7 Video Games That Broke Their Own Rules

6. Lara Absolutely HATES Killing (Tomb Raider)

Tomb Raider 2013 Lara's first kill
Square Enix

Early on in Crystal Dynamics' 2013 reboot of the Tomb Raider series, this young and inexperienced Lara Croft is captured, bound, and beaten by a Russian man. Shortly after, the same man tries to sexually assault her, forcing her to kill him in retaliation.

Despite the fact that this guy clearly deserved it, the act of taking someone's life is utterly traumatic for Lara, who falls to her knees weeping, covered in his blood.

The game is telling us that this version of Lara isn't some happy-go-lucky, Nathan Drake-esque mass-murderer. She isn't okay with killing and she only did it out of necessity, and at the end of the day, she's just an archaeology student who's never had a proper fight.

Almost immediately after this scene though, this rule is broken: Lara suddenly becomes an unstoppable killing machine, shooting guys with arrows, stabbing them with pointy weapons, and even beating them with her bare fists. She doesn't show a lick of remorse, and she acts like she's been doing this for years.

Now sure, it wouldn't be a very fun game without combat, and Lara clearly has to fight in order to survive. But the whole rule of her being emotionally affected by killing is completely dropped after that initial scene. It's jarring, to say the least.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!