Before Katniss There Was Lara (by C.D. Kearby)

“The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

― William Faulkner

       The Hunger Games trilogy presents the story of Katniss: A teenage girl who is willing to do whatever it takes to survive. She’s intelligent, strong-willed, and skilled with a bow. The world around her is falling apart and she must fight to keep it from crushing her. One wrong step and the trilogy ends early in book one.
       In the new Tomb Raider game, Lara Croft exhibits these same qualities. She is trapped, uses a bow, and fights off forces that are trying to kill her. So, it’s easy for people to say that this game is merely a veiled attempt to capture a piece of the wildly popular Hunger Games franchise. There’s one problem with that theory: Lara’s been doing this for years.
       From the first time she fought off wild dogs with a sharpened stick, Lara showed how compelling a tough-as-nails female protagonist can be. Gamers flocked to buy the game that featured a young woman climbing rocks, hunting for artifacts, and doing whatever it took to survive. Sure, she wore short shorts and a tight tank top but she was also clever and self-reliant. She didn’t need anyone to tell her who she was. She was a survivor.
       The Hunger Games trilogy is fantastic and if you haven’t read it you should, but let’s not forget one person who blazed the trail for Katniss to capture the imagination of millions of fans: Lara Croft.  She may look a little different in the new Tomb Raider game but the soul of the original explorer is still there.
       It’s terrific to embrace what is new but not at the cost of forgetting the past. 

     - C. D. Kearby


C.D. Kearby is a Contributing Editor for The Honest Gamer. Please be sure to follow him on Twitter and check out more of his writing and thoughts on his blog.

          - Twitter: @cdkearby

          - Blog: cdkearby.blogspot.com