Ok, so after we've all had our fun dunking on this letter for 24h straight, I do think there's some benefit in giving constructive criticism on why it rubbed so many people the wrong way. I know us fans can be a dramatic bunch, but the optics of this lore are... not great.
First of, making Lara one in the line of many famous explorers just makes her less special. She's no longer a rebel but a conformist nepo-baby 😫 It makes adventure less her choice and more genetic determinism, which ho boy opens some uncomfortable topics.
Lara is not just anybody - she's a British aristocrat, and damn does that come with some implications. Constantly mentioning her special aristocratic bloodline really leans into the worst kind of classism and ideas on "good breading" the aristocrats always thought made them above everybody else (and the law). I'm not saying she now needs to be the people's champion or something (GOD PLEASE NO), but all this bloodline stuff is the British equivalent of "great grandpa had a plantation". Let's make her an aristocrat without constantly reminding people why we hate those twats in the first place.
And then we come to the Society of Raiders, which was always a goofy idea, but now is starting to look waaay worse. Oh so they were a secret club for rich archeologist back in the 1880s? Cool cool, I'm sure there's nothing questionable in their past whatsoever 🙄😂 Also we all love it when rich people form secret clubs that operate outside the law, it's worked out great for us as a society so far 🤣
I'm not generally opposed to the SoR as a way to expand the universe, but we really shouldn't go there. Just keep them as more of a National Geographic Society for paranormal archeology nerds, not a weird secret cult for nepo babys 😬
And lastly, bringing up her family again makes us think that the LoA storyline will no be very good. Instead of being about the dangers of Atlantian technology or Natla's hunger for power, it looks like we're again failing back on Croft Family Tree hijinks 😫 (I call it the "grandpa Palpatine" plot).
Anyway, they might still do something interesting with this whole thing, but idk dropping this letter when the fandom is fed up with her family and the "secret society" trope has firmly soured is just a baffling move.
I can’t believe that people are crying that the new tomb raider game got rid of the torture porn death scenes.
They added nothing to the game and were only there for gooners. Not to mention it was following the 2010s trend of female characters getting tortured and brutalized for development. It’s not a mystery that they were removed.
People say that her classic death scenes were brutal too, but they didn't show her struggling or whimpering. She died pretty much instantly, even if it was gory. The reboot ones show her in prolonged pain in a way that's more exploitative than scary. They knew what they were doing.
Show the T Rex chomping her in half in one bite if you want. Don't show me her sliding down a spike for 20 seconds while moaning in a way that makes my neighbours think I'm watching a porno.
She got the idea for the study while walking with her advisor at Stanford to discuss her thesis topic, and the paper she eventually published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2014 is sharp enough that it should have ended the seated meeting on the day it came out.
She ran 4 experiments on 176 people. Same person tested twice. Once sitting, once walking. The creativity tasks were the standard ones psychologists have used for decades to measure how good a brain is at generating novel useful ideas.
81% of participants in the first experiment produced more creative ideas while walking than while sitting. In the second experiment, 88%. In the third, 100%. Every single person walked into a more creative version of themselves. On average, people generated 60% more novel useful ideas the moment their legs started moving.
The skeptical question is the obvious one. Maybe it was the fresh air. Maybe it was the scenery passing by. Maybe it was the change of environment doing the work, not the walking itself.
Oppezzo killed every one of those explanations with one experimental decision. She put people on a treadmill facing a blank wall. No scenery. No fresh air. No environmental change. Just legs moving in place while staring at white drywall. The 60% boost held.
Then she ran the experiment that closed the case completely. She took participants outside in two conditions. Half of them walked through a Stanford courtyard. The other half were pushed through the exact same courtyard in a wheelchair. Same outdoor stimulation. Same scenery passing at the same speed. The only difference was whether the legs were moving.
The walkers produced dramatically more novel high-quality ideas than the wheelchair group. The outdoors did almost nothing on its own. The walking did everything.
She also tested the opposite kind of thinking. Convergent thinking. The kind where there is one right answer and you have to narrow down to it. Word puzzles where 3 words share a hidden fourth word that connects them. The seated participants did slightly better on these. Walkers got slightly worse.
Walking is not a general intelligence enhancer. It does one specific thing. It opens up the divergent search inside your brain. The part that generates options. The part that produces unexpected connections. The part that takes a problem and finds five ways into it instead of one.
