Page 30 - SMITE Magazine Issue 33
P. 30
THEORY
IN THEORY - GODS OF GAMING:
LARA CROFT - DOOM RAIDER
By Devon Boyette
It’s hard to talk about the Gods of Gaming past, varying by interpretation. But above all else, she’s
or present, without mentioning several important an adventurer, an explorer into the unknown and the
figures. Of these, you can point out the progenitors of unsafe. Her skills tend to include abilities that let her
some gaming trends and changes in the industry. And get to exotic, hidden locales and kill everything she
of these you can pinpoint the influence of Lara Croft finds there. When she needs to, survive lethal falls
on a chart, or a map. In the heyday of gaming, it’s easy just by diving or push around several-ton blocks to
to trace a path that leads all the way from Samus solve puzzles, with the ease of a cybernetic linebacker.
Aran in Metroid to modern heroines such as Zoey, And when worse comes to worst, she takes up
Lightning, Alyx Vance, or The Morrígan herself, and arms and destroys her enemies--be they ancient
all of these plot a course through the grid-like worlds mummies, beasts, dinosaurs, or common men. And
of early Tomb Raider games. And in many ways, she’s like all proper English ladies, she does it without
contributed to three-dimensional adventuring as getting blood all over her clothes. Most of the time.
much as contemporaries like Mario and Link. Known In her newest outings, Lara is depicted as
today for coming back to the fore of gaming with more vulnerable and more human, growing into
maybe the best-handled series reboot in the industry, the hardened explorer and killer we know and love
it’s safe to say Lara’s come a long way from metered through the story we experience firsthand, rather
jumps, jangling old butlers, and the most famous than one thrown onto the opening pages of an
pair of accidental polygons in video game history. instruction book. However, her legend, her divine
Lara Croft is many things. Rich and ladylike, character status among the annals of gaming
deadly, willful, even charitable and intelligent, all history, transcends this or any one depiction. As a
30 The Official SMITE Magazine Issue #33 The GameOn Magazine
