“Lara doesn’t need to follow in anyone’s footsteps.
She can be those footsteps for other people.”
We’ve seen a few more female protagonists coming out there, I think.
But, [10 years ago] it was an unusual situation."
In my mind, an audition is for actors, not writers.
When her injured mentor, Roth, asks for her help, Lara doubts herself.
Roth, however, believes in her.
After all, she is a Croft.
In reply, Lara admits she is not sure she is “that kind of Croft”.
Turns out, she is that sort of Croft, she just hasn’t realised it yet.
But I was just kind of playing around with something that spoke to a possible wider story."
I tell Pratchett that line also made it into the 2018 Tomb Raider film adaptation.
“I should get a commission!”
“I’d seen the movies, of course.
“It was all sort of like, nudge, nudge, wink, wink to the guy.
“And, I think I missed out because of this,” she reflects.
“I think it was the wrong way of marketing Lara.
But it was certainly the wrong way of marketing Lara to me.
I think I missed out because of that marketing.
And I don’t think the games reflected that marketing.”
Pratchett says rebooting the series was somewhat a blank slate for everyone involved.
As for the project itself, Pratchett says it didn’t feel “too daunting” to take on.
“I thought, ‘Yes, this feels right’.
And, that really helped.”
Pratchett was particularly drawn to the reboot after seeing its cover.
“[Tomb Raider, 2013] was quite different tonally from the previous Tomb Raider games.
“But I am someone that likes to find room for humour.
And yeah, there are little bits of it…
But you know, people deal with trauma and dark times in different ways.
So personally, I would have liked to have done a little bit more of that.
“I completely understood where Crystal was coming from.
It was just my, my particular preference.”
She tells me this storyline was likely chosen because it felt “comfortable” for audiences.
“Father/offspring storylines are quite popular in games,” Pratchett remarks.
And, you’ve got Kratos as well.
There’s quite a few of them, right?”
“you’re free to’t win every battle, and you certainly can’t fight every battle.
Otherwise, you’d run out of steam…
It’s very much a balancing act.”
This story is actually inspired by Pratchett’s own birth, and her father’s memories from that day.
(Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimers in 2007, and died of Alzheimer related complications in 2015.)
Pratchett decided to use this story as inspiration for Lara’s birth, and Richard’s memories of it.
“It felt a little bit more significant to me.”
“I was very open to it as a writer.
But, yeah, I think they didn’t want to commit to it with the first game.
I don’t know why, perhaps they felt it would be too much of a distraction.”
Pratchett adds: “I would have been perfectly happy to do it.
I’ve got my own ideas…
But I think Crystal…maybe [wanted to] leave that open to interpretation.
“I guess the short answer is, they didn’t want to be explicit about it.
They didn’t want me to be explicit about it.”
“I love seeing the fanfiction and the slash fiction that’s out there.”
“I’ve introduced LGBTQ plus characters into my work since.
So, I think [Tomb Raider] was great for that.”
“A good writer wants to take on subjects and sexuality and diversity in all its forms.
Not just in sexual orientation, but in background and ability and age.
“[The ending] changed quite late in the day.”
“You realise how much gameplay decisions can affect the tone of the narrative.
“I think we kind of managed it.
It would have been just nicer to have had more time to do it.”
“She’s obviously incredibly shaken, and she throws the gun away.
“And he was like, ‘that, that can’t have been easy’…
But Lara says, ‘it’s scary how easy it was’.
And it was that moment where something breaks, where something breaks inside.
You realise that you’re capable of things you didn’t think you were capable of.”
Pratchett wanted this scene to be a moment of reflection for Lara and players.
“Like, what does that mean?
I thought I knew who I was, but who am I really?
What am I capable of?
And there was the emotional snap.
As a result of this mentality, Pratchett says the narrative team “lost that battle”.
Pratchett feels this would have allowed a little bit of time for Lara’s first kill to breathe.
“It is something I wish we had done differently,” she says.
When you work in other mediums, we will say action equals character in film and TV.
That will either be down to the player, or whoever’s dealing with the gameplay.”
However, she feels there is now “more willingness to factor” it in.
“Action is part of what tells you about the character,” she continues.
“Narrative dissonance is the academic term for it.
So, the story is saying one thing and gameplay is saying another.
They can be really difficult to marry up.
It’s not an easy task.”
These two parts of the game would then “cross at various points”.
“It was a really cool idea actually,” Pratchett says.
“It just didn’t, it just didn’t work out.
I don’t know the ins and outs of it.
But it didn’t work out.”
“So, that meant… we had to fold them into the singleplayer story.
And you don’t have a lot of space to do that,” she tells me.
“We had too many characters and not enough time to fully realise them.”
“Or, just have more time.”
“It was more of a last minute decision,” Pratchett tells me.
Was it going to be Sam or Jonah, or maybe Reyes?”
“[Lara] fights bad guys on the London Underground dressed as one of the Bennet sisters.
And, like Sam, Sam attacks someone with a cupcake.
Pratchett’s favourite comic book cover is Tomb Raider: The Watchers.
The reason for this is simply because Lara is smiling.
“It was just a really joyful picture.
And that’s one of my favourites because she looks so happy,” Pratchett says.
“And [Lara] didn’t get a lot of that.”
And, none of that was true.”
Pratchett states, “this was just a reimagining, and a rewinding.
We were doing our own take.”
For Pratchett, Rise of the Tomb Raider generally felt “harder” than the first.
“So [Rise of the Tomb Raider] feels heavier in my brain.
It wasn’t like the first game was not hard.
But the second game was just, I guess, tougher in different ways.”
She was kind of reliving the traumatic experiences she’d been through against a new backdrop.”
However, Crystal ultimately did not go for this idea, something Pratchett was disappointed about.
“I wanted to get into the guts of it,” she states.
“What would a human being that’s been through this, what would their life be like afterwards?
“There is still some of that in the second game.
But we were exploring that more on a gameplay level.”
It would have been nice to have brought her to that conclusion.”
“Let her have some fun, and humour, and relationships across the spectrum.
Not just romantic or sexual, but friendship and everything in between,” Pratchett implores.
That’s where you get that interesting meet!
I think that’s really interesting.”
Pratchett believes Lara now has enough experience under her belt to warrant that narrative.
“We’ve prepared the groundwork well,” Pratchett smiles.