When you need to converge on the single right answer, sit down. When you need to find the answer in the first place, get up.
The mechanism is now well understood. Walking selectively activates what neuroscientists call the default mode network, the system inside your brain that runs when you are not consciously focused on anything. The DMN is where mind-wandering happens. Where memories cross-reference each other. Where ideas that have been sitting in separate folders inside your head finally bump into each other.
When you sit at a desk and force yourself to concentrate, you suppress the DMN. When you walk at a natural pace, the executive part of your brain gets just busy enough handling the walking that the DMN comes online and starts doing the work that focus was blocking.
The most useful finding in the entire paper is the one almost nobody quotes. The boost did not turn off the moment people stopped walking. Participants who walked first and then sat back down stayed elevated. Their next round of seated creativity work was still significantly better than people who had been sitting the whole time. The rest lingered for at least several minutes after the legs stopped moving.
You do not need to do creative work while walking. You need to walk before the creative work. The brain holds the state.
I don't hate what I've seen about Tomb Raider: Legacy of Atlantis, but I don't love it either.
Far from me to ruin some hypes out there, but that mention of Kurtis Trent in the magazine's cover is nothing but an Easter egg. Fortunately, because lore wise it makes zero sense. Kurtis was always a man of low profile, being anonymous is key to his survival. Appearing in a cover magazine would mean his impending death.
The mention of other characters belonging to different timelines strongly reinforces the idea of this being just a detail to catch classic audiences thirsting again for some crumbs.
I don't want crumbs. I want the whole bread. And we're not getting it anytime soon (it doesn't matter when you read this. 2006? 2016? 2026? You name it.)
But overall I have a heavy heart seeing people pre-ordering those brutally expensive collector/special-ish editions before even having seen the thing. As cool as it looks, whatever we saw was just a cinematic trailer. We haven't seen actual gameplay, and people is already buying and preordering like there's no tomorrow.
They're literally preordering a wrapping gift paper and the bow that comes with it (the statue) without having seen what the gift actually contains. Capitalism at its finest.
And don't get me wrong, I respect everyone's personal choices. You do with your money what you want to do. It's just I don't know at which point people started accepting that a merge of three absolutely incompatible timelines would be a great idea.
The price you pay is the erasing of lots of lore belonging to each era, sacrificed in the altar of unification. They already did that to Lara. Now even if not being present, to Kurtis, who would not allow his name being public at any point.
And don't get me started with the erased dubbings and the AI generator disclaimer. I'm too tired now.
As for me, I will stalk and watch from afar the unfolding of events. Shame I lost the passion and hype for this saga 20 years ago. The remasters were a surprise, though.
I respect this response, and I completely understand your viewpoint.
For me, I’ve accepted that new Tomb Raider games are never going to feel or be exactly like the Tomb Raider I grew up with, and I’m choosing to enjoy what we do get. Gaming has changed and evolved, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse.
I’m not usually one to pre-order things, but I do like what I’ve seen from Legacy of Atlantis so far. Honestly, I really wanted to add that statue to my collection because the art looks cool. TR items are really the only things I collect, so I’m happy to add something new to it.
While the newer games may be an amalgamation of different Tomb Raider generations, I’m still happy that we’re getting Tomb Raider games and content after 30 years. Not many franchises can say they’ve been rebooted, remade, and reimagined multiple times and still have people this passionate about them.
As for the AI side of things, I get why people are concerned. I’m an Art Director and Graphic Designer, so I’m not blind to the issues around AI. But I also see AI as a tool, not an automatic dealbreaker. If something is 100% AI-generated and replacing actual creative work, then yes, I have a problem with that. But if it’s being used to speed up concepting, brainstorming, or tedious production tasks, I don’t personally see that as wrong.
To me, it’s kind of like tracing when you’re learning how to draw. It shouldn’t be the final result, but it can be a tool that helps you understand, improve, or move faster. AI is not going anywhere, and I don’t want to let that alone ruin something I might otherwise enjoy.
I’m going to keep enjoying the TR things that are being shared and try to take this new era for what it is. If something comes out about the game that I really dislike, I would consider canceling my pre-order. But for the time being, I’m going to take it as it comes.
