The Tomb Raider Mic-Drop: How the Tomb Raider Reboot Trilogy Called Out Videogames for Imperialism and Left the Room
From 2013 to 2018, Crystal Dynamics released its rebooted Tomb Raider trilogy, beginning with Tomb Raider in 2013, then Rise of the Tomb Raider in 2015, and ending with Shadow of the Tomb Raider in 2018. The original franchise dates back to 1996, the heyday of rampantly sexist games featuring bikini babes and hypermasculine Duke Nukem protagonists whose guns advertised the supposed size of other endowments. Tomb Raider’s cover character, Lara Croft, didn’t appear to be all that different in terms of her digital assets—although in his defense, creator Toby Guard hadn’t intended for her to be quite so asset-laden—or her imperialist acquisitiveness.
Nevertheless, Lara Croft was a female protagonist in an industry—both the narrower videogame industry and the broader entertainment industry—that had precious few, and her badassery, while calling out to both Indiana Jones and Sarah Connor, made her a bit more of a (problematic) feminist icon than either Princess Peach or a nameless swooning damsel in a loincloth, bikini, or other skimpy outfit awaiting rescue. Despite her short-shorts and crop-top, Lara Croft was in fact later nominated for the role of British Ambassador for Technology as well as having been featured on 200 magazine covers and named one of the “Sexiest Women of the Year,” something that suggests the relative significance of her cultural presence, if nothing else.[i]
But this piece isn’t about the 2013 reboot, specifically, or even the digital assets of Lara Croft (although in the reboot they’ve been updated—like all the graphics—to be considerably more realistic). It’s about Shadow of the Tomb Raider and the end of the game franchise, at least for now.
It’s worth noting that the series reboot was written by Rhianna Pratchett, giving Lara a female writer for the first time in her storied history, which may have a lot to do with some of the significant changes to Lara’s character—she’s now a professional archaeologist with knowledge of the culture’s she’s researching (instead of just stealing everything in sight, although to be fair she still does that, just in the name of science instead of wealth), and she works with a team of ethnically diverse people across all three games (including Jonah Maiava, a Pacific Islander who plays a prominent role in Shadow).
This is not to say that Tomb Raider has somehow escaped its imperialist legacy—it’s called Tomb Raider, for Pete’s sake, it quite literally encapsulates the quintessential imperialist action that spurred Edward Said’s Orientalism—because it absolutely has not.[ii] At least, not until the very end of Shadow, as I’ll explain. But it does attempt, throughout all three games, to resist the abject acquisitiveness, dehumanization, and stereotyping of which the original franchise was frequently guilty. As I said in a much more formal discussion of the first game:
Crystal Dynamics’ 2013 reboot enters into this paradox of resistant complicity both consciously and—to an extent—critically through intertextual reference to its direct predecessors, as well as to objects and practices of colonial imperialism. The 2013 Tomb Raider deliberately engages with colonial (and post-colonial) criticism of hegemonic masculine imperialism in an attempt to refigure the series, and Lara herself, as a different kind of exploratory agent, more concerned with knowledge acquisition than exploitation or conquest. Yet despite significant revisions to Lara’s backstory, the 2013 Tomb Raider remains trapped in an imperialist framework; in spite of its desire to escape its own intertextual past of oppressive colonial violence by producing a narrative centered around female-coded space and a capable female protagonist, the 2013 Tomb Raider is ultimately constrained by its own procedural imperialism, unable to fully escape its cultural past.[iii]
In other words, if you’ll pardon my proverbial ‘French,’ the series remains imperialist as fuck.
Which is why I want to talk about what Rhianna Pratchett did at the end of Shadow.
Shadow is interesting, too, because it is a more complete reboot of the 1996 game than the 2013 ostensible origin story reboot. While the 2013 Tomb Raider is set in Japan, both the 1996 Tomb Raider and 2018 Shadow are set in Central and South America. While the 1996 game is rife with stereotypes (including a guide in a serape and sombrero) and inaccuracies (a T-rex in an underground Incan temple), the 2018 Shadow tries very hard to actually represent traditional Mayan beliefs (including the worship of Kukulhan). While there are almost certainly inaccuracies and exaggerations made for the sake of narrative and gameplay drama, the Indigenous people Lara interacts with in Shadow are given individual personalities, are frequently sympathetic, and are fully humanized.
