Tomb Raider: A Survivor is Born, the Tie-in Comics and the less than Impressive Sequel Games

[Winter]

I knew very little of Tomb Raider before the second reboot of the series. The only Tomb Raider anything I was familiar with was the Angelina Jolie films and even though only really the first one as I never saw the second film. But the trailers for the first game in the second reboot aka the Survivor Timeline I was hooked. The game promised a overall dark and gritty tone with a greater emphasis on Lara as a character.

And after playing it I have to say that it's one of my all time favorite video games and after all these years it still really holds up. The gameplay is fun and tense, the puzzles aren't anything great but pretty solid and Lara is at her best here as she's a badass but still human and allows us to see her vulnerable side. She succeeds, she screws up, she makes mistakes but is also never gives up no matter what the island throws at her.

And while most of the supporting cast isn't great (really only Sam and Roth stand out as memorable) none of them are bad and overall likeable enough. Himiko is one of the most underrated villains of all time and I love how she's actually never really confronted in gameplay but the way she's talked about and the effect she has on the island makes her feel less like a character and more like a Lovecraftian monster or a Stringy-Haired Ghost Girl like Sadako or Kayako and this island is her cursed realm and we're the poor souls who have been trapped by her.

My enjoyment of the game was only enhanced by the REALLY good tie-in comics. I rarely suggest hunting down the Supplementary Material but in this case I say go check out the comics that followup on the first game. Not only are they well written (a result of some top tear talent like the first game's original writer Rhianna Pratchett, Gail Simone, Mariko Tamaki, Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly) but they help to flesh out most of the cast of the first game like Reyes and Jonah along with giving more depth to the rest of the cast that died in the first game.

But easily the character who benefitted the most from the comics (aside from Lara herself who is given a FANTASTIC arc that builds on the first game) is Samantha "Sam" Nishimura. Sam was already pretty good in the first game (so much so that the original ending where she was killed tested REALLY badly with test players due to how likeable she was along with her relationship with Lara that made fans WANT to see Lara save her) but in the comics she was very given even more depth, development and was allowed to grow into her own level of Awesome. She mocked her captures, killed one of the big villains in the first arc, beat up someone following her while armed only with a cupcake, made a plan to rescue one of their old friend and STABBED A SHARK IN THE EYE WITH HER PENDENT!!!



And that's not even the most awesome thing she did but we'll get to that later.

On top of that Lara's arc is really good, building on her trauma from the first game and showing how it is affecting her and that she still has a long way to go which causes issues with her relationship with Sam which the comics recognize is the true heart of this series as they have the deepest and most complex relationship in the series. Hell if you think the fans ship these two you haven't seen the writers talk about these two. Just about everyone who's worked on this series ALWAYS try to get these two together. Jackson Lanzing even stated in a tweet that originally the panel where Lara and Sam huge was suppose to be the two kissing as Lara comes to realize her feelings for Sam are romantic and Philip Sevy, the artist for the issue, even stated that he had drawn said kissed but due to Executive Meddling it was changed at the last minute.

It also clear that the writers LOVE Sam as much as the fans given how they talked about her OUTSIDE of her relationship to Lara and how much they kept giving her including her most badass moment having a Battle of Wills with the Aforementioned Himiko (aka a Effective Demigod) and WINNING.



So, Yeah. I love the first game and the tie-in comics are some of the best I've ever read and the standard I hold all tie-ins to... Such a pity that the actual sequel games are so... lackluster.

Both Rise of the Tomb Raider and Shadow of the Tomb Raider are both just lazy retreads of the first game. Lara goes on an adventure to find a lost thinging, gets hit by a storm and has to get her weapons back, she goes up against crazy cultist and has to save a friend in danger. At the start she usually faces down the most dangerous animal in the area. Just as she manages to get things under control Jonah does something stupid that undoes all of Lara's hard work and now the race is on to save the world by climbing some tall temple where a storm while fighting an army of the dead until she comes face to face with the secondary villain and then beats them and saves the day.

It doesn't help that her arc is rest due to the Higher-Ups not wanting Lara to seem "Weak" by having her suffering from PTSD which is REALLY stupid and insulting to people who Actually Suffer PTSD. And the third game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Lara is at her most unlikable and selfish as she endangers teh world and keeps blaming Trinity for her actions even though THEY Didn't start the Apocalypse. Which wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that the people Lara has put in danger KEEP Praising her for her heroics and yet NEVER learn that she's the reason they and their loved ones are either in Danger or Dead!!!

