10 Video Game Heroes That Got Everyone Killed

The Tomb Raider reboot trilogy certainly attempted to reckon with Lara Croft's ultra-violent, mass-murdering ways, while Shadow of the Tomb Raider trained its focus on Lara's problematic stature as a globe-trotting "treasure hunter" who, let's be honest, steals shiny s**t from ancient civilisations.

This is broached early in the game when Lara locates the Dagger of Chak Chel, and despite nearby murals warning of apocalyptic events, she takes the dagger anyway, under the flimsy justification of stopping paramilitary outfit Trinity from grabbing it first.

However, this act of pilfering ends up triggering an event called the Cleansing, whereby a gigantic tsunami floods the Mexican island of Cozumel, causing an innumerable amount of damage and lost life, including a young boy who perishes before Lara's very eyes.

The game is very much concerned with Lara's journey to atone for her actions, which predictably descends into a typical white saviour narrative in which she kills many, many more people in the quest for "redemption."

As Wired's review so brilliantly put it, "Hundreds of people die in this game to teach Lara Croft a lesson in humility."

We know that Crystal Dynamics is currently working on a fourth entry into their reboot franchise, and so it'll be interesting to see how they reconcile Lara's troubling past - both her rampant theft and the massive pile of bodies she left in her wake at the end of the last game.