TOMB RAIDER - Game Over

It has been quite sure time since I have done one of these, so here is a quick disclaimer. SPOILER ALERT! The following article contains the end of the game TOMB RAIDER. If you don't wish to have the end of the game's story ruined for you then stop now and proceed only once you have beaten the game. Otherwise continue on and discuss with me how the story ends.

Story

This is going to be a very boiled down run-through of the story. Lara and the crew of the Endurance get ship wrecked on an island in the Dragon's Teeth. There they find a violent cult, the Solarii, on the island. This cult wants nothing more then to escape this God forsaken island, but due to mysterious storms that prevent any sort of rescue or escape, they cannot. They have been living by salvaging ships that crash on the island and killing those that will not join them.

As Lara traverses the island, she finds it is the lost island Yamatai and the force that is holding them there is the soul of the first and last queen Himiko. In the ancient past she would pass her soul from one body to the next. This gave her eternal life, until the next priestess she was to do this too figured it out. The priestess killed herself half-way through the ceremony trapping Himiko in a withered corpse. The storms are Himiko lashing out at those still alive. Mathias, the leader of the cult, believes Lara's friend Samantha is a vessel that can hold Himiko's soul and free then from the island. He is right of course and this means Lara has to rescue Sam from the cult, which is much more difficult thanks to a traitor in their midst, Dr. Whitman.

Whitman is willing to do anything to guarantee this archeological find for himself to the extent of selling out his fellow expedition members to Mathias. You get an idea of this when you first find Whitman just outside a large room where they are keeping Sam and this idea is verified when he disappears with Sam after the cult attacks. He gets his just desserts when an ancient samurai (basically an undead guardian of Himiko) kills him. From there Lara climbs the side of mountain to stop the ritual of Sam becoming the new Sun Queen. This ends with Lara stuffing a torch in the decaying corpse that held Himiko's soul up to now, releasing it into the afterlife. Now, with Himiko truly dead Lara and her friends can leave the island. Lara is no longer the scared girl she was when she embarked on this journey. She is now a survivor, fully transformed by this adventure.

Thoughts

TOMB RAIDER promised us an epic adventure. One that would transform an innocent girl into the ultimate survivor, and they delivered on this. What they did not promise was a story that would have a number of twists and turns in it. The fact that Mathias was a man not to be trusted was not a surprise to me at all, even when we had just met him shortly after Lara meets back up with everyone from the Endurance. I was also not surprise that Whitman was willing to betray, and kill, the entire expedition just to get the credit and money that came with the discovery of Yamatai. Perhaps if the betrayal of Whitman had not been telegraphed so much things may have been different. That could have been a great twist, but I guess since most people, or maybe just me, hated him right off the bat it would have been difficult to hide the betrayal has we would have been expecting it. It was also not a surprise that they needed Sam's body to resurrect Himiko. She was kept separate of the rest of the group whenin captivity making her a bit more special when doing the rescue attempts. These are all things that I feel you figure out far before the characters, especially if you are diligent in gathering the logs that are scattered across the island.

Now I am not saying that I did not enjoy the story, I am just saying that it did not surprise me. I enjoyed how a little extra work expanded the story and what was happening to the inhabitants, past and present, of the island. I enjoyed the ancient world they attempted to recreate on the island and I enjoyed the way the mystical was mixed in. I just happen to prefer a story that keeps me guessing a bit more (thing Batman: Arkham City). The game should still be played though, but more for the actual gameplay then the story.

EDIT:

Something I forgot to add the first time around. They kill secondary characters way to easy. They don't give us a chance to get attached to them before they are offed. Sure Lara is emotionally attached to them after several months at sea and several years of knowing them. But we have only known them for a few hours and then "BAM", they are dead. This makes the deaths of her friends seem hollow and meaningless to me. Sure most of the time they are saving Lara's life when they pass away, but with the ease that other people die it makes it hard to care.