(sigh) Rise is salvaged partly by it's DLC's. The Baba Yaga and Cold Darkness DLCs are both fun and offer some genuinely fun missions that have some great atmosphere and bring in Nadia who is, by the DLC's writers own admission, basically Sam. But the real saving grace of Rise is the Blood Ties DLC which is basically Gone Home featuring Lara Croft.

On it's own, without the DLCs Rise would be a 5 or 6 out of 10 due to it playing it safe and being WAY to easy (and this coming from a filthy casual gamer I might add) and that scored doesn't really go up with the first two DLCs BUT with Blood Ties it goes straight up to a 8. Blood Ties adds a LOT to Lara's father, gives us a love to hate antagonist with Lara's uncle Atlas, a likeable supporting character with Winston and also gives us time with Lara's mother Amelia who is given such a engaging and tragic arc that adds so much to the story.

If you get Rise play Blood Ties DLC as soon as it becomes available as it gives the game more emotional investment for players which is something the core game is seriously lacking IMO.

Shadow, on the other hand, has a different problem. On it's own I would score it as a 3 out of 10 because it's again just the first game again plot wise, Lara is REALLY unlikable, the gameplay is only hard due to artificial difficultly but is otherwise to easy again and the supporting cast is as bland and forgettable as it gets with one of the weakest villains I've ever seen in a game. It doesn't help that this game is mostly on massive timesink. Seriously, if you remove all the stuff that's clearly just there to run out the clock the game would be 45 minutes. There are so many times where we're just walking around instead of actually PLAYING the game or going through overly long cutscenes, Your Princess is in Another Castle mission that makes up most of the missions in this game. It is a SLOG to get through this game and it only becomes more obvious when replaying the game.

With the DLCs however the game goes from a 3 to a... 4. Yeah the DLCs have some great Tombs (some of the best in the series with the one from The Nightmare being the best) but story wise they add basically nothing aside from Lara's Doppelganger (which is REALLY Creepy and Awesome). Not helping matters is how long it takes to get to the DLCs. Out of universe we needed to wait almost a full year to get them all and a planned 8th DLC was cancelled due to low sales for the game and almost no one getting the DLCs as a result of those low sales for the actual game.

In universe it gets even worse as you can't access the DLCs until either certain points in the story which results in you needing to LEAVE the area the DLC is in so you have to go back via loading screen which takes for bloody EVER!!! Go through one of the game's Awful Side Quests (seriously these are BAD!!! With bad voice acting, poorly thought out mission layout and lackluster combat/stealth and Crypts). Or worst of all, a combination of the two where you can only play one of the DLC Tombs towards the END of the game and have to do a TERRIBLE Side Quests. The worst of this being The Nightmare DLC which can only be done by doing at least two side quests and is only accessible towards the end of the game.

In Rise you can access Blood Ties as soon as the Tutorial is finished, Baba Yaga is unlocked about 2 or 3 hours into the game and Cold Darkness can be accessed any time you want but is recommended to play if after you unlock most of your skills and upgrades.

Shadow doesn't do this and the end result is NOT Worth It.

It also doesn't help that I find the final DLC tomb to be the most overrated in the series. I remember everyone going how hard and challenging this tomb was and when I played it (without looking at how it worked BTW) I solved it in less then a minute because it LITERALLY shows you how to solve it as soon as you get there. That's like saying you had trouble defeating a baby with a fake sword in a duel to the death. This Puzzle is the easiest in the series. I want SOME challenge in my games and there is no real challenge in this final tomb.

And the final nail in the coffin of these sequels was Jonah. I liked Jonah in the first game, he was alright in the first 3 comic arcs, I forgot he existed in Rise and by Shadow I just wanted him GONE!!! He's so bland and forgettable and I have to wonder if the writers hate him or something given how often they seem to try to write him out of the game or just straight up kill him.

And no, he's not here because he's super popular with the fans, I checked. There's barely ANYTHING of him in fan fics, fan art or essays. Anything on the biggest fandom sites BARELY go over the 60 mark while Sam has hundreds of people writing about her, drawing her and going over her character despite only appearing in one game and the tie-in comics.

