‘Rape Scene Controversy’ Hasn’t Impacted Rise of the Tomb Raider

Crystal Dynamics Senior Designer talks about how the rape controversy didn't affect Rise Of The Tomb Raider.

Prior to the release of the 2013 reboot, Tomb Raider, a pretty serious albeit a bit overblown controversy surrounded the game due the ‘rape scene’ where an islander tries to rape Lara.

Not only fans of the franchise, but also many notable personalities in the industry cried out against the scene considering it a bit too far.

With the imminent release of the sequel, Rise of the Tomb Raider, a lot of people have been wondering if something similar will cause issues in this game as well or not.

In an interview with Finder, Michael Brinker who serves as the Senior Designer at Crystal Dynamics, the studio behind the Lara Croft reboot games talked about how the studio didn’t feel pressured at all to avoid such scenes in the sequel.

According to Michael, during development, their main focus is to explore the character backgrounds even if they do tend to be dark and mature. If it fits the narrative and explains their history, in the eyes of developers it is justified to include it in the game.

The only thing that influences the developer’s decision to pull back on certain content is how it fits the narrative of the game, like the immortality mythos in Rise of the Tomb Raider which might seem extremely far-fetched at first but fits in with the whole theme.

Rise of the Tomb Raider is scheduled to release on Nov. 10, 2015 for Xbox One and Xbox 360.

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Ashar is the managing editor of SegmentNext.com. He enjoys all sorts of video games except those made by Nintendo. He thinks Fortnite is the only battle royale that should exist. He is a big fan ...