For over two decades Crystal D, urged by the original rights holders (Eidos/Square Enix), have been on a methodical, calculated slanderous campaign aimed at misrepresenting Core/Classic Lara. Not just misrepresenting but outright erasing her and the positive and empowering aspects of her story.
For over two decades Crystal D have been lying through their teeth about the nature of the Core games and Core Lara's cultural influence reducing her to her looks and deliberately invalidating her powerful impact on media and on women.
For over two decades it was an unprecedented case of one of the most egregious, consistent propaganda campaigns aimed at tarnishing the legacy of the earlier timeline. Something that never happened to other popular gaming franchises in history. In other cases, despite whatever "modern" narrative developers may have pushed, there was always at least an acknowledgment of the accomplishments of the earlier installments and how they made the IP stand out.
But not in this case. And there were clear and obvious reasons for that. Classic Lara was too subversive in her defiance of the pseudo-girlpower 90-s tropes most of which followed the "Special Girl, Special Destiny" cliche. Core Lara challenged that narrative. Her motto was "I make my own luck" and "I only play for sport". She went up against the destiny and path her privileged parents had set up for her and carved her own even if it meant losing their and the high society's approval.
Women were not allowed to have that. Eidos allowed that conditionally as long as they could cover up the progressiveness of Classic Lara's in universe story with the sexualized renders and objectifying marketing they were producing in spite of the Core team's vehement opposition to it.
Eidos were not just misrepresenting Lara even back when Core was in charge - they were flanderizing her. Reducing her to select amplified traits - including physical traits - to try to erase her genuinely feminist cultural impact.
What Crystal is doing now, even with the other publisher in charge of the IP, is the SAME exact flanderizing. They are STILL on the same agenda as before: reducing Lara to her looks, teal top, twin pistols (which already made an out of the blue come back in the Reboot related movie), booty shorts and amplified "girlboss" aesthetics. They hope it'll be enough to divert attention from the aforementioned two decades of non-ending slander and the obliteration of the actual depth of Classic Lara's bio and backstory. They erased and twisted her bio again just recently in their first attempts at "unifying" the timelines.
"Unified" Lara is not Classic Lara making a come back. It is the final step on the way of erasing her character's main tenets, substituting them with flanderized "girlpower" symbols associated with Classic Lara and "purifying" her through blatant references to and the carefully selected traits of LAU and Reboot/"Survivor" Lara.
The only difference between then and now is that Crystal frames this flanderization as a "celebration" of her Classic self rather than the condemnation like before.
The reason they're able to do that is because media tide has changed and now the most commercially successful trend is the "Not Like Other Girls: Reprise". This is what sells now and they are adapting the ravaged corpse of the Tomb Raider IP and Lara's character to said trend, with Ge*ff K*ighley as their one man propaganda squad (same one who participating in the anti-Core campaign right after the "Survivor" timeline and its torture fetish direction were announced and promoted as a "feminist improvement").
I'll definitely be passing on that and sticking to the Classic Remasters, no matter how flawed.