I want to take a little time, therefore, to examine the intentional allusions to the 1996 Tomb Raider and the original design of Lara Croft relative to the rebooted version we encounter in Shadow, released twenty-two years later. Tomb Raider’s original concept “was for a treasure-hunting adventure,” drawing from glamorized popular culture archaeological tropes.[iv] Game designer Toby Gard sought to differentiate his protagonist from the then-popular Indiana Jones by making her “female and as British as I can make her.”[v] Although Lara’s gender-identity thus departs from the traditional male explorer trope, she is nevertheless presented in the original game as a quintessential imperialist, as we see in her biography, contained in the 1996 game manual.[vi] In this characterization, Lara’s pursuit of “archaeology is thus presented as a subversive displacement of the traditional Indian adventures of privileged British travelers.”[vii]
But, more importantly for the sake of what I’m getting at here, we see Lara’s personal journey to becoming an archaeologist; she is where she is not to gain wealth, but to find the truth about what happened to her father. Specifically, she is in pursuit of a clandestine Vatican paramilitary group known as Trinity who are implicated in the death of Richard Croft. They represent Christian imperialism, the legacy of the Crusades in Rise and the Conquistadors in Shadow. Their explicit connection to Western Christian dominance and expansionism—particularly since they, too, are interested in stealing artifacts from their indigenous owners, makes them an easy target as the proverbial “bad guys,” and their homogeneity as mostly-white men provides an ideal foil for the Hispanic and indigenous peoples with whom Lara allies in Shadow as the game highlights the negative outcomes of imperialism and its own history of glamorizing that very behavior.
The emphasis—in 2018, during the first Trump presidency during which he was placing considerable emphasis on the southern border wall and on the apparently slavering hordes of migrants about to encroach upon the US through Mexico—in the game on the beauty of Central American Indigenous culture pushes back against the prevailing narrative coming out of the US government. Shadow begins in Cozumel, Mexico, showcasing traditional Dia de los Muertos decorations and celebrations, including music, clothing, and other traditional elements. As Lara and Jonah mingle with the crowd, Jonah remarks that “I like it here. Good people.” Jonah’s approval (which cues the player-qua-Lara to feel similarly) is itself a political statement.
When Lara takes the knife (the key of Chak Chel) from the Maya temple in Cozumel, she triggers a series of supernatural events (although, admittedly, Trinity is hunting the same artifacts—which Lara is trying to keep out of their hands). When she realizes that the shaking of the temple around her is likely the consequence of her own actions, saying “What have I done?” Early in the game, the player largely dismisses this as an immediate reaction, but in retrospect from the end of the game, the question is meant to be much broader: what has imperialism done?
When Dr. Dominguez (an archaeologist hired by Trinity) takes the knife from Lara, he tells her that the impending tsunami is “your doing.” Again, we hear anti-imperialist echoes. Lara, as an English aristocrat, stands for the imperial forces which have long occupied indigenous lands and plundered their treasures without regard for the consequences. In the series of natural disasters—supernatural in Shadow of the Tomb Raider—we also find echoes of the consequences of European interference in the natural world: global warming, specifically, which has exacerbated recent flooding, hurricanes, droughts, and other natural disasters, caused by the pollution put into the air as a byproduct of imperial industry.
“Do you realize the tragedy you have unleashed?” Dominguez asks her, as warning sirens echo in the background—emphasizing in the subsequent tsunami sequence the fact that those who are most impacted by these climate change natural disasters are the peoples in third-world and post-colonial nations who often do not have adequate resources to manage the impacts of such disasters as a direct consequence of imperial oppression and interference. As Dominguez departs in his helicopter, Lara turns just in time to witness the destruction her actions have caused as a massive tsunami wave destroys the façade of an old fort, sweeping vehicles and people along with it. The immediacy of the consequences to her actions, the game seems to suggest, makes Lara’s complicity in the destruction of Cozumel much more apparent than the similar impact of global colonialism perpetrated over centuries, yet which is equally (if not more) destructive.
