Back in 1996, a video game hit the market that would revolutionize adventure games, but what really made the ink flow was the fact that the lead character in the game was a beautiful British woman with akimbo pistols and a penchant for acrobatics.
Lara Croft became a fixed legend in video game history, right up there with Master Chief, Mario, and Sonic the Hedgehog. Her cultural impact would run so deep that it would result in several movies, a long stream of games, reboots, remakes, and remasters for decades. In terms of adventure characters, she had the same name recognition as Indiana Jones.
What made Croft interesting was that men loved her for her beauty and action, women loved her for her competence and glamour, but everyone loved her because she was fresh, unapologetic, and fun. She smirked while she pulled the trigger, while backflipping, while in short shorts and a tank top. Lara Croft was just cool.
However, like many things do, Tomb Raider games became stale. A failure to revolutionize the gameplay led to players becoming bored. Soon, Tomb Raider games would become overshadowed by Nathan Drake and the Uncharted games.
It didn't help that in 2013, the same thing that happened to almost every major franchise or character happened to Croft, too. It became the focus of a woke "reimagining," with new games, television shows, and a movie. Usually, when an ideologically based reimagining happens, it's an attempt to redefine the character for future generations, but all the entries were so bad that hardly anyone truly remembers them or even watched them in the first place.
Netflix's Tomb Raider "anime," for instance, featured a man-ish Lara Croft, and it's hardly ever talked about. To this day, I haven't met anyone who actually watched it, and the only person I know who actually did is The Critical Drinker, because he excoriated it.
Then, in 2025, something miraculous happened. At the Game Awards, a new Tomb Raider game was announced, and it blew up the internet.
Why? Because it appeared we were getting the Lara Croft back. Beautiful, snarky, confident, dual pistol-wielding, cart-wheeling, Lara. Not only that, it seems Crystal Dynamics is pressing the reset button and going back to the beginning with the story of Croft's search for the city of Atlantis.
First trailer for the ‘TOMB RAIDER: LEGACY OF ATLANTIS’ remake
— DiscussingFilm (@DiscussingFilm) December 12, 2025
Releasing in 2026. pic.twitter.com/J6F6Qq3mcU
Meaning this isn't just a remaster. You're effectively getting a new game with a classic story, featuring a classic character. The audience reaction to this has been largely positive, with people just happy to have old Croft back.
But this does not include the Left. In fact, they're peeved, and I don't think it's just because a conventionally attractive character has made her return after a decade and some change of being intentionally reduced in beauty.
Woof, this new design for Lara Croft is really jarring.
— Stella😈 (@ParallaxStella) December 12, 2025
I joked that she looks like those anti-woke face tuned photos of "make gaming characters hot again" but idk if it's a joke anymore
wym she's fighting for her life and has a thick set of falsies??? pic.twitter.com/osK7J1NNhn
But I want to point out here that Croft was never supposed to be a gritty survivor "fighting for her life." She's supposed to be a fun, action hero that blends exploration with style. None of the Crofts during the "woke" era were Croft at all. They were some sort of sad shadow, constantly exhibiting angry or sad emotions, crying, shocked, and always hanging around a diverse crew to check off some boxes.
The last Tomb Raider game, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, did poorly on release, becoming a discounted game early on. People just weren't that into this version of the character.
Now, we're getting the real one back, and this isn't just bad news for the left in terms of getting a figure that pleases "male gaze" returned from the ashes; it also means that the stories they tried to push on us are getting shelved, too. Lara, the lesbian, who seemed to have a romance plot with her Asian friend "Sam," is being tossed aside and replaced with actual adventure.
No more "inclusion," no more "diversity," no more "emotional realism," or whatever it is the Left likes to call appealing to the "modern audience," just guns blazing adventure about an ancient mystery and a woman with an unnatural talent for shooting, flipping, and looking damn good while doing it.
If you're on the Left, you see this as your grip further being pried off the culture. Croft was a big get for them, and now she's been jerked right out of their hands and returned to her real fans.
Things are looking up.
