Eric Lindstrom, the Creative Director of the upcoming Tomb Raider: Underworld game, wrote a blog entry over at EDGE Online detailing the inner workings of Lara Croft's carefully crafted persona. I laud his effort at deconstructing such a complex, multi-dimensional character. I would point out gems such as the following:

"But the character was never a traditional vixen bimbo kind of character and it’s been very important for us to reinforce that."

..or:

"One of the things that I don’t hear about so much, but is very important to us internally, is that she never, ever appears to be aware of her own sex appeal, that she never uses it as a tool or a weapon in any situation."



Okay, on the one hand I kind of see what he's going for here in trying to maker her look a little less like a pair of polygonal tits floating from one jump puzzle to the next, and more like an icon of strong, independent femininity. On the other hand, Lara Croft is one of the most disproportioned embodiments of typical male fantasy to ever grace the video game arena. I'm not saying it isn't important to see her as more than that, but the article comes across as very dishonest to me and doesn't even mention the fact that she is basically fanfic fodder to the maximum. What do you guys think?

Check out the blog entry here.