The game does not hesitate to foreground—in the subsequent sequence—the damage and destruction to lives and property caused by the disaster. People around Lara (whom she is helpless to aid) are being swept away, struggling to save loved ones, or are already dead, as homes, shops, and property are destroyed by the water. Nearly at the end of the sequence, a small boy begs for help and falls to his death while the player tries (and fails) to get to him. Once she is reunited with Jonah, Lara says, “I failed.” On the one hand, this refers to the knife (the key of Chak Chel). On another, it is a reference to having failed by causing the tsunami, by failing to save the boy, and, in the larger global sense, by having failed to be adequately responsible for the destruction and oppression perpetrated through imperialism.
Lara says that “After everything my father went through,” she has lost the knife. She tells Jonah that they have to stop Trinity, and Jonah says, “Okay, but first we’re gonna help these people get to safety,” calling out not only Lara, but all of Western imperial tradition for placing wealth and acquisitiveness before the health and security of the many indigenous peoples around the world who suffered as a consequence of imperial expansionist ideology. Lara, however, argues with him, saying that “No one is safe… I have to go. I’m the only one…” drawing on the traditional imperial narrative of the white savior; only the imperial conqueror is capable, in this narrative, of providing salvation and civilization. Jonah angrily interrupts her: “You’re the only one that can what?… Not everything is about you. These people need us here. We can do good NOW.” Jonah, throughout the game, advocates for speaking to the people about what they need, understanding them on their own terms and in their own cultures, rather than imposing upon them a framework brought from outside.
The game flashes forward to a silent and clearly still-angry Jonah on a plane, heading into Peru with a chagrined Lara sitting beside him. She remains “stuck” in her original pattern of thought, returning, when she does speak, to the riddles they are tracing into the jungle. Jonah replies, “I just can’t get those people back there out of my head. They lost everything.” His words summon contemporary news images: Puerto Rico, devastated by hurricane Maria in 2017, during Shadow’sdevelopment; Haiti’s earthquakes in 2010 and again in 2018, the first of which included a tsunami; the Hawaiian volcanic eruption in 2018. Certainly not all of these could have influenced the creation of Shadow, but the sentiment is the same: destruction caused by natural disasters exacerbated by or even proximately caused by human (mostly Western) action. When Jonah says, “This storm looks like bad news,” Lara—again channeling the voice of the West (and perhaps a liberal dose of climate change denial)—replies, “It’s just a little rain.” Which, of course, it isn’t.
It is, ultimately, Jonah who notices the mountain from the riddle, and Jonah who understands that the storm is an immediate and very real threat. Just as it is Jonah who does most of the emotional labor of working with the Indigenous peoples they encounter throughout Shadow, he is also frequently there to help Lara when she needs it most: although Lara is indeed strong and independent (and certainly more capable than most Western narrative heroines), Jonah provides the support that she needs to be successful.
Once they arrive in Peru—specifically, in Kuwaq Yaku—Abby, a local whom Jonah immediately befriends, explains that they will not find Mayan ruins there: the local people are Inca. She does explain that she has seen a symbol like the one Lara has in a photograph from Cozumel, which suggests that there is a connection between the local Inca and the Mayan ruins in Mexico. However, the game makes a point of not conflating the two cultures in an attempt, perhaps, to rectifying the conflation which happens in the 1996 game.
The village of Kuwaq Yaku has been damaged by the recent storm, but it is also clear that the villagers have suffered at the hands of both Trinity (although under another guise) and the exploitative actions of an oil company, Porvenir Oil.[viii] From Spanish to English, the word translates to “future,” a choice which serves as a warning about the potential for natural disasters, exploitation, and poverty—all of which have impacted Kuwaq Yaku—which will come as a result of over-reliance on fossil fuels and corporate infrastructure. While there, Lara has the opportunity to help the local people recover from the impact of both as she also works to find Dominguez and Trinity.
