As I said in the previous episode, I had to bail on our recording session this week. I’m sorry I missed this section of the game in our show. Here is the commentary I would have given you if I’d stuck with it:
If ships always get stranded here, then who climbed to the top of this crazy mountain and built a refueling station here? Also, why would anyone build a fueling station here? Did Lara really need to blow up ALL the fuel? Couldn’t she have made a smaller, safer, and less destructive signal fire?
Let’s imagine the rescue plane didn’t get struck by lightning. Where was it going to land? Why would an airplane be sent on a rescue mission where there is no known airfield? And as others have pointed out: We’re off the coast of Japan. Why is the rescue plane American?
Individually these are not horrible sins. I think the audience is mostly prepared to allow for a bit of slop in a pulpy adventure story. But I think a little attention to detail would have spared me from about five minutes of sustained eye-rolling.
Also, I think the rope arrows are a good mechanic in theory, but this looks ridiculous. Lara fires a rope arrow into a wooden structure and then pulls it down. I’m even willing to spot the game the hand-wave of arrows penetrating and holding unlimited loads. I’m even willing to spot the game a second hand-wave and allow her the unlimited supply of rope that’s always long enough and never needs to be recovered. (We can hand-wave this by saying it would just be tedious to have her reel in and re-roll the rope every time.) And naturally we’ll give a pass to the silly notion that these little arrows could still hit their targets while dragging that much weight.
But even with all of that duct tape applied to the bridge of disbelief-suspension, this is still pretty silly. Lara can’t be exerting force on these lines that exceed her weight. (If she did, she’d just fall over or haul herself up.) Which means these structures require less than her body weight to fall over. Okay, okay. Videogame rotted wood, etc. But if that’s the case, then she didn’t need the rope arrows. She could pull any of these objects over by grasping them and pulling. If nothing else, they should dump the doors that are reachable on foot but can only be opened with rope arrows. That’s just too preposterous.
I’m sorry Tomb Raider. I ran out of hand-waves for you.
Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.
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