For me, I've accepted the classic games are unlikely to come back anytime soon (if ever). Gaming has changed too much, and it's impossible to expect the money needed to for an AAA game to be spent on something that doesn't have broad appeal. It just is what it is. Most franchises are now just products to be optimized for what the IP holders think will bring maximum profit.
That said, LoA is the first time Lara has looked like something recognizable in a while after the whole Survivor mess. And while I might not be getting a chocolate cake, I can still enjoy a blubbery muffin. Classic lore is still there for those who want it, and after reading Sacred Artifacts I'm interested in seeing what they do with this new unified Lara. There is a book coming out explaining the new timeline so we'll see what that looks like. I mean, this is basically a regular soft reboot playing pick and choose with the previous lore, it's just called "unified" to pander to all fans. Which I can sort of appreciate, since so far every new era ment shitting on the previous ones. I'm guessing a new owner finally knocked some sense into CD.
As for Kurtis, while the magazine is probably just an Easter egg, it does look like a new version of him might appear in Catalyst. Again, OG Kurtis still exists, and people don't have to engage with this new one if they don't want. I have never bought a single Survivor game because I hated the timeline. If franchises are just products now, then I will vote with my wallet.
I will most likely buy LoA as long as it's not a completely unplayable flop, though whether on launch or sale depends on how the game comes out. They've lost too much of my good will for me to cash out for a preorder (except the remasters, of course 😂).
And while I don't like AI, I also know enough people in creative industries to know you can't avoid it in big studios. The fact they don't use it in the end product is already a step above (assuming they're being honest). The only thing that curbs the use of AI is a rise in pricing. But I will not excuse the lack of dubbing, that was a shit decision.
TL;DR: despite the show's flaws and it not being my preferred version of the story/setting, NDMC is saved by the great work it does writing the characters* and some absolutely gorgeous animation.
Now let's dive in, shall we...
MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
* Now the first disclaimer I will make is that I've been with the franchise since the start, and I fully believe that the writing of these characters is not consistent throughout the franchise: so how "true" the show's characters are to their canon selves depends on which parts you consider the main "canon". For me, everything before DMC4 is my main canon (with maybe the exception of DMC2!Dante), and I've never been massively into what came after. So far NDMC draws primarily from the earlier games, which is why I consider the characters (mostly) faithful to their game counterparts. If you started with or prefer the latter installments, this will probably not be the same for you.
(I know many of you are screaming "Lady!!!" at me now, and lemme tell ya if you gave DMC3!Lady an army, NDMC!Lady is pretty much what you'd get 😂)
Second disclaimer is that I'm writing this in 2026 and am not clairvoyant, so if this show goes off the cliff after S2 don't come at me lol.
Ok, with that out of the way, let's start with the things I didn't like:
Short Season
DMC suffers from the Netflix-imposed curse of the short season, so there's not enough space for us to just vibe with the characters. Every episode is juggling the plot and the character arcs and the world building and the comedy filler; and while it's not the producers fault Netflix is killing filler episodes as an art form, the situation would be much better if they showed some restrain and stopped putting every brain fart they have into the show. Which brings me to:
There is Too Much Stuff
Too much dialogue. Too much side characters. Too many backstories. Mind you, not all of them are bad per se, but the writers just don't know when to wrap it up and move on. The dialogue could have been tighter instead of explaining everybody's feelings in literal detail (despite this some folks still couldn't figure out the most basic of themes, so we might as well write for people who have two brain cells to rub together). Mattie is fun but should have been left behind with her (non-lethally) wounded grandpa. Football guy should have either been scrapped altogether or replaced by someone who could be better incorporated into the main plot (LUCIA WAS RIGHT THERE!!!). Arius's backstory didn't need the (yet another) emo childhood; the scorned inventor flashback gave us everything we need. You're already short on time with only 8 episodes, so use them wisely.
These are my main gripes with the show that I think were objectively fumbled, rather than a question of my personal preference. Now moving on to the stuff I actually enjoyed!
Dante
I'm loving Dante here, he's a nice mix of funny, cool, and vulnerable. This is the "softest" Dante we've gotten so far, but given how (rightfully) fed up people are with the toxic male hero trope, I think it's understandable that they decided to play it safe. I've seen people complain that he's a side character in his own show, but I disagree, it's just that his arc is longer than the other characters' and is meant to span several seasons. Lady and Virgil are more mature than Dante (who is yet to realize his true potential), but the difference is that Dante is the only one growing into someone better, while the other two have lost hope in ever becoming something more. It's a nice juxtaposition. Game-wise I would say he resembles DMC3!Dante the most in terms of behaviour (and age), but he wears his heart on his sleeve a lot more.