During her explorations, Lara comes across a boy (Etzli) trapped in the ruins of an ancient city. She saves the boy from the first soldier (which we later learn are called Jaguar Warriors), and then is joined by Unuratu, the rebel queen of Paititi, and taken to the lost city of Paititi. Lara explains to Unuratu that she is looking for the Box, and Unuratu offers to take her to the serpent with the silver eye, what she calls “a place of death and sacrifice,” keeping Jonah as collateral. Lara is introduced to Paititi, a city all but untouched by modern technology, intentionally protected by its people from the influences of modern technology. In order to move among them, Lara must dress as one of them (the player does not have a choice—they must equip the Blue Heron Tunic to move through Paititi) in order to maintain their traditions.
From this point on, Lara’s interests align with those of the people of Paititi. Yet if Lara speaks to the villagers, she learns that although Unuratu claims leadership, Paititi is under the actual control of a man named Amaru (who, as it turns out, is actually Dominguez, although it takes some time before this is revealed to Lara and the player). As play continues, Lara learns more and more about the politics in Paititi, and becomes increasingly embroiled in the conflict between Amaru and Trinity on one side, and Unuratu and the rebels on the other.
Later in the game—after exploring the Indigenous city of Paititi and its environs—Lara is tasked by Unuratu with using a key (shaped like a silver serpent) to gain access to the temple and find the Box of Ix Chel and rescue Etzli. At the end of the mission, Unuratu and one of her men, Uchu, are smuggling Etzli out of the ruins, and the Jaguar Warriors surround them. Unuratu directs Uchu to take Etzli and run, staying behind to be captured. Lara kills one Jaguar Warrior, but then—in a cutscene, Unuratu shakes her head and mouths the word “No.” Unuratu’s refusal of Lara’s help, symbolic in this case of the refusal of Indigenous people to become reliant on the “salvation” of Western imperialism, suggests that Unuratu understands the politics and circumstances of her situation better than Lara does—and is making a conscious and informed choice. Lara—uncharacteristically, based on previous games, nods in return, and allows Unuratu to be captured, turning to complete the quest on which Unuratu sent her to begin with.
This quest also marks Lara’s first encounter with the Yaaxill, a people who, we learn eventually from the game, have been in the area for longer than the Inca or Maya, and who share a kind of symbiotic relationship with the people of Paititi. At this juncture in the game, Lara (and, therefore, the player) does not know anything about the Yaaxill; she has found journals from European explorers and Conquistadors, as well as evidence of Trinity’s attempts to infiltrate the caves, and all of these discuss the Yaaxill as “monsters,” “strange people,” and “savages.” For the most part, even Lara’s initial encounters with them are hostile; they attack her and the player is forced to kill them (there is no non-confrontational or diplomatic option).
However, later in the game, Lara confronts a woman whose dress clearly marks her as distinct from the others. Dubbed the “Queen of the Damned” (a moniker which itself participates in a colonialist discourse which suggests that because she is Other, the Queen must be demonic), she is the leader of the Yaaxill. Her first encounter with Lara, despite the violence her people and Lara have been inflicting upon one another, is surprisingly tentative. When Lara crosses the threshold of the doorway, the Queen and her people stop on the other side and simply watch as the door closes between them.
It is clear to the player that, had she wished to do so, the Queen could easily have killed Lara right then. Lara herself also doesn’t attack in the cutscene, and comments, once the door is closed, that “They didn’t enter.” Her facial expressions communicate confusion, and she seems to be seriously reevaluating her relationship to these yet-unknown-to-her people.
Then Lara turns to the paintings on the wall beside her, and comments that “These figures… they look like those creatures. But they’re… graceful. Yaaxill… Goddesses of Protection.” Although the game doesn’t immediately ascribe the name of Yaaxill to the these people (Unuratu later tells Lara that this is what they are called), it becomes clear over the remainder of the game that their Queen is, in fact, one of these so-termed “goddesses.” Lara’s commentary, however, marks a line between imperialist Otherization of the Yaaxill—“those creatures”—and her recognition of their humanity—“they’re… graceful.” This is also the point where Lara recognizes that the Yaaxill are protecting the Box of Ix Chel, granting them agency and culture tantamount to that in Paititi, if not (yet) of the West. This is one of several small shifts in Lara’s imperialist paradigm, all leading to the game’s eventual anti-imperialist conclusion.
