Crystal Dynamics Warns Racial, Ethnic Stereotypes Remain in Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered

People are too sensitive these days but it has been so long since I actually played these I probably wouldn't have remembered if they changed anything anyway.

It's a shame that publishers feel the need to put disclaimers such as these on their products but kudos to them for not changing the games from their original outings. I despise the cancel culture and I'm very much of the "if you don't like then don't buy it" mentality. Instead of cancelling things that are deemed outdated,contentious or offensive we should be using them as tools to educate people instead of just erasing them from history but I guess it's less effort overall to just erase them.

Marketing ploy - nothing more. As others on here have said, this has turned something that would otherwise have been barely commented on into a dog whistle for the extremists on both sides.
And y'know what? It works. Here we are talking about it after all. We are probably worth millions in free advertising.

"...if we had to guess, it's probably..." is all I need to know. Also, funny coming from them when, in their reboots, you're killing a cannibalistic father that wants to sacrifice his daughter for the tribe.

Glad to see this warning on time. If I would have played this, it would offend and scar me for life.

More media should do the WarnerBros approach like this. It acknowledges past cultural mistakes, while preserving original intent. People are calling the devs sensitive and stuff for including this message but I think it’s the actual best way to go around this.

This is the best way to handle it. Media isn’t created in a vacuum and it’s important to note that the devs weren’t exactly any more racist than the majority of the UK at the time, it just comes from a different culture. I can’t think of too much egregiously dodgy stuff from when I played them but then I wasn’t paying much attention to the cutscenes.

I remember playing TR3 way back. It features an extensive section set in India (the country where I live). My friends and I were quite intrigued. It had some religious symbology including a boss which closely resembles venerated divinity (the featured image for this article). But the extremest emotion I can recall was being bemused. 😀

"People nowadays are too easily offended" they said, seething at an article.

Cant do anything these days without it upsetting someone. Thats why i dont tell people when im going to fart at work anymore. I just stealth one out and leave the office. Huh, whats that noise! (MGS ! sound)

@MrMagic I call that BS. It’s not about being sensitive, but about ensuring we acknowledge the lazy stereotypes and ‘subconscious’ racism that exists and is very real today (I don’t know your ethnicity but as someone who lives in Europe and is of ethnic minority, this kind of racism day2day is still vey present in our society (and of course overt racism in social media). I applaud the way they have handled this.

Crisis averted, Twitter was preparing one of it's super effective boycotts.

@bighal seriously, he is right.

I was flicking through the t.v. at the weekend and landed on an episode of Birds of a feather. A similar warning came up on the screen at the beginning of the episode. People need to toughen up rather than be offended by every little thing. Humanity is doomed!

Anybody have an example of what they are referring to with this disclaimer? I can't for the life of me remember anything racist playing these games way back when, but now i'm curious.

Are they actually telling the truth about preserving the original games contents in unaltered form? They had the same warning for Destroy All Humans 2 Reprobed and that was a lie, they did cut out some offensive content.

Worth pointing out since both are published by Embracer.

I appreciate them leaving it be. Throw up a content warning if you must just keep it the way it was. "Modernizing" bits and pieces of anything almost never goes well.

Take the P3 Reload beach scene for example. The dialog they replaced now borderline doesn't even make any sense and the scene now just feels awkward. Sure it's unimportant in the grand scheme of things but my point stands.

If cannibalism is what the warning if for, that's odd

Cannibalism in some pacific islands is a documented fact

Wow, this is so sad. Imagine feeling that the old tomb raider games are offensive, so much so you have to put a warning on something kids of every kind enjoyed growing up.
Removing it would have been ridiculous.

What a stupid world we live in. Lol

The only sensitive people is in twitter, most real people / gamer doesn't care about this, like at all.

@MeatyVeg If anything, it's representation and that's a good thing, right?

Completely unnecessary announcement.

@BeautifulCreatures They'll make a big show about how objectified Lara is wrong, but then pull what they did in the 2013 game and it's attempted r**e scene to make the player want to "protect" her. Also both of their versions of Lara had daddy issues too lol.

Things like this make me appreciate South Park even more.

Don't see the problem here, the content is there to enjoy regardless of what they write in the warning so it's really a non issue. Like some have said here I think Crystal Dynamics is just trying to manufacture some controversy as that leads to more eyeballs.

While I would prefer that they leave the content in and didn't have a disclaimer, I know that there are those on the outside that would have an ignorant take on it, so if this is the price to pay to keep the integrity of the game as it was designed (not as we would design it now), I say its worth it.

Erm, how is a cannibal racist? 😏 With that kind of logic zombies are also a racial stereotype and should also be cautioned before we shoot them too 🙄 , oh boy, we are too sensitive these days

@invictus4000 no logic behind this whatsoever, I'm scratching my head over this one 🤔🤔

@nessisonett Your assumption the entire culture was racist is both tone deaf and ignorant

Lets quietly erase what we don't agree with. Human cattle.