What's funny is that some who dislike Sam have tried to paint Jonah as the better option because he doesn't get captured as nearly as much as Sam does and has proven more useful... Um, What?!

Only covering the first game Sam was captured all of two times and if we count the comics only 5 times which may sound like a lot... Uuuunnnntiiilll you realize that Jonah has been captured or needed to be rescued 8 times in the games and 14 times if we count the comics.

And on the other point, Sam has done a lot to help Lara in just the first game. She was the one who funded the voyage to Yamatai, she was the one who managed to get in contract with Lara and let her know where she was. She was the one who stuck by Lara's side and defended her when Reyes was ready to blame her for everything that had gone wrong. She was the only one who took Lara's warnings about Whitman seriously and, according to the comic, was able to keep Himiko from fully possessing her until Lara managed to kill her old body.

Jonah, in just the first game, killed a bunch of people off screen which in a game is like saying they used a stick to stop a T-Rex. It's basically useless and was more about Reyes' redemption then anything Jonah did.

And then we have his actual contributions in the games which can best be summed up as Jonah is an idiot and nearly destroyed the world 3 times due to pure stupidity. He trusts Whitman despite all the evidence (and Lara flat out stating that he already betrayed her and Sam once) that he can't be trusted (which is what resulted in Sam getting captured a second time BTW). Held onto the Atlas despite the fact Lara no longer needed it and was only going to be useful to Trinity which resulted in them getting the McGuffin of the week and leading to the death of one of their allies. And then in Shadow tried to steal a helicopter that, based on the dialogue in the game, he didn't know how to fly which resulted in Trinity getting the OTHER McGuffin of the week and nearly destroying the world.

Jonah is the Neelix of Tomb Raider, he's a character no one wants to have around who nearly gets everyone killed and is only talent is, supposedly, cooking and has no sense of fashion. Also, does anyone know what Race he is. He's clearly Polynesian in the first game while in the second game he looks more African and in Shadow he looks more Vietnamese. I mean he could be mixed race but honestly I wonder if the developers cared so little they didn't bother to keep track of what race he was. Terrible you say, well, in my defense I asked and even Jonah's actor (great guy BTW, really friendly) doesn't actually know because he was as confused by the changes to Jonah as much as anyone else is.

The only argument is that Jonah is a good luck charm for the series... Which I doubt given the more a game tries to give him more relevance to the story the worse it does. A Survivor is Born, he is a minor character who could be cut from the game first game is well liked by most people. Rise, is advertised as a big part of the game while barely being in it, game does well but not as well as the first one. Made into a main character in Shadow, game does poorly in both sales and in reviews. Is announced in the upcoming Netflix show, another company buys the series and we've heard next to nothing about said show.

Anyways. I love the first game and the tie-ins and it's so sad that the other games just couldn't live up to them. There's a great series here but the sequels play it to safe by just being the first game all over again only lacking what made the first game work. It's like the Disney Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, they don't offer up anything new and lack what made the first installment work.

I hope to make my own Tomb Raider animated series (got the scripts for the first season all finished at least) and I want to move the story forward, not just do what was done while also keeping the events of Rise and Shadow in canon and using them to build on the story. Bring Sam Back (and yes she and Lara are hooking up so help me god) and explore Lara's trauma instead of pretending she doesn't have any and have villains that don't SUCK!!!

(sigh) Sorry I was just replaying the first game and I couldn't help think of how disappointing this series became. Again, I love the first game and the comics and hope my own series does well but I wish Rise and Shadow had build on the first game instead of just trying to be the first game again.

[Thebestoftherest]

I hear someone describe rose as the story on how Lara became the tomb raider, I think I'd that true then the developers mindset was in the wrong place.

[Winter]

I hear someone describe rose as the story on how Lara became the tomb raider, I think I'd that true then the developers mindset was in the wrong place.

,,, Huh?

[CharlesPhipps]

Winter, I love your posts but I feel like you have four or five separate posts worth of subject here that may have been benefited by breaking them up a bit. Though I have read the entirety of it because I love Sam (arguably more than Reboot Lara) and I agree the tie-in comics are fantastic in large part to the work of Gail Simone.

Mind you, Gail Simone really was a huge Sam/Lara shipper and got really annoyed she couldn't hook the two up (with a planned "love epiphany") that is an interesting example of ascended fanfic. It also helped inspire the gay Russian adventurer that briefly became part of Sam and Lara's circle that I kind of wonder if Gail was setting up to date Sam.