Yet when Lara finds the pedestal on which the Box was supposed to rest—amid the heron-and-eclipse iconography which suffuses the game—it is empty, and the ground around her starts to tremble. She ascribes this as “a foreshock,” still focusing on a scientific explanation for the natural disasters which seem to be too coincidental to not be supernatural in origin. When the door falls in, the Queen takes this as a signal that Lara is either unworthy or has been the cause of the shock, and summons her people, chasing Lara out of the cenote temple.
We learn from Dominguez (who is actually from Paititi and leading the Cult attempting to remake the world) that the Box was stolen by a Catholic missionary named Lopez several centuries earlier. As Lara and Unuratu attempt to escape, they are attacked by Jaguar Warriors, whom Unuratu defeats easily on her own. However, she is then shot by Commander Roark of Trinity, who is the only person (that we have seen) in Paititi wearing modern dress and carrying a gun (Lara only carries hers if she leaves Paititi; while in Paititi, she wears indigenous clothing—given to her by Unuratu, Uchu, or purchased from Paititi vendors—and is only able to use low-tech weapons, like her knife, axe, or bow). In essence, it is only the invasion of the imperial West that has caused the political strife and death of the true leader of Paititi. Lara promises to take Unuratu’s medallion to Etzli, who must now inherit his mother’s rule.
Lara and Jonah leave Paititi to find the box, which had been taken by a Jesuit. It is Jonah, rather than Lara, who suggests that the “cup” from the clue left by Lopez might be a chalice, and Lara recognizes the serpent in the chalice as a symbol of St. John, leading them to the Mission of San Juan, a Jesuit church within walking distance of Paititi.
This section of the game focuses on the layered history of colonized—the Maya and Inca—and the colonizers, first the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth century, then Trinity (following in their wake). Whether intentionally or not, the Mission and Paititi echo one another: llamas, overlap in voice actors, similar structure and occupations, a focus on the central religious culture (whether the Catholic church of the Cult of Kukulkan). These echoes remind the player of the way in which colonialism changes the overlying context, but it also suggests that the spirit of the people beneath remain, even beneath the shifting institutional structures which surround them.
The relics and spaces which Lara and Jonah now have to explore are focused on seventeenth-century Catholicism (the seven stations of the cross, Biblical passages, etc.), the religion imported to and imposed upon the people of Mexico by the Conquistadors in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In these scenes, the Box of Ix Chel appears, stolen and then appropriated by the Spanish empire for its own purposes, despite having a culture and history of its own. The game is also very deliberate about the way it characterizes Lopez’s version of Catholicism; for all that the culture of Paititi is rooted in human sacrifice, so is Lopez’s mission.
When Lara and Jonah enter the room of the sixth station (the crucifixion), they find a chapel filled with the dead; along the walls are the stations of the cross “sculpted” by dead bodies. Jonah asks, “Isn’t this sacrilegious?” and Lara replies that it could be considered the height of devotion to give one’s life for faith—just as it was for those in Paititi seeking to renew the world or giving their lives in sacrifice to the gods. Yet again, the game emphasizes that the ostensibly more “civilized” culture of the West is, in fact, no more so than that of the Indigenous peoples Lara has encountered… and may, in fact, be worse, given the example of Trinity.
Once Lara and Jonah take the box, there is a minor earthquake, and Lara falls through a crack in the floor. When she finds Jonah again, he has been captured by Dominguez and Trinity, and Lara exchanges the box for his life. She calls Dominguez a coward, and he asks her “How many lives have you taken, Lara? And in pursuit of what?” The number, of course, is excessive; the player has played at least 70% of the way through Shadow, and has probably played both the 2013 Tomb Raider and 2015 Rise, if not some or all of the games from the original series. The justification for Lara is that the people she kills—at least directly—are “bad guys,” Trinity, people who attack her first (even though some of them, such as the Jaguar Warriors or the Yaaxill, are only defending their way of life). Yet her actions, especially in this game, have caused the deaths of many, many more in natural disasters (the tsunami and earthquakes, at least), to say nothing of Unuratu (which likely would not have happened without Lara’s interference).
