Lara Croft facing ‘female friendly’ make over
Boob reduction shock horror
Catchy strapline, eh? It seems that after Eidos severely curtailed its revenue expectations for 2008 due to the lacklustre performance of Tomb Raider: Underworld, the publisher/developer is considering giving Lara a wardrobe revamp.
After missing her mark by around $20 million, the company behind the agile archaeologist suggested to The Times that a more ‘female friendly’ version of the treasure hunting nymph might be in order to reignite the character’s appeal.
“We need to look at everything, as we develop the next game. Look at how Batman changed successfully, from the rather sad character of the Michael Keaton era to the noir style of The Dark Knight,” said Eidos’s chief financial officer Robert Brent.
Despite the enormous irrelevance and inaccuracy of his Batman comparison (clearly this is a guy who believed that Adam West played the definitive version of the Caped Crusader, and should therefore be dragged naked through London by his thumbs and have his remains marinated in lavender and fed to fruit bats), this isn’t quite the shock horror philosophy we might have implied in the title of this news item.
After all, fans of the original Tomb Raider game will recall that Lara wasn’t always quite so ‘male friendly’ in her build, but went under the knife to maximise her gaming assets – and it worked.
So, if she’s falling behind again, perhaps another stab at renovating her physique might be just what the long-lived franchise needs.
Either that or the developer goes out on a limb and attempts a Tomb Raider game that’s got something fresh to say, and isn’t just the same old tired mechanics with slightly fancier graphics and increasingly skimpy outfits.
Nah, it can’t be that. It’s got to be her cup size that’s cost Eidos the big money, rather than any kind of creative apathy of formulaic corporate pandering. It’s the only reasonable explanation.
We can’t wait to see Lara in a $20 million no-nonsense Scully-style business suit or Mary Tyler-Moore tweed school ma’am get up.
