Retrospect on Core Design , Toby Gard & The sexualisation of Lara Croft (and why core is not the second coming of Jesus)

A THREAD:

While i will always be grateful to Toby Guard/Core for inventing my favourite videogame character, something about Core has never sat well with me.

We all know core started off tomb raider with a male character, then both a male and a female, and then settled on a female protagonist as the male was too reminiscent of indiana jones.

At that point we had Laura Cruz, a south-american/hispanic female, however we all know that Sony rejected the idea so they went for Lara Croft.

As you can see from the concept art of Laura Cruz to Lara Croft from TR1, while surely all look badass there’s an obvious common denominator. The huge breasts + tiny waist combo.

Im not saying having a sexy female protagonist is bad, far from it, bayonetta is another great character that loves to play with her sexuality and she’s amazing.

My issue with Core starts when interviewed for TR1 to the question of why Lara’s breasts are huge their reply was “because of the technology and programming error”

Now, i do understand back then technology was very limited, but was it really a programming error? When all concept arts of laura cruz/lara croft she had already very generous curves? When the promotional materials show off Lara’s proportions?

We could also look at the other few female protagonists in other games like Jill Valentine from resident evil from the same generation of console and compare her body to the one of Lara’s.

Again my issue is not with lara having generous curves, far from it.
My issue is mostly with core design and their lame excuse ‘programming error’ , as if they are ashamed of lara’s design yet wanted her to be sexy.

Core even went to the lengths of asking Toby to add a nude cheat code in the game, which thankfully Toby refused to do so, so was it really a programming error? Or core wanted to sexualise Lara from the get to?

Tomb raider came out and it was a smash hit, selling millions of copies, innovating the 3rd world gaming, and trailblazing/inspiring other developers to give female characters more than a damsel in destress role.

But when Lara croft was taking the world by storm, being the best selling game with a female protagonist, lara being the first videogame character to be on the FACE magazine, and many more accomplishments, Toby left.

In the anniversary documentary it said that He left because Lara was being sexualised by the media, which she was, but that was never the truth.

The real reason Toby left is because he refused to sexualise lara in game too, so he was taken away creative freedom, and core proposed him to work on a port of TR for other consoles, rather than on the TR sequels, which he refused and walked away.

His vision for Lara was a female character who was a heroine, you know, cool, collected, in control, which thankfully translated very well in the games.

Core’s inconsistency of wanting a sexy female yet when asked about that they brushed it off blaming a programming error, coming off as ashamed of said character, while putting all the blame on toby, a person who never wanted to sexualise his creation, has never sat well with me.

Core took off toby creatived freedom, and put a lead designer to work on a port, something really shady and degrading considering what Toby did, only become he was against the sexualisation of Lara.

10 years later Toby was hired by CD for TRLAU doing Lara's visual redesigning, co-writing the storyline, overseeing Lara's character design and creation, designing and implementing parts of the character movement system, and directing the cinematics.

While Crystal Dynamics is no saint either, this is however Lara Croft Peak design, and Toby gard agrees with it too as you can see