At the same time, however, she is willing to give the box to a man intent on remaking the entire world in order to save Jonah—the paradox of videogame narratives the world over: Lara is willing to kill untold numbers of people in pursuit of artifacts or her own friends, but she accuses Dominguez (who has admittedly killed quite a few himself, including in human sacrifice) of being the murderer. We are supposed to recognize the hypocrisy here, the idea that she accuses him of having her father killed, when he does so to save his entire civilization (although we get the impression that this was probably not justified). But when Lara kills Trinity, Jaguar Warriors, Yaaxill… her actions are legitimate. Certainly, the game attempts to justify this fictional veneer through Dominguez’s insanity, Trinity’s evil, and having Lara attacked first in almost all instances, and we are not meant to think of Lara as “evil,” per se. But it does force us to question whether the difference is really all that significant.
During the game’s final sequence, Lara—as Unuratu’s replacement—must work with the Queen of the Yaaxill (the “Crimson Fire”) to destroy Kukulkan (Dominguez/Amaru) and restore the order of creation. The game thus deliberately turns the “monsters” of the game—those who opposed the colonial powers of Trinity, Spain, and the Jesuits—into Lara’s most important and powerful allies. The Yaaxill are a stronger military force than Etzli’s rebel troops (who are also in the fight), and more of a threat to Trinity, despite being entirely untouched by technology or Western culture. Despite her elaborate costume, the Queen is recognizably human in proportion and form: her 3D body model is nearly identical to Lara’s or that of any other female character in the game, and her near nudity (which is surprisingly not sexualized) makes it clear that although her body has been modified with piercings and tattoos, she is human (although her voice is disconcertingly gravelly). In these moments, Lara—and, therefore, the player—recognizes the importance of the culture and civilization of the Yaaxill, as well as the barbarity of modern Western imperialism.
As Lara moves through the Yaaxill, they speak; it is not a language recognizable to the player, and the game’s captions do not translate the words, but it is clear they are speaking. Lara represents Ix Chel to the Queen’s Chak Chel—this is about the only linguistic exchange that is clear. Yet it is also apparent that the rest of the Yaaxill, despite their seeming monstrosity, are a part of a civilization and society with its own laws and language; they allow Lara to pass, speaking to her and recognizing her role, even if she cannot understand their specific words. As such, the player, too, has to accept the relative humanity of the Yaaxill, and must also confront the fact that they-qua-Lara have been killing not monsters, but people. (Although the game does not explicitly condemn Lara for her earlier encounters with the Yaaxill, the implicit recognition of their purpose and humanity asks us to interrogate our earlier interactions with them, just as Unuratu’s earlier naming of them and identification of the Yaaxill as the protectors of Paititi also called into question Lara’s violent actions against them.)
Yet despite this, the Yaaxill (and the Queen, in particular) are far better adapted to their underground environment than Lara; as the player moves through the level, Lara requires tools (her climbing axe, her grapple, her climbing shoes) to maneuver through the areas, while the Queen easily traverses the same path without shoes or equipment. On the one hand, this might seem to suggest animalistic traits, but, on the other, it recognizes the different strengths of their respective cultures; Lara’s Western background has provided her with technology which enables her to mimic the physical skills of the Yaaxill developed (presumably) through training and practice—not unlike myriad historical interactions between the more technologically advanced imperial West and the Indigenous peoples of the places it colonized (including the fledgling United States at Roanoke, Plymouth, and Jamestown, where the colonists had to rely on the good will and expertise of the Indigenous peoples in order to survive). The game’s emphasis on the capability of the Yaaxill in the face of ostensibly superior technology asks the player to accommodate the possibility of the (non-technological and non-economic) value of Indigenous cultures and peoples.
