Trigger Happy
a different lock. A Tomb Raider door, therefore, operates as a symbol for “exit” or “threshold,” a means of policing movement between predefined spaces, and a key operates symbolically a little like a minor powerup, a second-order sign denoting “ability to use door.”
There are also clearly artificial symbolic conventions in the gameplay of the Tomb Raider world: for instance, if a stone block is a slightly different shade of brown or gray from its neighbors, that tonal contrast is operating as a symbol for “pushable”—the player knows that Lara is able to push the block out of the way in order to climb up onto it, or to uncover a hidden passage. The “medikits” that Lara finds scattered around, meanwhile, are iconic in that they look like little leather bags with a red cross painted on them—but their function is purely symbolic. We are not meant to imagine that Lara really sews up her bullet wounds with the contents; they are conventional power-ups, restoring Lara’s health in the time-honored, blatantly artificial manner. For all its heightened graphic naturalism, then, the mechanics of the game still operate, just as in Pac-Man, as a symbolic system. The “realistic” skin hides a semiotic cyborg.
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