Lady
Lady is the character most people complained about, and I get why. Like is said, I don't think she's exactly OOC given the change in circumstances, but S1 did leave her looking a little one note. Luckily, the swearing has been reduced this season - not that I mind swearing, but they we're not doing a good job making her sound natural while doing it😆 But finally we get more vulnerability to her here and I like where her character is going! I wish they put more of that into S1 to soften the shock, but better late than never 😉I will say I also liked how her relationship with Bane wrapped up, I thought it was a good example of showing mixed emotions without over-explaining it for the crowd scrolling on their phones.
Virgil
I'm not ashamed to say this is the most I've liked Vergil since DMC3. Sorry not sorry, but all that goofy nonsense with V really did not land for me lmao. However, I will say that I started the franchise with DMC1 where Vergil was basically a non-character put there for kickass boss fights and some fleeting pathos. He was definitely promoted to a great character in DMC3, but until DMC4:SE his story basically boiled down to "bro fought the law, and the law won" (btw, anybody remember the fan speculations about Nero being Dante's son when DMC4 came out, and how uninterested Capcom was in clarifying?? 😆) For me, his story here makes more sense and packs more of an emotional punch that what they did in DMC4:SE/5, probably because the latter ware kind of an attempt to retcon some parts of the character after he became a fan favourite. YMMV 🤷♀️
Dante x Lady
I'm gonna take my shipping glasses off for a moment and say that I think this was handled perfectly fine. IMO after so many years it's easy to forget what's widely accepted fanon and what's actually in the games. I know we all love a slow burn (where all the conflict conveniently gets resolved before the first kiss), but let's be real, DMC3!Dante goes from being shot in the head to trying to kiss Lady in a course of an evening, so this is not exactly OOC for him 😄 Again, people were mad he forgave Lady for her betrayal, even though he's literally known her for only a few days by that point?? I really feel like we're expecting the characters to be hurt and messed up but also somehow be 100% aware of that and act accordingly 🙄 Dante and Lady are both needy and distant (just in different ways), and it makes sense their relationship is going to be messy. Now will the relationship have a satisfying conclusion, well that remains to be seen...
Plot
Now there is a lot of things here that I did not need in DMC. I'm not big on the "War on Terror" metaphors (though seeing it lampooned is very validating), I prefer the gothic esthetics of the games to the more SF feel of the show, and I still prefer the (pre-DMC4 game) canon. But just because I prefer something doesn't mean I can't enjoy a different take on it. The producers were always clear that this was going be a non-canon AU, and they picked up the IP back when Capcom had very little faith in it due to the flop that was the reboot. And I will say making the show an AU was not a bad call, because it makes the show exciting. It's a lot harder to make a show suspenseful when we already know the main story beats from the games. Hell, even the games have slowly started phasing out the original characters in favour of Nero's gang (I'm very meh on that tbh). Watching the show I did catch myself wondering how and why, because I knew it did not need to align with what we've already seen in the games. It would have been nice to get more canon lore on Sparda and Eva, but the last canon novel we got was about the emo twink so I doubt that was ever going to happen 😛
Conclusion
It's hard to talk about this show online as I feel so much of the discourse is about what people think the show should be rather than what it really is (not to mention how much of that criticism is in bad faith or just misinterpretations of the story). Look, I think it's fully possible to be a True Fan™️of the games and not like the show at all, but you don't need to pretend the show is abysmally bad or that the character are completely OOC when that's obviously not true. The show is different enough that it will turn some fans off, it's faithful enough that it will win some fans over, and it's fun enough that it will turn some non-fans into fans. It's very much a situation of "two cakes", and you're free to take it or leave it as you want.
So I have a lot of remarks about Netflix's DMC S2 (some good, some mixed), but until I find time to write something more coherent I will say that Vergil's last words to Dante have me like
Life had been busy so I did a little redraw of the London and Nevada challenge mode outfits. The London one now has long jeans to be more like what the Damned wear, and the Nevada one is now a proper flight suit.
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