Dominguez expresses shock that Lara accompanies the Yaaxill, then announces that the ritual is “mine” to perform. Lara counters, and says, “No. It was always theirs.” Her assertion of the authority of the Yaaxill—in direct opposition to her frequent claims throughout the game that “It has to be me”—relinquishes her own authority as modern colonizer and returns that authority (in a somewhat problematic way, since she is literally speaking for the Queen) to the Yaaxill. She claims that “‘We all create destiny.’ Not just you. All of us. Together.” The line emphasizes the need for cultural and social diversity and toleration, the inclusion of all peoples, not just the paradigms established by the dominant classes.
Dominguez, of course (he is the game’s villain), refuses. After Lara defeats him, he begs her, while dying, to “Protect Paititi.” She promises, “I will.” When the power from the box flows into her, Lara has a flashback to her own childhood, in which her girlhood self says, “To claim her treasure, the adventurer, Lara Croft, must outwit the King—” and her father replies, “Outwit the King? I think the King might have something to say about that.” It is the first time we see her father—rather than just his shadow. He is decidedly unimpressive; a white, middle-aged man with early male-pattern baldness and glasses. But that is, of course, both part of the point and not the point at all.
Her father doesn’t have to be impressive—he’s her father. Yet transforming him from a legend into a man removes some of his power, especially for the player, and makes him simply human. Lara’s mother appears, as well, painting a portrait of them in Hawaii, a unified, happy family. On top of this scene comes Dominguez’s voice, reminding Lara that she now has the power to remake the world without conflict, to create a perfect world. The dream, of course, is the world Lara could make with the power that is now available to her.
But she chooses not to, instead saying “Goodbye, Mum. Goodbye, Dad,” and turning her back on the possibility of this perfect world before her. Instead, Lara (and the player) return to the cavern in Mexico, where Lara is joined by the Queen of the Yaaxill. Lara hears Unuratu’s voice saying, “When the catastrophes come, the god Kukulkan must be sacrificed to power the sun. otherwise, the world dies.” As Lara now has that power, she is the god who must be sacrificed. Unuratu continues: “the Crimson Fire will guide me and hold me to my promise.” The Queen of the Yaaxill—the Crimson Fire—is there to perform the sacrifice of Kukulkan: to kill Unuratu, or, since she is already dead, Lara, who takes her place.
The Queen brings down the blade, and light flares as the eclipse fades. The screen goes black, and the words “Two days later…” appear in white on the screen. Then a scene appears, with Unuratu’s funeral, her face surrounded by flowers on a bier. Etzli speaks over her, eulogizing his mother both formally and personally. Lara lays her hand on his shoulder, showing that she—somehow—has survived the ritual in the cave.
As they leave the chamber, Lara and Jonah talk about the future: Jonah and Abby (who helped them in Kuwaq Yaku) are headed to the coast, and Lara says she will stay a little longer in Paititi. Jonah jokingly asks if she’s going to “‘restore’ a few more artifacts,” a reference to her penchant for destroying walls in order to “restore” the murals or artifacts behind them. The joke has relevance both in the game itself, but also to the actions of imperialists who have gathered up relics and artifacts from around the world and brought them to Western museums for “restoration” and “safe-keeping” for centuries—stealing those artifacts from the places and people who created and venerated them.
The most interesting part of the game’s conclusion comes when Jonah asks, “what will you do?” Lara answers that “Etzli will help me figure it out He’ll let me know what Paititi needs to rebuild,” recognizing that her role is not to dictate, but to do as she is asked by the Indigenous peoples in whose city she currently resides. She then says, “I’m done searching. I want to be around the living,” essentially giving up her title of “Tomb Raider.”
During the end credits of the game, concept art appears alongside the names; however, it is not concept art from only Shadow, but the entire post-2013 trilogy (easily recognizable by the fact that large portions of it contain snow, from Rise, and Japanese architecture, from Tomb Raider), suggesting that Shadow is meant to be recognized as tied explicitly to the three games as a trilogy—and it is now over. As Lara says at the very end of the game: “I had it all wrong.”
