Why Tomb Raider Has a Racism & Stereotypes Warning

Are you playing or thinking of playing Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered? Wondering why Tomb Raider has a racism and stereotypes warning? Here’s what you need to know.

Why Tomb Raider Has a Racism & Stereotypes Warning

If you’ve never played the original Tomb Raider trilogy or if it’s been a long time since you touched them, you might be wondering what the fuss is about.

Fire up the game for the first time, and you’re given a warning stating that the games contain “…offensive depictions of people and cultures rooted in racial and ethnic prejudices.”

As someone who played them the first time around, I remember gunning down endangered species in a very suspect manner, but racism? What’s going on? Tomb Raider Remastered co-developers Crystal Dynamics and Aspyr Media haven’t specified which depictions they’re talking about, but one in particular stands out.

In the third game, Lara visits the South Seas and encounters a tribe of locals. How do these events unfold? Not particularly well – she, or rather you, run around a native village gunning down people. And, despite the game taking place in the ’90s, they’re actively practicing cannibals, dressed in bones as their everyday wear.

You’re treated to lines like “Is well for you me fasting this day, you make plenty good flesh pot.” It’s not exactly a great look. And this blog explains the natives are defending a religious artifact that Lara has come to steal. Lara storms in, shoots them to death, and steals it.

Aspyr and Crystal Dynamics chose to leave this in “…in the hopes that we may acknowledge its harmful impact and learn from it.” Thankfully, the gamerverse has taken this in its stride and has been thoroughly reasonable about it… Oh, who am I kidding?

Even though nothing has been removed from the game, and the warning only seems to appear once, there are people shaking their fists that Crystal Dynamics has dared sully the remaster in this way. And you can bet they’d have been even more enraged if it had been removed.

So, while the game isn’t wall-to-wall racism, the reason why Tomb Raider 1-3 Remastered has a racism and stereotypes warning is that it has at least one problematic sequence that wouldn’t fly in an AAA game today.