A Survivor is Torn: The Importance of Trauma in Narrative

My intention here is not to say that, for a game to be good, it has to examine trauma. There are plenty of light-hearted games that are artistically rich and satisfying, and those games need to exist. We also need games like Far Cry 3 because, dammit, power fantasies are fun and a joy to adventure in. My point is that anything with true aspirations of tackling mature narrative themes must take trauma into account. All of us experience something that affects us on a deep level, something that changed the person we would be forever, perhaps for better, perhaps for worse. It is an uncomfortable truth of the adult life. And when writers and developers can tap into that truth, the work they do becomes all the more provocative. While the future of the Tomb Raider franchise is yet to be seen, I'll always feel the trauma of it, and Crystal Dynamics would be wise to keep that in mind for the future as well.

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