Mic drop.
In that line, the game’s ending makes the radically unorthodox suggestion—especially in the hypercapitalist gaming industry—that Lara’s most responsible choice is to stop interfering in the politics and lives of other people, particularly Indigenous peoples. The career glorified and established in the 1996 Tomb Raider is exploitative, violent, and destructive, and the series of disasters, mistakes, and deaths in Shadow,which not only can be but are attributed to Lara’s actions mean that the only ethical choice that she has—and, therefore, that the creators of the series have—is to end her explorations. Shadow thereby positions itself not simply as the end of a trilogy or of a franchise, but as an acknowledgement of the fundamentally problematic nature of games which feature the exploitation and murder of Indigenous and minority populations, and especially of those which glorify the role of the white savior as superior to or even necessary for the salvation of those people. In ending the Tomb Raider franchise—and, especially, in having Lara admit that “I had it all wrong”—Shadow takes the only action it can to make amends. After all, no game with Tomb Raider in the title can help but glorifying the exploitation of other peoples and cultures; therefore, in admitting fault and ending the series, Shadow calls upon us—as players and consumers of videogames and popular culture in general—to be wise as we do both, and to make choices to engage with knowledge rather than ignorance, and to support a broader, more diverse, and wiser world that recognizes not only the benefits of, but also the need for diversity.
[i] Kurt Lancaster, “Lara Croft: The Ultimate Young Adventure Girl or The Unending Media Desire for Models, Sex, and Fantasy,” Performing Arts Journal 78 (2004): 87; Kristin M.S. Bezio, “The Perpetual Crusade: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Religious Extremism, and the Problem of Empire,” in Woke Gaming: Digital Challenges to Oppression and Social Justice, ed. Kishonna L. Gray and David J. Leonard (University of Washington Press, 2018), 189.
[ii] For one of the best takes on games as imperial, see Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter, Games of Empire: Global Capitalism and Video Games, Electronic Mediations 29 (University of Minnesota Press, 2009).
[iii] Bezio, “The Perpetual Crusade: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Religious Extremism, and the Problem of Empire,” 190.
[iv] Magnus Anderson and Rebecca Levene, Grand Thieves & Tomb Raiders: How British Video Games Conquered the World (London: Aurum Press Ltd, 2012), 238.
[v] Anderson and Levene, 239.
[vi] Lara Croft, daughter of Lord Henshingly Croft, was raised to be an aristocrat from birth. After attending finishing school at the age of 21, Lara’s marriage into wealth had seemed assured, but on her way home from a skiing trip her chartered plane had crashed deep in the heart of the Himalayas. The only survivor, Lara learned how to depend on her wits to stay alive in hostile conditions a world away from her sheltered upbringing. 2 weeks later when she walked into the village of Tokakeriby her experiences had had a profound effect on her. Unable to stand the claustrophobic suffocating atmosphere of upper-class British society, she realised that she was only truly alive when she was travelling alone. Over the 8 following years she acquired an intimate knowledge of ancient civilisations across the globe. Her family soon disowned their prodigal daughter, and she turned to writing to fund her trips. Famed for discovering several ancient sites of profound archaeological interest she made a name for herself by publishing travel books and detailed journals of her exploits. Core Design, Tomb Raider, PC (London: Eidos Interactive, Square Enix, 1996).
[vii] Claudia Breger, “Digital Digs, or Lara Croft Replaying Indiana Jones: Archaeological Tropes and ‘Colonial Loops’ in New Media Narrative,” Aether: The Journal of Media Geography II (2008): 47.
[viii] The name may also be a reference to the 1918 (since the release of the game comes exactly 100 years later) Porvenir Massacre in Texas in which the US Army killed fifteen unarmed Mexican men and boys (Madlin Mekelburg, “El Paso Times,” El Paso Times, accessed November 2, 2019, https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/2018/01/26/100-years-later-porvenir-massacre-haunts-descendants-texas-border/1058345001/). There is also a Porveir, Chile, in Tierra del Fuego, and an anarchist journal El Porvenir, published in Spain.