no real plans to include the character after his introduction. That of course being the subject of today's post, Kurtis Trent.
Now, to be clear Kurtis DOES have a fanbase, he has more fanfics and fan art then many of Lara's other potential Love Interests. Again, look at Chase, he has so few fan fics that I had to go deep into the fandom to find them and no real fan art to speak of. I'm still not convinced that Alex West from the first Angelita Jolie movie was based on Chase.
It's not like, say, Jacob Taylor from Mass Effect where absolutely no one likes him, there are clearly fans that like him and think he's great.
However, while it's true that Kurtis does have a fans it's nowhere near as big as some may think. Between Fanfic.Net and AO3 Kurtis has about 225 fanfics which is rather pitiful when compared to Sam who has over 700.
During the release of the Remaster of Tomb Raider IV - VI Kurtis' page became one of the most viewed pages on the Tomb Raider Wiki but after roughly 1 week his page went down and Sam resumed her place as the 4th most viewed page on the site which has remained for over a month at the time of this writing and has consistently been on the top 10 most viewed pages for over a decade.
And in terms of appearances after he was introduced he certainly has fared better then Amanda Evert who, as far as I know, only really exists in the Legend games but hasn't done as well as Natla, Zip or Winston and is miles behind Sam. Winston, or a version of him, has appeared in every continuity of the games and had a stand in for the Angelita Jolie movies and top cow comics (where he was evil and given a different name). Natla appeared as a major villain in the Legend games, had her name appear in the original ending of Shadow and might show up in TLOLC as a major villain.
Kurtis has only really appeared in 3 issues of the Top Cow Comics (which was more of a promotional move for Angel of Darkness to help increase sales for the game) and the mobile game Tomb Raider: Reloaded (which is more of a "and also featuring" vibe).
As far as I know, there were no plans to include Kurtis in any of the Legend games, any of the Survivor games, the Alicia Vikander movies and I've yet to see anything to indicate that there are any plans to include him in the Netflix show or any future games.
As mentioned before, Kurtis was clearly intended to be a breakout character which you can see in the number of projects that were planned for him after AOD but none of them came to fruition. There were plans for a Spin Off game and to have him return as a playable character in a sequel to AOD. But this never happened and Kurtis today is closer to a base-breaking character and even with his fanbase he remains a divisive character with some fans loving him, others hating him while everyone else is rather indifferent towards him.
And it should be noted that at the time of release people HATED Kurtis and while that hatedom has faded a bit it's still there. Fans of the series at the time hated him and made that opinion clear.
Having looked over everything I can about AOD I think I do understand why Kurtis never really caught on with anyone and it all comes down to 10 issues.
Before we go on just a reminder this is just my opinion like all my other posts. This is not an objective fact and I know fans of the character either don't have any issue with these points or find some of them to be a positive. This is just how I felt about these points and why I think they played a factor in Kurtis being so unpopular at the time and remains so divisive today.
Also also despite the title I don't actually hate Kurtis and most of these are things that just annoy me then anything but I thought it would be a funnier reference to 10 Things I Hate About You (fun movie BTW check it out when you get the chance).
Design
Let's first take a look at Kurtis' Design. It's boring. It's a generic wannabe Goth-ish design. He wears mostly black clothes and his face is locked in an almost permanent frown and he also looks a little fugly, his face is generic with nothing to really make him stand out but is kinda uneven and he looks like he hasn't taken a shower in days. Seriously every time I look at him I think "Take a Shower". He's just so greasy.
But again the real issue is his design is more bland. It's a generic hot topic, with a generic looking guy who frowns a lot. He just looks like A Guy with nothing to make him stand out.
Compare him with, say, Nathan Drake. The two have overall the same build and are pretty generic looking guys when you get right down to it yet Nate is one of the most iconic video game characters of our time. The reason for that is because Nate is basically a regular guy who goes on amazing adventures and does death defying stunts so his design helps to make him more relatable.
