(pt1) I realized Toby Gard wanted Lara to be very hollywood-like. In tr1 Lara was flawless in everything she does. The way she knocks out Larson, overthetop elevator ride, the perfect swan dive when dismounting her bike & always clever with her lines but cuz of tech limitation, it was different back then. This brings me to Legend, who also featured a flawless Lara. Very 'perfect', very 'hollywood'. The only difference was the main focus was Lara herself rather than her adventure and artifacts.
That’s not surprising considering the very first character Toby Gard designed for Tomb Raider wasn’t even a woman, but a male action hero looking like more between Indiana Jones or your regular shooter cowboy. Later he turned this character into a woman, but the concept of a badass action hero remained; and this is a main trope and cliché for any Hollywood-esque plot.
But to be honest it wasn’t just mere show-off on Lara’s character. Toby Gard defined his character as a “babe with brains” defining her in a combination of physical charm and wits, also her lines are so clever and polished and much more meaningful than the void and cliché lines she’s all the time spitting in Legend. Maybe because she didn’t talk that much in the classics, and when she started to talk more, Gard wasn’t anymore there to be found.
To make him justice, tho, I must note that not always Lara acts or looks like a flawless perfect cookie. In the very TR1 she’s outwitted, attacked and disarmed by Natla’s goons and she’s forced to run away and jump to the sea to survive. Later when she makes it to Natla’s goons boat after that perfect swan dive you mention, she’s aware she can’t confront them in that very precise moment and chooses to hide and get some rest in the boat’s cargo zone before even trying to face them. So we have some moments of humanity in this character as well.
Btw I just consulted this article to clarify Gard’s whole role in TR1 - I thought he was just the character designer and animator, but looks like he worked on the FMV too - and I realize whoever wrote this directly LIES when saying
Core gave Gard creative control over the game, although it was clear they wanted to market Lara’s sex appeal, even asking Gard to implement a nude code into the game which he refused to do.[4]
Which is absolutely false since Core Design NEVER wanted to market Lara’s sex appeal and fought directly against Eidos for this, who was the real one wanting to do this; and it was Eidos again which asked in the first place the nude code and it was CORE who refused it. The article cites an interview as source and I’m appalled how people is still lying and spreading misinformation about this. The interview cited as source says exactly:
h0l: Were you amused or appalled at “Nude Raider”? :)
PD: It’s pretty sad. Have you heard the rumour that it was Core that did it? It wouldn’t surprise me in the least. We were actually asked to put something like that in the game by the boss, but flatly refused.
So DESPITE the very interviewed person calls it “a rumour” he doesn’t bother to check up and clarify if this “rumour” and throws the slander at Core, when it was Eidos who did it.
For more information I really advice to read the book L’Histoire de Tomb Raider by Alexandre Serel, who gives pretty detail and unbiased information about the beginnings of Core Design and the people involved in them, particularly Toby Gard and his latter contradictions.