Tomb Raider Discussion | It's Lara, not Laura!

So while I completely agree with you that Sam not being in the second game sucks, I would still recommend the second game. I preferred it to the 1st game.  The combat is better, traversing the environment is better and the tombs are really interesting set pieces rather than holes in the ground. I also think the dissonance between gameplay & the story is less in the second game.

Although what does Lara have to do to get a girlfriend/boyfriend? Not one in over 20 games and Nathan Drake (who is effectively male Lara) gets a love triangle and a wife over 4 games. 

There definitely seems to be a convention where it's not allowed, it's barely allowed for there to be a female protagonist.  I can't think of a single game with a set female protagonist were they have a romance.  I've been playing Horizon: Zero Dawn and I know lots of people have been comparing it to the Witcher, but Geralt gets to sleep around and Aloy doesn't even get an option to respond to people obviously flirting with her. 

Even though Chloe has a reputation as a woman who enjoys sex, I would but money on her not having a romance in the new Uncharted 4 DLC.

Spin-off media like comics seem to be our only hope for stuff like this. 

I want Lara to be lesbian or bi.... in part because it'd be amazing representation but also because I'm so in love with Tomb Raider as a series and Lara makes me gayer lul

She is ultimately a video game character and she should have relationships in her games, rather than leaving it all to spin-off stuff.

Even if she is not as outgoing as male protagonists in action adventure games, I still say it is weird that in 21 years Lara hasn't come across anyone she fancied in one of her many games. 

For horizon, my understanding is that the option was going to be there, like you could pick a romance, but they ultimately scrapped it for this one so perhaps on a sequel they do considering the many ships I seem surface. But I agree, I understand Lara not having a romance at first in some games but its been a while, I wouldn't mind if it happens as long as its treated well.

Has for Sam, I wasn't a fan of her at all but they could have redeem that character in the sequel but unfortunately didn't. I was expecting her to be like a Zip or alistair type of character for Lara. While I enjoy the reboot games. I hope the next 3rd game does a better job with Lara's support characters, although I did like Jacob and Sofia on this one, Jonah is still pretty meh however. And I hope she transforms further in being more confident, she was more confident here but can be so much more.

I think what I really liked about the last one was Trinity. I'm quite intrigued to know more about them, I also really liked Konstantin has the villain, he was way better developed than Mathias.

I'm not disagreeing with you on the other stuff but she clearly did fancy Kurtis (which, obviously, if their genders had been swapped, things would've likely gone further than they did... although AoD was only supposed to be the first game in a trilogy so it's possible that they were saving that stuff for games 2 and 3, we'll never know for sure). I personally never minded there not being much in the way of romance stuff in TR but then I'm looking at it not so much from a general equality angle and more from a "the games just never felt like they needed romance" angle. That being said, if it were well done and not shoehorned in for the sake of it, I definitely wouldn't be opposed to them introducing LIs for Lara. I quite liked Kurtis and what they were doing with him (well, unless we're talking about his controls LOL).

As for why female game protagonists are less likely to get a love interest, I think there are a couple of reasons (and all of them are BS). A) In games with male protagonists, love interests are mainly eye candy for straight male players. In games with female protagonists, the protagonist is the eye candy for straight male players (and giving them an LI will make them seem less available to the player). B) Devs/writers might be concerned that giving a female protagonist a love interest will make them seem less independent or strong. C) Devs/writers might be concerned that giving a female protagonist an LI will weird out straight male players, some of whom already claim to be having a hard time identifying with and playing as female protagonists.

I remember trying...one of the classic games as a kid. I don't remember which one, probably 1-3, and I just didn't like it. The controls were clunky and just shitty and I was honestly bored stiff. So I didn't really try any of her games again until the 2013 reboot, and I absolutely loved it and Rise.

So it seems my trend of going backwards on the order of things is continuing. Got my first real introduction of the series with the most recent reboot and ended up playing Rise of the Tomb Raider first and falling in love with it. I have yet to beat the first one in the reboot however and remember being stuck at an annoying part and never finishing. Annoying for me anyhow.

I guess I should go back and try to play the first game again at some point. Probably have to restart it at this point😅

So finished both games in the reboot and I still really prefer the second in the series over the first though the first had some great creepy locations.

This is probably going to be a bit unpopular but I didn't get any hint of romantic undertones from Lara and Sam. Which makes me curious was the whole SamxLara thing a fan thing only or did the game devs say that was suppose to be the case?