Same thing with Luz Noceda from The Owl House. Her overall design for most of the series is fairly generic. Her hair is a bit messy yet not in an anime kinda way, her clothing is something anyone would wear and even her final design of the series is basically box standard goth. But what makes this work is it contrasts her to the world of the Boiling Isles and contrasts her overall personality. She's a weirdo who loves weird things (she literally at one point brought live snakes to school for a class project without telling anyone) which makes her design almost funny because if you knew nothing about her you would think that this is a regular kid.
And her designs in the finale are all about her being completely open to who she is and being loved for it (my personal favorite design of her is her last design of the series just FYI).
But Kurtis? His design doesn't really tell us anything about his character other than he's just a dude who frowns a lot.
But I will say this, this bland and boring design really does capture his... personality and what a... personality it is.
Personality
Much like Kurtis' design his overall character is also pretty bland. He has this too cool for school attitude who is, like, totally numb to the evils of the world cause he's been exposed to it for so long. He can look at an explosion and see a woman on fire (briefly) and not be phased by it.
This wouldn't be too bad if there was more to him then this. OG Lara was a thrill seeker who took shit from no one but she could also be classy and charming when she needed to be and had still cared for people. She was a badass but she was still an interesting character.
Kurtis is a case of what you see is what you get and what you get is generic edge lord wannabe who thinks he's cooler than he really is.
Of course this could be fixed if he was given enough time. I mean Sam has only about 30 or 40 minutes in ASIB and she's great and if there was a chance to get to know him in documents, collectables or cutscenes or gameplay then he could be interesting right?... well... nooo...
Limited Focus
One of the problems with Kurtis is that while he was marketed as a major character in AOD, even getting special mention in the opening credits of the game in the game proper. He was everywhere in the marketing from Game Magazines and mentioned rather often in interviews in the buildup to the game. But in the game proper he isn't really in it all that much and as such doesn't have that much focus. Generally speaking AOD takes about 6 or 7 hours to beat and we don't really see Kurtis until about half an hour in and this is everything he does. He sits in the corner doesn't talk to you (the dialogue that he was suppose to say doesn't trigger due to the game being so buggy) and his first real cut scene is this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrGgWvlQyPY
We don't see him again for about half an hour and when we do he's just standing around watching Lara escape an exposition while smoking and being uninterested in the event he's witnessing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm12zgXoZJg
And that's it, we don't see him again until the halfway point of the game where we're given, yet again, very little.
He frisks Lara for weapons, the two fight, he gets knocked out and then he's gone again for at least another hour. At this point in the game you're likely at the 3 or 4 hour mark and it's here where he locks up Lara and then becomes a playable character. We're well past the halfway point of the game here BTW there's likely only 2 hours left and we're suddenly playing someone we don't actually know.
All we know about Kurtis at this point is he rides a motorcycle, wears a black shirt, is stalking Lara and seems to be a bit of a pervert given how he was frisking her seemed more of him feeling her up and he has this weird throwing star (which wasn't even something you could use in the original game). We don't even know his name, he's just a guy who we're now playing as.
I knew more about Sam, Jonah, Reyes, Whitman, Roth, Alex and Grim in the first hour of ASIB then I did about Kurtis in 4 hours of watching AOD. Hell, I knew more about Himiko than Kurtis and that's a character with no documents, one line of dialogue and 1 cutscene that lasts for about 1 minute and you don't even get in a boss fight with her.
How am I supposed to care about a character if the game doesn't even give me the chance to get to know him?
But this is a game so maybe he'll be fun to play as, after all he has magic powers and that sick throwing star. Surely the game makes him fun to play as right!... Right?... right?
Clunky Gameplay
One of the issues a lot of fans have with Kurtis was that he was TERRIBLE to play as. He was basically a slower, harder to control version of Lara and she was a pain in the ass to play as here as well. And in the original game you couldn't use any of his powers, he just had a gun and weaker stamina, couldn't sprint and can't even swim!
I think the water was poisonous or something but touching water while playing as Kurtis is instant death. What is the reason he looks so greasy, is he secretly the son of the Wicked Witch of the West and inherited his mother's aversion to water?
Now the remaster, which I have yet to play, did a lot to try and fix this by letting players use his unique weapon and having access to his powers but apparently it's still not that good. He's still slower then Lara, his attacks aren't as fast and during boss fights his powers are awkward to use because these bosses were designed to be fought with the regular gameplay not the new stuff made for Kurtis in this remaster.