Indeed, Sam's "ensemble dark horse" status is one of those things that has kind of wrecked the continuity of the reboot Tomb Raider because EVERYONE loves her and almost every game after's reception had the Poochie reaction from the fans.

WHENEVER POOCHIE'S NOT ON SCREEN, ALL THE OTHER CHARACTERS SHOULD BE ASKING, "WHERE's POOCHIE?"

Or to say, everyone wanted Sam to be part of the game except ironically the people who were actually writing her/publishing the game.

I'm going to state that RISE OF THE TOMB RAIDER basically feels like a reboot of the reboot. It's the same Lara Croft, theoretically, but if you played Rise of the Tomb Raider first then you would not be in any way shape or form confused. You could believe Shadow was ALSO the origin story of Lara Croft as it was heavily about her father seeking the Grail, fighting the Nazis, and keeping them from Jesus.

I really wish I could have sat with Rhianna Pratchett (in general but here specifically) because I'm like 99% sure her marching orders were, "make the Shadow of the Tomb Raider the most derivative of Indiana Jones as you possibly can but divorced from Christianity, Judaism, or any real life religion." I have to admit I do think the anti-Catholicism of the Pratchett family may have leaked in since the substitute for the Nazis in the game are as close to being Vatician caricatures as humanly possible. Then again, maybe someone said, "Make the bad guys the Templars from Assassins Creed" and she just used the actual Templars.

It makes me wonder why they decided to go this root because none of the characters but Jonah are carried on and I think you're wrong. Jonah is fine as a character. He's just not done much with and fans dislike his presence because they removed the rest of the extensive supporting cast of the reboot. Jonah was blandly inoffensive and even the characters that were killed in the reboot had a lot of personality. Rise of the Tomb Raider is almost completely without a supporting cast and much more focus on Lara as a loner. The previous story does not matter in the slightest and has only the vaguest nods.

It's The Legend of Zelda 2 without Link but no Zelda, Hyrule, Ganon, or Triforce.

SHADOW OF THE TOMB RAIDER effectively killed my love of the reboot because not only did they ditch Rhianna Pratchett but it was clear they had no interest whatsoever in her set up. Trinity is no longer an evil Catholic organization but a religiously agnostic one that is led by an Incan Priest trying to protect his indigineous people in some sort of weird nature preserve. Which is basically a level of rewrite that had previously only been reserved for RISE OF THE SKYWALKER levels of nonsensical.

Lara is now obsessed with avenging her father and killing the No-Longer-Catholic Trinity and accidentally almost causes the end of the world. I actually don't hold that part against her because sometimes Lara fucks up like when she accidentally released Set on the world in one of the earlier games. However, without her supporting cast of humanization, we're left wondering when Lara became less about protecting people and more about killing them.

The story makes no goddamn sense because it attempts to wield continuity together versus the much more sensible idea of Lara dealing with a new organization. Except they needed to wrap up all of the issues of the previous game.

So it reads as utter nonsense.

I liked Abby, though, and wish she'd had a bigger role because Lara needed cast members like her.

[Thebestoftherest]

I hear someone says they treated the new reboot as a trilogy explaining her origin, when it would have been better if the three were made to stand alone.

[Winter]

Winter, I love your posts but I feel like you have four or five separate posts worth of subject here that may have been benefited by breaking them up a bit.

Sorry this is a series I'm REALLY Passionate about, hence the web series I'm working on (if you want to read the first three scripts they're on my DeviantArt page btw). I will say that I agree with what most of what you said with one exception.

Or to say, everyone wanted Sam to be part of the game except ironically the people who were actually writing her/publishing the game.

As I said just about all the writers of the series have gone on about how much they liked Sam while barely talking about Jonah. Even the writers of Shadow admitted that they had planned to bring her back but the way they talked about it made it seem that they were overruled by the higher-ups. As for Jonah himself most of my dislike of him is rooted more in how he's a rather toxic friend. Not a bad person but he does encourage Lara's worst traits.

He tries to assure her that nothing she does is her fault even when it is, yells at her when she tries to do the right thing (only to turn around and help her literally less then 30 seconds later) and his repeated comments on her to not confront her issues causes her no end of issues. This is just my interpretation of the character but I've known people like this, those who think they're helping but are only making things worse and the fact that this is presented in a positive light only makes that worse.

