Talk:Tomb Raider (1996 video game)/GA1

GA Review

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch

Reviewer: Indrian (talk · contribs) 15:59, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

I'll tackle this one. Comments to follow soon. Indrian (talk) 15:59, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

Gameplay

• "Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game where players take on the role of archaeologist-adventurer Lara Croft, who navigates through a series of ancient ruins and tombs in search of an ancient artefact. The player controls the archaeologist Lara Croft in search of the three mysterious Scion artefacts across the world." - These first two sentences have a lot of duplicate information, including identifying Lara as an archaeologist twice and describing a primary goal of searching for artifacts twice.
  • Fixed.
• "Lara can perform side-steps, hang on ledges, pull-ups, roll over, dive and swimming on the surface or underwater." - All the activities listed here should be direct objects of the verb "perform" according to the sentence structure here, but they are not. She can perform side-steps and pull-ups, but she cannot perform hang on ledges, roll over, dive, and swimming. This will need to be rewritten.
  • Did my best to rewrite this.
• "allow Lara to either perform a handstand from a hanging position, and swandive into water." - I presume this should be an either-or proposition? So "to either perform a handstand from a hanging position or to swandive into water."
  • Minor rewrite here.
• "In a free environment" - This is the first we have heard of "free environments." This needs to be defined within the context of the game.
  • I cut that bit.

Development

• I think we are missing a little something at the beginning here. In the Eurogamer feature, Jeremy Heath-Smith talks a little of the beginning of the game and how Gard first proposed the concept at a brainstorming meeting where Heath-Smith called for ideas for games that could take advantage of the new PlayStation hardware. Gard was clearly tinkering with the idea well before this point, but this is how it became an official Core Design project.
  • Did some additions here.
• "According to different accounts, the lead protagonist was always intended as a woman" - I don't think the sources support this contention, or rather I think the story is slightly more complicated and not actually contradictory as the article makes it out to be. In the Paul Douglas interview, all he says is that by the time he joined the team she was a woman. He clearly states that there could have been a male character before he joined the project. The Prima Strategy Guide interview does not address this at all. The team is asked "why use a woman" but is never asked "was she always a woman." The Game Informer interview comes closest to implying that the game featured a woman from the beginning, but it is only an implication. Nowhere does Gard address whether the main character was a woman from the start of development. On the other hand, in the 2001 BBC interview referenced in other parts of the article, Gard is clear that the game concept came well before the first draft of the character who became Lara. That is not definitive proof in the other direction, but it does leave open a window. Therefore, I see no need to doubt the testimony of Jeremey Heath-Smith when he says the first concept Gard showed him featured a male character.

I am pretty sure the confusion here is because this male character was probably only featured in initial concept art or something and may have never been intended as the final word on the subject. Other sources indicate that initial brainstorming was really focused on the environments of the game and that really focusing on the character came later, which is what the 2001 interview also implies. I think the best way to reconcile this in a way that actually follows the sources is to state that Gard's initial presentation featured a male Indiana Jones type character but that once he actually focused on defining the protagonist, Gard decided it should be a woman. This is how the book High Score presents the situation, so its not OR to say this, and this approach reconciles Heath-Smith's statements with Gard's statements without contradicting any of the other sources.

Did my best with this issue. Some of the reconciliatory stuff was removed by another editor after my initial revisions.

Audio

• "Each tune was written once, as there was no time for rewriting." - This sentence is awkward. I get that it is trying to convey that there was no time to revise the compositions, but technically just about any tune is only "written once" because even a hundred revisions are part of a single process to write a specific song.
  • Tried a rewrite here. Hope it works.

Release and Versions

• The article appears to contradict itself a little here about the PC version. First, it gives release dates for Windows versions, then it says the game was in MS-DOS before being patched for Windows '95. I realize that "Windows" versions of games before Windows '95 were essentially just running in DOS, but a reader coming into the "joys" of running mid 1990s games on PCs is going to be confused by all this.
  • Tried to do something here.

Nude Raider

• "A notable response was a secret code revealed by Core Design for Tomb Raider II; allegedly a similar nude code, it in fact blew Lara up." - This sentence has a few problems including the use of passive voice. There is no need to identify this as "notable," just say something about how as a response to the controversy the team included a code in the second game that appeared to be a nude code but actually caused Lara to explode.
  • Did my best here.

Legacy

• "which focuses on her in poses he felt the character would never assume" - This is a pretty oblique way to state that he was upset that her sexuality was being exploited at the expense of her character. We should just say this directly.
  • Rewritten.
• I don't think we need a separate remake section if it is going to be that small. I would just make it the last paragraph of the legacy section and link the game article directly in the text rather than through a "Main Article" heading.
  • Done.

And that's about it. The article is well-written and informative, so once these relatively minor points are cleared up, we should be good to go. Therefore, I shall put this nomination  On hold while changes are made. Indrian (talk) 17:38, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

@Indrian: I've done my best to address the points above. Some of them were due to edits made by another editor who left some...awkward bits.

Indrian, PS; thanks for picking up that GameFan platform gaff just now. This article got bombarded by "this isn't right, this should be here" edits for a while, and I got tired with arguing out these points, and searching through magazines wasn't easy for me with other life commitments at the time. So when that turned up, I didn't do anything about it. --ProtoDrake (talk) 19:37, 1 October 2020 (UTC)

ProtoDrake I wanted to give this a couple of days in case the dispute on the origins of Lara Croft resurfaced, but I think that controversy is over. I made some changes to further explain how the timeline fits together, so hopefully in the future people that come to the page will realize that yes, at the very very beginning there was a male protagonist. Toby Gard is absolutely the authority on this since it was his game idea and his design document. Anyway, I will give the article another look now and work on finishing this review. Indrian (talk) 18:36, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I made a few more tweaks, mostly to grammar and mechanics, and everything looks good. I will go ahead and promote. Indrian (talk) 19:23, 7 October 2020 (UTC)