So, to recap: He's slower then Lara in attacks an dogging animation, his more unique abilities in the remaster don't work well against the enemies because the rushed development meant there was no real time to fashion the enemies to his original play style. Is weaker then Lara in terms of gameplay and is unable to even touch water without dying.
It's not usual to switch between characters in a game or to play as a character who's weaker then the main character but it has to make sense. The Last of Us Part 1 did this but that worked as we went from playing a middle aged man who had been fighting for survival for 20 years to a 14 year old girl who weighs about 9 pounds soaking wet. In AOC we're playing as someone who seems to be more buff then Lara yet is not as strong and has fewer abilities at his disposal.
Games are dependent on gameplay. If a character is either boring or annoying players will often overlook these issues if the character is fun to play as but just about everything I've seen and heard his parts of the game are among the worst in either version of AOD.
So, the most important part of the game to make him work is when he's at his worst and something even fans of the characters dread doing?
The most praise given to Kurtis' sections is that the atmosphere is nice, that it has a really unsettling feel to it that makes if feel like you're suddenly playing a Resident Evil game but that has nothing to do with Kurtis and part of the reason it's so tense is because he's so weak. Horror is meant to make you feel helpless so what does it say that the most redeeming part about Kurtis' first of only two playable sections works because he's powerless to play as?
But what really makes his clunky controls so bad is his first encounter with Lara. In their first real scene together Kurtis manages to get the drop on Lara, out maneuver her and even holds her at knife(?) point and successfully escapes her and only doesn't because someone hit him with a tranquilizer. And then he later manages to outsmart her and lock her up.
This gives the impression that he is Lara's equal or possibly even her better given how easily he was able to get one up on her not once but twice. And YET when we play as him he's a complete joke who's not even half as good as Lara is in gameplay regardless of which version you're playing as.
One of the most annoying things to happen to a player in any game is being defeated in cutscene. The most infamous explain of this is with Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3 where in cutscenes he manages to kill Thane, take down your skycar and worst of all beat you on Thessia.
But when you actually do fight him, both on Thessia and at Cerberus' main base he's a complete joke. Even on the hardest difficulty setting, Insanity, he's one of the weakest bosses in the series and in fact his attacks are weaker then some standard enemies and he barely attacks you at all.
But then the cutscene kicks in and suddenly he's super dangerous and easily outmatches us... because EVERYONE BECOMES AN IDIOT IN THE CUTSCENES!
One of my favorite DLCs of all time is The Tyranny of King Washington and one of the reasons I love that DLC so much is how well it conveys how dangerous King Washington is. We're told throughout the first half hour of the game how much power he has, how he should not be crossed and we see that for ourselves in our first boss fight with him.
Washington completely Curb-Stomp us, he does a great deal of damage with attacks we can't dodge, we can't get close to him, we can't hit him from range and we can't retreat to safety as he's put up a barrier around us so we can't get away. And this isn't in a cutscene this is all in gameplay so we, the player, are shown just how dangerous Washington is thus justifying the need for the Tea of the Red Willow Tree (again long story).
Kurtis' encounter is more like Kai Leng's and anything that reminds me of that worthless Piece of Shit is always a bad thing.
The cutscenes keep insisting that Kurtis is a real badass, one who is on par or better than Lara. He gets the jump on her not once but twice and easily escapes her, even taunting her while doing so both times. Only to then have him be a complete joke in actual gameplay. A tough guy wannabe who's behind Lara in every possible way regardless of which version of the game you're playing.
And that leads to the final insult, in the game Kurtis is a weakling and since he bested you, that makes you and Lara weaker then a weakling.
First Impression
As anyone will tell you first impressions matter and in the first half of the game Kurtis hasn't done much to leave much of an impression on players and we're only properly introduced to him halfway through the game regardless how fast you play the game we don't really meet him until we finished the first half of the game which again can take about 6 or 7 hours depending on how you play (about 40 minutes if your speed running just FYI).