I do wonder if Crystal Dynamics kept Jonah was because he was so blandly inoffensive? That he's here because he adds nothing to the plot (besides screwing things up) and Lara's character (besides screwing her up). To go back to Rise, the studio made a big deal about him returning only to have only be in the game for about 5 or 10 minutes, do basically nothing until his out of nowhere return. Get captured by Trinity so they could get the Atlas because it doubled as an idiot ball for Jonah (seriously JUST DROP IT! WE ALREADY GOT ALL WE NEEDED OUT OF IT!!!). Got killed while having because he couldn't bring himself to kill an obviously evil person (why were they interrogating Jonah again?) and then was brought back to life only to disappear for the rest of the game without ever getting mentioned after that point besides the last 30 seconds of the game.

Honestly, if Jonah was removed and the scene was just Trinity getting the Atlas you could cut straight to the final battle. And based on a deleted scene, I have to wonder if even Jonah was here. Here's the deleted scene in question.


youtu.be/Kw4SO5EU3LM

Based on this I think this whole thing took place around the start of the game and part of the plot was getting the other half of the Atlas back and if Anna was even involved in a relationship with Lara's dad because she seems like a completely different person here.

Anyways, back to Sam.

I do find it interesting that each writer who's worked on the series always try to get Sam back in the story and try to get her and Lara to hook up together because it's not just Simone. Pratchett famously said that if she could have gotten away from it she would have made Lara and Sam gay, Tamaki had Lara drop her quest for Revenge in favor of hunting down and destroying Trinity to save Sam the SECOND she heard she was in danger. And Lanzing flatout stated that he and Kelly tried to make Lara officially gay and based on how the story was going I do think that Sam was to return and not Jonah but that it was changed at the last minute.

(sigh) I will admit that I put the blame for all this on the studio because the writers all but stated that they weren't allowed to do certain things in the story by order of CD which includes not addressing Lara's PTSD, kicking Sam out and keeping Jonah in along with the rather annoying order of to do the first game over again but to also NOT be like the first game.

Here's hoping that I can get my TR project off the ground which has a LOT more Sam and LOT more gay in it. Wish me luck. I'm gonna need it.

[Winter]

I hear someone says they treated the new reboot as a trilogy explaining her origin, when it would have been better if the three were made to stand alone.

I heard that too though I've heard that they're trying to present the Survivor Timeline as the origin story to the original games even though that makes no sense as A) Lara's parents are still alive B) The Origin we do get DOESN'T line up with the one we get in the reboot and C) Lara's personality doesn't line up with the Original Lara's Personality.

[Thebestoftherest]

I agree, I also think that maybe instead of trying to use the origin story card to hide bad writing they could just either give her a new threat for a while or finish what came last time properly.

[Winter]

I agree, I also think that maybe instead of trying to use the origin story card to hide bad writing they could just either give her a new threat for a while or finish what came last time properly.

That's more or less what I'm doing in my TR web series as it builds on story bits from the first game (aka the Best game in the Survivor Timeline) while not completely disregarding ideas from Rise and Shadow. And the threat she's up against is a Dictator of a Fictional Country (one inspired by Oceania from 1984) while also dealing with a Sorceress who is out to kill Lara and also deal with the last remnants of Lara and Sam's most personal adversary.

The idea here is to make a proper sequel to A Survivor is Born while not just ignoring the other games as Trinity still as a role in the story (not a major focus but still important) and the events of Rise and Shadow still haunt Lara and hang over her relationship with Sam. Trinity was actually pretty well done in the comics and the last few remnants of the order reflect that the comics instead of the game.

[CharlesPhipps]

I heard that too though I've heard that they're trying to present the Survivor Timeline as the origin story to the original games even though that makes no sense as A) Lara's parents are still alive B) The Origin we do get DOESN'T line up with the one we get in the reboot and C) Lara's personality doesn't line up with the Original Lara's Personality.

In fact, I should point out that Lara's story has gone through multiple versions and alternate continuities. While you may love the reboot Lara's comics, I admit a special love to TOP COW LARA CROFT who did lose her parents in a plane crash (along with her fiance). She was a fantastic character and I enjoyed many of her boyfriends and possible (they vacation together and many-many other suggestions) girlfriend/friend with benefits in Sarah Pezzini.