There’s a small truth at the core of the myth, a real quote once spoken, but the rest is a collective act of poor attribution and mythmaking. Once I had my list of games, I then dug up character creation videos on. Even when parts don’t add up, people like to believe these quirks, especially when they’re about something provocative or controversial. Recently, I got back into playing Star Wars: The Old Republic when a friend of. Devoid of context, however, details and quotes can be repeated to fit a mythology that suits the teller. In context, both Gard’s comments and the GameSpot article are obvious jokes.
It’s hard to believe that if Gard had joked about something less sensationalised, the story would have endured for so long. To this day, she still holds the Guinness World Record for “most recognisable female character in a video game”. She’s a divisive and heavily discussed character, but her silhouette is undeniably iconic.
Despite being written in 2000, the piece reflects some of the positions about Lara’s design that are still talked about decades after her creation - even down to predicting the absurd controversy around the ‘too small’ 2013 reboot. The GameSpot article doesn’t only contribute to the myth, it inadvertently explains why it’s still so prevalent today. To top off the obvious joke, the piece closes with a time-limited offer to trade in your copies of Tomb Raider, for one “where Lara’s chest is said to be noticeably flatter, but neither ‘too large or too small.’" He also disavows any intentional part of the design because he is himself a father of daughters, in a tidy two-for-one in bad conservative arguments of ‘think of the children’ and ‘I respect women, because I myself parent some’. ‘West’ is a mouthpiece who vocally hopes that Lara’s appearance wouldn’t “detrimentally affect” consumer’s buying choices (when we know Tomb Raider was marketed around, and had substantial buy-in from consumers because of, Lara’s sexualised appearance). The piece is satirical, poking fun at both overly-invested fans and the conservative backlash against Lara’s appearance. Drew Karpyshyn, the lead writer of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Mass Effect. Unlike Gard’s joke being misconstrued, these quotes are entirely fictitious. In not particularly trying to create a great female character. The first Tomb Raider game was developed by a very small team, and West definitely wasn’t part of it. While it isn’t unheard of for creators to be written out of the credits of games where they leave mid-production, the creation of the original Tomb Raider has a well-documented history. Of the Tomb Raider games released before 2000, he appears in none of the credits. It should be made clear that Nigel West does not exist – at least, not this Nigel West.