And when we do meet him he doesn't give the best first impression. I'd show the cutscene in question but it honestly makes me uncomfortable so I'll just quick summarize it. Kurtis gets the drop on Lara and holds her at gunpoint and then... this is really REALLY uncomfortable... he frisks her which comes off as him feeling her up while he threatens her.
Please note outside of the cutscene of Lara escaping an explosion we have not seen Kurtis until this point and with that scene in mind and the fact that you can't interact with him when we first see him (I think this was fixed in the remaster which restored a lot of cut content but I'm not sure) this means that Kurtis has been following Lara around waiting to get the drop on her. In other words, he was stalking her until he could be alone with her.
It should be noted that Lara does frisk Kurtis later but the two scenes are very different from each other. Lara searches Kurtis for weapons quickly and when she finds them she stops after 3 seconds and goes back to pointing a gun at him.
Kurtis' scene is played to be as sensual as possible while Lara's is played straight as she's just checking him for weapons.
And as mentioned before after this scene Kurtis disappeared for at least 2 hours on a normal playthrough... And when we meet him again he locks Lara up to keep her out of his way and this is the point in the game where we take control of Kurtis.
So, our first impression of Kurtis is basically a creepy stalker who is just as antagonistic towards Lara as her enemies, holds Lara at gunpoint and uses checking her for weapons as an excuse to feel her up and then locks her up to keep her out of his way. And when we play as him he's a weakling compared to the person he's been stalking.
And again, it takes most of the game to get to this point so all I've learned about this guy is that he's an asshole! And this is even worse when you remember that Kurtis was meant to be Lara's first real love interest in the games, leading us to.
Strangled by Red String: Angel of Darkness Edition
I am a romantic, I adore romance and get excited when love is in the air in a story. Doesn't matter if it's between characters of the same gender or not I will usually have fun. But it HAS to be done right or I'm not going to have a fun time and the "Romance" between Lara and Kurtis is just not fun for me.
As I said the impression I get of this guy is that he's a creepy stalker who holds Lara at gunpoint and him searching for more weapons is played sensually but it's just unsettling which is not helped by him locking her up later. It comes off as him wanting to have power over some random woman he just met that he finds attractive and given his overall lack of interest in working with her at first it gives the impression that he doesn't care about her and only sees her as something to be objectified and not as a person.
The two having almost no screen time together throughout the game doesn't help. Again it takes about 3 or 4 hours before Lara and Kurtis actually meet and when they do we get that awful frisking scene which for many players makes them feel uncomfortable and thus makes the idea of a romance between them less appealing.
And then, after finally meeting, Kurtis disappears again for at least an hour and when they meet up again he locks her up to keep her out of his way and then later they meet again and they're both threatening each other. And after threatening each other they realize that they have a common enemy and decide to work together. We only have about 2 hours of the game left and they still don't spend much time together and when they do it's not much and Kurtis dies before the final level.
In total the two have about 6 or 8 minutes together and most of that is them fighting each other and Kurtis nearly kills Lara a few times. And whenever they're not together they're clearly not thinking of each other. Lara loses interest in Kurtis soon after their first encounter because she has more important things to focus on and Kurtis sees her more as an object that gets in his way when she is clearly the more competent of the two.
And for me the two lack any real chemistry, they spend most of their time together being at each other's throats and outside the frisky scene there is no real sexual tension between the two, most of their dialogue is either antagonistic or boring exposition.
Look at Lara's relationship with Sam and this is only counting the game not any supplementary martial. Sam is warm and supportive of Lara with Documents by Sam going over how much she's trusting in Lara, how she's trying to make sure to get her the credit she deserves and how she's putting on a brave face despite her unease while heading towards the Dragon's Triangle.
While the two are away from each other Lara mentions both in optional dialogue and mandatory cutscenes how she's worried about Sam and asks her friends if they've found her yet. When Sam is able to contact Lara, hearing each other's voices calms them and Lara heads towards Sam when she knows where she is.
And when they do finally meet again they embrace each other with Lara fighting off a small army to both protect and get to Sam. Sam stands up for Lara when Reyes blames her for Roth's death, Sam is the only person Lara confides in about her plan to steal the boat and take it inland. Sam is the only person to take Lara's side when she makes her distrust of Whitman known while Reyes and Jonah take a more neutral path. When Reyes threatens to leave Lara behind when the boat is fixed Sam swears to not leave without Lara.
