Trigger Happy

surely be careful never to let Lara become too individuated. If she were to look photorealistic, too much like an actual individual woman, what seductiveness she possesses would thereby be destroyed. Smith agrees:

We feel that we can make Lara significantly different to the way she is now, without making her sort of real-life, by only going up to say twelve to fourteen hundred polygons. You don’t need to go any higher than that— because you’ll probably lose some of that feel for her, for how she is now. With PlayStation2 technology we’ll be able to smooth her off, without changing the aesthetics that work. We can give her great facial expressions, and we’ll be spending a lot of time on clothing technology and working out the physics of clothes—a cloak, a shirtsleeve . . .

But she’ll never be thoroughly realistic. For Lara Croft is an abstraction, an animated conglomeration of sexual and attitudinal signs (breasts, hotpants, shades, thigh holsters) whose very blankness encourages the (male or female) player’s psychological projection and is exactly why she has enjoyed such remarkable success as a cultural icon. A good videogame character

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Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy manual