Der har været en del debat på nettet efter at Crystal Dynamics-medarbejderen Ron Rosenbergs udtalte sig om Tomb Raider med ordene: "And then what happens is her best friend gets kidnapped, she gets taken prisoner by scavengers on the island. They try to rape her, and...".
Nu har udviklerens global brand director Karl Stewart kastet sig ind i debatten. Blandt andet fortæller han til Kotaku hvordan han ser presset som en måde at vise en stærk kvinde der rejser sig efter modgang og intimidering og som er villig til at bruge denne til at blive stærkere.
Her på Gamereactor bifalder vi spil der tør tage emner op, som ellers kun er forbeholdt film og bøger, såfremt de behandles med respekt og modenhed. Men hvad synes du?
"We have a female character that we're very proud and very honored to be able to have in our game and build a story around. And by giving her motivation to become the stronger action-adventure hero and the girl that's willing to fight to stay alive and move forward throughout the game, we use that device and that intimidation to make her stronger.", siger Stewart.
Han fortsætter: "To make her feel empowered and to take her beyond that breaking point where she realizes the severity of the situation and she's willing to fight to stay alive."
På spørgsmålet om tabu i spil svarer Stewart: "That is a hard subject because I believe and the studio believes that it is a subject that we see played out in many ways through movies and TV shows and I think in our medium we are trying to bring an immersive narrative to which- in all the research and all the work that we do in building the story and building this game, we take it to many different places. And this isn't something that's uncommon in story narrative."
Stewart slutter af med: "And what we're trying to do is in a way, as you know, raise the bar of story-telling- how Lara Croft how that plays out how you interpret it... as you play the game out for yourself, as you review the game and try to answer how you felt from that input, we're trying to raise the bar in immersive storytelling through the video game. So I'm being careful in that we're not choosing to say "this is a word we want to be associated with that," that is not the case."