And when is captured again Lara fights through Hell to save her and the two express relief that the other is okay.
And of the main differences between the relationship between Lara and Sam vs. Lara and Kurtis is that one relationship is the main focus of the game. Everything Lara does in ASIB is to find and rescue Sam and as such the game makes a point in showing us why this relationship matters to make sure you share Lara's desire to save Sam. The relationship between Lara and Kurtis, on the other hand, is a minor relationship that the game barely focuses on, putting more emphasis on Lara's conflict with the villains and despite sharing a common enemy in those villains the two spend more time at each other's throats rather then doing anything to help each other.
Lara and Sam have about half an hour to 40 minutes together between gameplay and cutscenes and most of that they're being supportive and protective of each other. With Lara and Kurtis they spend most of their time working against each other and only about a minute actually working together.
I'm not against the idea of the enemies to lovers trope, (look at my She-Ra posts for a good example of that) but that story works best when the pairing in question actually get to spend time together and are flirtatious with each other throughout.
Catra and Adora can't help but flirt with each other and Adora never gives up on Catra and Catra clearly wants nothing more than to be with Adora. Amity and Luz are only enemies for 2 episodes are start working together soon after that. Midna is borderline abusive towards Link but softens over time and Link clearly comes to care about Midna so when they become friends with hints of romantic tension it's believable.
Even Raya and Namaari work because the two can't seem to help but flirt with each other in every scene they're in together and that's a pairing that's not even technically canon.
These pairing work and are popular with fans and in all these cases part of what makes it work is the fact that they spend most of the story together even if it's at each other's throats.
Even if you like the scene where Kurtis feels Lara up (I don't judge) that's all they have. They don't spend nearly enough time together to develop beyond that point and most of their time together isn't even that much fun to watch.
Kurtis locking Lara up to keep her out of his way along with him threatening her when they first meet gives the impression that he views her as weaker than him and that he wants to be the dominant in any possible relationship with her and Lara is indifferent towards him throughout most of the game.
Contrast this relationship with the one between Lara and Alex in the first movie. Jolie and Craig have genuinely good chemistry and you get the idea that they respect each other, Alex even smiling when Lara gets the upper hand on him and his boss. Hell Lara has more chemistry with the villain of the first film then she does with Kurtis and that's someone she hates and wants dead by the end.
If you're trying to sell fans on the idea of someone becoming Lara's first canonical love interest it's usually sound advice to convince people playing the game that the characters in question have some real chemistry otherwise you risk turning people away from that relationship by making it no fun to watch.
Interesting Concept, Poor Execution
One of the most common things that fans will bring up in Kurtis' defense is that he has a pretty interesting backstory and an interesting concept. He's a psychic raised by psychic monks out to get revenge for the death of his father by someone who can shapeshift into other people.
I'll admit that's not a bad idea and the few times we get to see Kurtis use his powers it does raise a lot of interesting questions about him. The problem here is that the execution for this idea is terrible.
His backstory isn't really isn't fleshed out in the game meaning in order to know most of this you have to go hunting for supplementary material either in comics, novels, interviews with the developers or the game's manual. As I've made clear before, I don't like it when stories do this because in order to understand what's happening I need to do homework which is not helped that none of this is shown or explained in the game itself.
What part of Kurtis' demeanor gives the impression that he was raised by monks, I can't even recall if he ever even mentions his father's name and as I'm going to get into he doesn't even really know who killed his father and was hunting the wrong man.
Now this isn't anything new to the series, the Survivor Trilogy had a lot of information stored away in Supplementary Material, most notably with Sam's absences, and a good chunk OG Lara's backstory was regulated to the game's manual. However, both these cases work for a number of reasons. While I don't like that Sam was removed from the games you don't really need to read the comics to understand why she's out of the series as a few lines of dialogue and documents (hidden though they may be) give you a vague idea and Sam is not needed in these games for them to work.
