As with many a starlet whose star has faded before her, it seems that the next move to revitalize the sagging career of Ms. Lara Croft is to delve into the arena of more “mature” rated content.
Following on the Tomb Raider Forum posts by former Lead Designer Eric Lindstrom (it’s confirmed to be him), another post has been caught by MTV Multiplayer as he explains how Lara’s stuck with the T-rating for so long, and that an M-rating had been considered…
…the Teen rating meant we couldn’t do things we wanted to or were done in the past, but it was a publisher mandate at the tmie. [sic] It won’t always necessarily be so, though, the future can always be different. [Note from Stephen: the line about what was done “in the past” echoes what another former Crystal Dynamics employee once told me about how sound effects and death animations of Lara Croft from the original, “Tomb Raider,” which wasn’t rated by the ESRB, had to be scrubbed from the recent re-make of that game to get a T rating.]
…The managers who said it had to be Teen left some time ago, so maybe that could change sometime…
…We were torn about making Underworld a Mature title, in the studio. I wanted to do things that a Teen rating prevented, but I also wanted it to get the players the first unrated games, did. In the end it didn’t matter because publishing wanted it to be Teen. — Eric Lindstrom, via MTV Multiplayer
So, it seems we’re talking more in terms of brutal death scenes via ancient Mayan booby-traps than Lara showing her own booby-traps, but the future is an open book; in either case, do you think a more “mature” Lady Croft would help revive the series?
Or will it just seem like a desperate publicity stunt, like the second half of Britney Spears’ career?
