《古墓丽影9》的编剧在日前接受采访时表示，新作中的劳拉将不再是她扮演了多年的“冰雪女王”的形象，她会变得更为可靠。
为了完成这一任务，编剧瑞安娜·普拉切特(Rhianna Pratchett)和开发商晶体动力尽最大的努力把劳拉身上厚厚的“保护层”撕去。
“我是和劳拉一同成长起来的，但这么多年来，我一直对她又爱又恨。”这位女编剧说。“我甚至是在被逼之下把劳拉塑造成了现在这个样子，大胸什么的，这些让我有些暴躁。”
“所以我想，这是类似‘要么行动要么闭嘴’的选择，在写过《天堂之剑》的Nariko和《镜之边缘》的Faith之后，我开始真正的知道动作游戏的女主角应该是什么样的。”
普拉切特表示，现在她塑造劳拉的重要方式之一就是仔细观察游戏中的实际演示，然后从中获取灵感。
“在我塑造《镜之边缘》的女主角时，我经常自问一些问题：‘这是一个跑酷游戏，为什么有人会在这样的环境中生活？他们为什么要跑？他们希望停下来吗？停下来以后他们要做什么？他们会为了什么停下来？’”她说。
“所以，游戏的实际内容会对角色出现反馈，它们让这个角色与游戏世界更接近，而不是凭空写出来一个与游戏内容无关的角色。这就是我们想在劳拉身上实现的东西。”
“我希望人性和温暖能再次回到《古墓丽影》的女主角劳拉身上。”
ZZer：以下为此新闻稿英文原稿全文。
Rhianna Pratchett: Rewriting Lara Croft
By Rachel Weber
FRI 05 OCT 2012 2:00PM GMT / 10:00AM EDT / 7:00AM PDT
Tomb Raider's narrative designer is taking Lara back to the genesis of action game heroines
Like all the best biographers, narrative designer Rhianna Pratchett is the first to admit that she has had a rocky relationship with her subject.
"I'd grown up with Lara, but I'd also had a bit of a love/hate relationship with her over the years," she says of Lara Croft, the instantly recognisable star of the Tomb Raider reboot that Pratchett has been working on for two and a half years.
"I'd even written things in the press being slightly grumpy about the way Lara had become. Big boobs and ecetera ecetera. So this was a chance to kind of put up or shut up I guess, and having experience with writing Nariko and Faith as well it was really like going back to the genesis of action game heroines."
That's Faith from Mirror's Edge and Nariko from Heavenly Sword, just in case you'd forgotten to check your pack of gaming heroine Top Trumps. Pratchett, who started out as a journalist for the magazine PC Zone, is also the words behind the Overlord series and Viking: Battle For Asgard.
Pratchett says key to her work on Tomb Raider was making Lara more relatable, and trying to find a way back from the "aristocratic ice queen" that the series and films and transformed her into. The focus of the team, she adds, was to "get away from Teflon coated Lara."
Key to Pratchett's method is looking at the actual mechanics of the game play, and building character from there.
"With someone like Faith [from Mirrors Edge] it's asking questions like 'in the gameplay mechanic there's lots of running away, why would someone live a life where there's a lot of that, and what are they running away from? Do they want to stop running, what would they do if did stop running, what would it take to stop them?'"
"So actually looking at how those gameplay mechanics feedback into character, because I think that helps to embed the character in the world more, rather than making them seem slightly outside the game playing world. And that was something we definitely wanted to do with Lara."
And this Lara does seem more vulnerable, more human than any before, with the resourcefulness she shows in the game play, solving puzzles, hunting, reflected in her back story. Of course as with any good game release, the reboot has not been without its controversies.
"I think due to some of the coverage that's come out about Tomb Raider my gender has been touched upon probably more heavily than I hoped it would," she says, politely ignoring the fact it was being touched on again.
Faith from Mirror's Edge
"Because I've been doing this a long time, I've worked on female characters, everyone kind of knows what I do and what I've done in the past and I really wanted to talk more about bringing the humanity and warmth back to Lara as a character. I try not to especially focus on the fact that she's female or the fact that I'm female. But people tend to focus on your gender in this industry more than you do."
But, she says tolerantly, it gives her a platform to talk about more interesting things. Like games narrative, character creation, and to call for more diversity and for narrative designers to be involved earlier on in the development process.
It's something Pratchett is passionate about, and spoke about last month at the TEDx Transmedia event in Rome. While the visibility of writers in the industry has improved, there's still a way to go when it comes to making the process as productive as it can be for the writers and the developers they're working with.
"There's a bit of an unfortunate attitude in certain sections of the industry that writers are the people that do the word bits"
"And that's really great to get this dialogue out there and start talking about it. And that's something I definitely strive to do, because I don't think you change anything by staying quiet. Although that's probably blacklisted me from a few companies," she laughs.
And, she points out, while studios are finally seeing the value in hiring professional writers, they're not always using them in the right way. She mentions being called in as a "narrative paramedic" to try and build a story around a game at the end of development.
"There's a big tick in the professional writer column, but now it's trying to fit somewhat square pegs into somewhat round holes, and it's that where needs the improvements," she explains.
"There's a bit of an unfortunate attitude in certain sections of the industry that writers are the people that do the word bits, and therefore word bits are easy and quick and they can just be slotted in wherever and that has led to writers being brought in late because they think they can just sort of puts some words in and it'll be fine. And that's kind of led to very difficult, very trying, very narrative paramedic-ing situations for writers."
Nariko, Heavenly Sword's heroine
Both sides are still evolving, writers are learning how to deal with the limitations of the medium, and the developers are learning that the value lies in more than just hiring them at the last minute to write a few jokes for NPC #182. There's hope.
"They are learning," she promises. "We are moving in the right direction."
Pratchett is currently working on the screenplay for an adaptation of Janet Paisley's historical novel, Warrior Daughter, on a second, unannounced big franchise for Square Enix and replaying the Bioshock games.