And with OG Lara, her backstory plays no part in the story of the first game and there isn't much story to begin with which was pretty common for older games back then.
But one of the biggest selling points, and indeed of the game's strengths, of AOD was it would have a more involved story. There are a ton of collectables, hidden clues and dialogue that help to give you more depth on the antagonists of the game and seeing that the game is a bit of a mystery at first it's nice that it does give you the answers even if you have to go digging for them.
So, why is Kurtis' backstory lagging in the game? Again the game does not give much explanation as to who he is, how his powers work or what he wants. It's kept vague and mostly unexplained and if it is in the game it's really hard to find this info.
What doesn't help is how little Lara is interested in learning about Kurtis. It makes sense, she's seen so many weird things in her life that everything about Kurtis just doesn't phase her which was part of older Lara's charm but in this case it hurts Kurtis' character.
And it really doesn't help that Kurtis is not the strangest thing we've seen in the series which, again, is REALLY not helped by the original release. Remember players couldn't use his powers in the original game and the few times they are used it's for basic information gathering that could have been done by just finding it in a more mundane way.
And in the remaster his abilities are apparently not that good and not a lot of fun to use.
Keeping things unexplained can work just to pick one example, Himiko from ASIB. In that game we never learn that much about the Sun Queen, how she got her powers, who she was before becoming Queen of Yamatai and there are also a lot of questions surrounding her actions in the game itself.
Why did she wait so long to take a host, why does it have to be Sam, wouldn't anyone have worked? How has the Storm Guard remained alive after all these years did she make them immortal and if that's the case how is Lara able to kill them?
And none of the tie-in comics or novels or future games ever explain this and the movie version makes it so there is nothing supernatural going on so that doesn't provide an answer.
But this works because it adds to the horror of the game. Himiko is effectively a Lovecraftian monster who is unknowable to us and all we learn about her is all secondhand from Documents by people who met her in the past and what little they did learn terrifies them, enough for one to leave Yamatai and warn his lord to avoid conflict with Himiko at all cost and the other to take her life in the hopes of stopping her once and for all.
Himiko being unknowable works because it adds to the horrors of the island. It gives you just enough information to grasp the basics but also lets you know that you REALLY don't want to know the rest. Again, much like a Lovecraft story, we learn enough to get the picture and the rest is left to our imaginations.
That's what I mean when I say that the concepts behind Kurtis Are interesting but the execution fails him because it either doesn't explain anything about him or leaves it insufferably vague.
This is a character we're going to be playing as, he is someone with physic powers and is supposed to be Lara's first canonical love interest. We WANT to know more about him and how his backstory and both are left to the wayside NEVER given a proper explanation.
An interesting concept can only carry a character so far and if the execution fails then it's going to be hard to get people invested in whatever you're trying to sell them.
Unconnected to Lara's Goals
One of my biggest issues with Kurtis is his story doesn't really overlap with Lara's, is really cliches and ultimately unresolved. His story is a simple "You killed my father, prepare to die." Only he never has a chance to confront the man in question, dies before the finale at the hands of what is effectively one of the villains pet monsters and it's Lara who deals with the villain for reasons that have nothing to do with Kurtis.
Lara doesn't hunt the villain because he hurt someone. She and Kurtis both know she's here because someone she knew was killed and she was kinda framed for said murder and she's trying to clear her name and settle a personal score.
Lara doesn't really know Kurtis, as far as I know she didn't know his father and while their hunting the same person they don't want him for the same reason and on top of that Kurtis isn't even hunting the right man, it was someone who looked like him at the time (long story). So, Kurtis dies before he can even get close to the man he wants to kill and wouldn't have done anything because he didn't really do anything to Kurtis and the person who does kill him doesn't care about that because she's hunting him for her own reasons.
So what we have here is a lazy rehash of a box standard revenge story with a character we barely know trying to avenge someone we don't know who doesn't even come close to succeeding at said revenge and likely never would have because he wasn't even chasing the person who did it. And he dies at the hands of some random monster he has no connection to before he can do anything of note.
And the person who gets revenge for him wasn't interested in his own quest, she just happens to be hunting down the same person for her own reasons that has nothing to do with Kurtis.
