Lara Croft could help young men learn about the challenges women face, says Rhianna Pratchett

Pratchett said the game has shown men how women have to move through the world
Shades of Lara: in the new game
Mark Blunden @_MarkBlunden15 September 2016

Lara Croft could help young men learn about the challenges women face, according to the writer who rebooted the Tomb Raider heroine.

Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of the late fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett, scripted the most recent two games in the multi-million selling franchise that began 20 years ago and spawned two movies starring Angelina Jolie.

The writer will appear at FutureFest at Wapping’s Tobacco Dock this weekend to discuss the future of storytelling. Ms Pratchett, 39, was also bequeathed the intellectual rights to Sir Terry’s 41 Discworld books, which sold more than 85 million copies. She revealed how she has paid tribute to her father in the latest Lara Croft instalment.

Rise Of The Tomb Raider, which will be launched for the PlayStation 4 next month, features a script longer than four feature films, with Croft voiced by British actress Camilla Luddington.

Ms Pratchett, from Islington, told the Standard: “Male players being put into the shoes of a female character has had some interesting results.

“There’s a scene in the Tomb Raider reboot where Lara’s confronted by a male enemy, who I’d say is a bit handsy with her, he’s quite threatening. She has to fight her way through it and it ends up leading to her first human kill — it’s a dramatic, visceral moment for her.

“The reaction we had from male players was, ‘This is a situation that, as a man, I’m probably not likely to be in in real life, to worry about what the intentions of this person are — now I feel I kind of understand a little bit more about how women have to move through the world, because of playing with Lara’.

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She added: “Our gamer base is very balanced between male and female. I hear a lot about how people have been drawn to Lara’s resourcefulness, her strength, her grit, her determination, to basically put one foot in front of the other and get things done.”

Family time: Rhianna Pratchett with her late father Terry Pratchett and other members ofthe Narritiva team

Ms Pratchett started playing computer games with her father on his ZX Spectrum ZX81, when she was six. He died last year, at the age of 66, after developing early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.

His daughter wrote a tribute to him into the gameplay of Rise Of The Tomb Raider. Ms Pratchett said: “There are these audio letters Lara’s father made for her when she was a kid and sent home from his travels.

"One of them talks about the night she was born and it’s a riffing on my dad’s recollection from the night I was born, because he said that was the one memory he didn’t want Alzheimer’s to take away from him, so I decided to immortalise that.”

Tickets and information: futurefest.org

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