Talk:Samantha Nishimura/@comment-2038153-20180318205130/@comment-1500935-20180428134727

I half-agree about your opinion regarding Sam's role in the series. As much as I understand why Sam's character and her chemistry with Lara resonate with the series' audience as a whole, I actually think Crystal Dynamics made the right choice to have her break up relations with Lara. I also think this break-up should have been made clearer in Rise other than in just one of Lara's therapy sessions.

My point is mostly motivated by the direction the developers are taking Lara's character throughout this trilogy, which is putting Lara through hardship and building her into the character she was in the original games. Note that for now I won't talk about the tie-in comics and novel.

TR 2013 had her going on some dangerous adventure with her closest friends, and it ended up in tragedy. Both her father's most reliable friends died (the ones she looked up to after his death), as well as Alex. What makes it worst is that this is entirely Lara's fault, at least in her head. She ended up broken herself, but didn't give up on her lust for discovery and adventure.

In Rise of the Tomb Raider, although not clearly explained, Lara has become estranged with her remaining friends. She first goes to Syria alone, but when finally facing Trinity in the flesh, asks for Jonah's help, her only friend who had nothing to lose and was mentally unmovable. However when reaching Syberia and facing yet again danger, Lara decides that she shouldn't involve him any further and leave him behind. Unfortunately for her, Jonah follows her against her will, and would have lost his life without the Divine Source. She is also responsible for leading Trinity to the Remnants and subsequently their heavy loss by the mercenaries, although she goes out of her way to protect them and fight with them.

So far the first two games have been respectively about experiencing loss and living with it. Shadow seems to introduce this time the notion of sacrifice. In a way, I think Lara will have to sacrifice all of her past life with her friends in order to become the "Tomb Raider". This doesn't make her less human, just more cynical. She will also know that the more people she gathers around her, the more chances she will either loose or be forced to sacrifice them. In short, she will have to make sacrifices in order to keep up with her new lifestyle.

This brings me to Sam. Was she a strong character? Probably, but less than Lara when facing Yamatai's horror. She's actually what Lara could have been if Lara had not experience the loss of her parents in her youth. I actually prefer to think she was hospitalized as a result of PTSD rather than Himiko's improbable lingering influence. What didn't help is that Trinity covered-up what happened on the island. Imagine experiencing something truly supernatural that scares you mentally, but the world laughs at you and calls you a liar or worse a madman? Actually, it's even possible Trinity even had influence into locking Sam into a hospital, considering her family's wealth and possible influence compared to Lara's before Rise.

Anyway, I believe Sam is the representation of a more human Lara and a moral compass to her. Because of that, breaking up with Sam was determinant in Lara's storyline. When you think of it, the original Lara Croft character was a rather cynical person who only believed in herself, owned up to her mistakes and kept her cool while trying to fix them. She didn't have much friends either, more like past relations, even in the Legend trilogy.

tl;dr The way Lara's character was developed over the last two games, I believe introducing Sam as Lara's moral compass only to separate them in the most traumatizing event was determinant for Lara's growth. My only grief is that somehow the developers left the writers of the comics and the novel to explain it, and they did a poor job. They blamed Himiko instead and this actually did more disservice to Lara rather than Sam. They even have each their own version of it, which makes me question the reliability of these two media as canon. Maybe I'm wrong about it and am simply projecting my vision of Lara as a character. This is just my opinion, as a fan of the series as a whole. :)