The most he has to do with Lara's arc is he's an obstacle to her own goals and later keeps a monster busy and in the end is only a minor inconvenience in the former and a glorified decoy in the latter.
The fact that he does little to nothing to help Lara only makes this worse. Again he locked her up to keep her out of his way but in the end she was his only chance at getting his own quest complete... and he still wasn't able to complete it because, again, he was hunting the wrong man.
The only thing of note is him killing one boss who wasn't even anyone he or Lara actually knew and then died. Speaking of which.
A Meaningless Death
One thing that isn't brought up all that much is Kurtis' death or rather his not quite dead yet moment. Towards the end of the game Kurtis is killed by the aforementioned monster that he has no real connection to and that is the last time we see him. Now technically speaking he didn't "Die" die because his body goes missing and he was meant to survive to show up for his spinoff game and future TR stories and in a sequel/tie-in novel Kurtis is alive.
However, that is supplementary martial and even if it's good the canonicity SM is questionable at best and is often prone to be decanonized in mainline stories. For example in Star Trek, Data had successfully transferred all his memories and thus himself, to his brother B4 as shown in a number of toe-in novels and comics, most notably in the prequel comic to the 2009 film Star Trek. But in the Star Trek TV Series Picard it was revealed that B4 was disassembled and shut down and that he only had some memories of Data but nothing more.
So, this means that until we get a game that is a direct sequel to AOD Kurtis is, for all intents and purposes, dead. And it's such an empty death.
The game tries to play this up as this big moment but he has had so little impact on the plot that when he does die it affects nothing. Lara doesn't even know he's dead for about 40 minutes and none of the villains care so it affects NOTHING!!!
This death is so poorly handled that this was the general reaction to said death by the fanbase at Large.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36EzyC0_Djo&t=25s
It's almost comedic how poorly handled this death was and the fact that it's never resolved and may never be resolved is also kinda darkly hilarious. Made even worse/funnier that he dies to one of the easiest bosses in the series.
Remember, Kurtis was meant to be the breakout character of the series and in the game he's introduced in, the one where he was meant to leave gamers wanting more of him and he's barely in it, is kinda pathetic in the actual gameplay and dies to one of the weakest enemies in the entire series.
And again, what makes this worse is that this death affects nothing, killing him didn't change anything and the boss he killed didn't mean anything to him or to anyone else in the story.
This again, isn't anything new to the series, characters have died and have had little impact on the story and it was just as annoying there but what makes Kurtis' death worse is that he was being played up as a major character only to do next to nothing and then died and continued to affect nothing.
What makes this even funnier is that in the next two timelines would include the death of two characters that would have a profound effect on Lara's life for good and for ill that being the death of Lara's parents.
In the original games Lara's parents are alive and well and not on the best terms with their daughter for the life she's chosen to live. But after the Top Cow Comics and the first movie Lara's parents were killed off both to better tie into the first movie which was a massive hit and to give Lara more depth so she wasn't just doing what she did for the thrill of it.
But Kurtis, his death means nothing even in the game he was introduced in which is made even worse by the death of Werner. In AOD Lara was framed for Werner's death which is why she's in this mess to begin with. Werner dies at the start of the game and Lara's whole goal is to find the real murder and clear her name and to avenge her former friend/mentor.
His death is the reason Lara is doing what she does and in the end she avenges Werner even though her main goal is to clear her name.
But even worse then that is that Kurtis' death means even less then that. Remember Kurtis was supposed to survive this, the monster that killed him he already killed and seeing how little he means to Lara results in his death having no impact at all. He's not dead, he's just off screen.
This creates the subconscious mindset that Kurtis' death is meant to be shrugged off and discarded because he's just fine so why get worried about it.
All this adds up to is that Kurtis' death means nothing to anyone. Not to Lara, not the villains and not the player. It's a nothing death so irrelevant that people forgot it happened.
Irreverent Character
But the biggest issue with Kurtis is that you could easily remove him from the game and nothing would change. He's barely in the game, he has nothing to do with Lara's goals, the villains don't even seem to know he exists and he dies without having actually accomplished anything other than killing a single monster that had nothing to do with his own personal arc and wasn't tied to Lara.
