Thinking along the lines of Waypoint's criticisms, is a "woke" and/or "fairly representative" Tomb Raider possible within the construct of what most believe Tomb Raider to be?
I... think not. In truth, Lara should not be raiding tombs. The idea of a british noblewoman traveling the world and collecting artifacts from "primitive" civilizations is... well, unredeemable.
In a "woke" narrative, you'd probably have to reimagine Tomb Raider as a franchise where the titular heroine changes at each game, and you have a character coming from the culture whose tombs are featured in the game recovering artifacts for the goodness of the general public. And you'd still probably find issues there too. And it would probably be the most boring franchise of all times.
There may be a sobering realization that "fairness" and "wokeness" may not be terribly fun at some point. That Indiana Jones is problematic, and Back to Future is problematic, and that probably everything you loved in the past wasn't "right" in some way. The author of the Waypoint review points out (and this is something the people who jump the gun to say "lul waypoint" are absolutely missing) that the very vague and cartoonish premise of Old Lara was
better than the New and Depressingly Realistic Lara.
I think this is what probably damns this Tomb Raider. Instead of avoiding the issue, it tackles it pedal to the metal - and fails. I don't want to bring out Uncharted here, but one can't help and think how wise Naughty Dog was in designing a "fantasy archeology" franchise while almost completely avoiding these issues. Drake is generally raiding the tombs of
white people, disrespecting the heritage of literal nazis, killing mercenaries and so on. The most "problematic" story may be Uncharted 2, but generally speaking Nathan Drake isn't pillaging other civilizations, he's going after the people who did so. Uncharted would never feature indigenous populations performing mass human sacrifice. It's about a thief stealing from thieves.