Contrast this with Sam, you can't remove her from the game without seriously altering the story to make it work and I know this is the case because the 2018 movie removed Sam from the story and had to seriously alter it to make it work and the story was weaker without her. Kurtis is basically a glorified extra who no one knows and no really cares about in the game.
What's worse is there's nothing he does in the game that couldn't be done by Lara. He fights a few minor monsters, gets an item and kills a single boss and gives some minor details about the villain that isn't even true because, again, the man he's hunting isn't the one who killed his father.
And because the original game just had him as a slightly worse player character that means that there is nothing that makes his sections really stand out in the original. The Remaster is a bit better because they gave him more unique skills but none of those skills make him any more impressive then Lara.
Even comparing him with Jonah highlights how little he really matters. I've made it no secret that I have issues with Jonah and how utterly useless he was in any of the games but TLOLC showed that he could work that he can add something to Lara and his fake death in that show had more of an impact then Kurtis' actual death. Hell Sam being exiled from the series had more of an impact and that was with the studio actively trying to bury her.
Lara's parents have had more of an impact in the series and they were basically nothing characters in the original timeline.
Because of this I honestly wonder if Kurtis was even supposed to be in this game. AOD infamously had a rushed development which is why it was so buggy on release (and apparently in the remaster because it too was rushed out with most of the features and character models were unfinished). But given how little Kurtis features in the game, how the enemies he deals with are better suited to Lara's play-style then his, how hardly anyone but Lara interacts with him and how his death affects nothing until literally the last minute of the game makes me wonder if Kurtis was added into the game late in development.
I could be wrong but, again, he has no real impact and the few things he does do could be done by anyone.
Mind you this again was a rushed game so Kurtis could have been planned to be included right from the start but the rushed development meant that the ideas they had for him had to be scrapped in favor of just getting the game done. That happens a lot, too often in fact, which is likely why Kurtis has such an interesting backstory but is so poorly executed in the game itself.
Closing Thoughts
In order to show just how badly Kurtis has done in the wider fandom of Tomb Raider Contrast him with this with Sam, Zip and Natla
Natla died on October 24 1996 in the first Tomb Raider game but was brought back 10 years later in Tomb Raider: Anniversary and Underworld. Sam was kicked out of the series on July 29 2015 in the comics but has been brought in TLOLC. Zip was just a minor character in Chronicles back in 2000 but he was brought back back 6 years later in Tomb Raider: Legend.
Even Winston, a character who had been introduced in the second game of the original timeline, had been written out of the series after Underworld back in 2008 was brought back 7 years later in the critically acclaimed Rise DLC Blood Ties.
Kurtis has been dead for about 21 years and outside of the comic adaptation of AOD and being included in Reloaded, which again is a mobile game, he has not been brought back in any of the mainline games, shows or films.
Will he return to the series proper at some point? It is possible because he has fared better than other characters in the series. Chase Carver died in 2001 and only briefly returned in 2004 but he is still dead. Tsang died in 2003 and has never returned in any way, shape or form.
Even characters who seemed to be popular like Alex West has not been seen since he was first introduced back in 2001.
But as it stands right now, I'm not sure Kurtis has enough fans to make a real return. While Kurtis has his fans it's clear that he just didn't become the breakout character the developers were hoping for which is evident by his lack of appearances after AOD, the cancellation of the Original timeline which meant an end to his planned spinoff game and no one in any projects after AOD seem to be planning any kind of return for him.
Again the comic adaptation of AOD was done mainly to better promote the game and only lasted 3 issues and that was the last we saw of him until 2021 with the release of the mobile game Reloaded. I think I read something about him being included in an upcoming board game but that's it.
With the series trying to sorta combine the different continuities into a single timeline aka the Unified Timeline but that seems unlikely. And even if he does return he likely will not be the same character he was before.
TL;DR Kurtis never really caught on because there was so little to work with. For a character that was planned to have his own game and be playable in future titles we got next to nothing of him in the only mainline game he appeared in and what little we did get wasn't enough to cement him as a mainstay in the series.
He has his fans but it's not as strong as other characters in this series.
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