At least her name is on point with Tomb Raider.

Well. She's the Tomb RAIDER, not the Tomb Preserver.

Average br*tish archaeologist tbh

I love when I'm surrounded by treasures in an ancient temple no human has laid eyes on in thousands of years, so I take a look at a scroll then immediately leave.

Put mercenaries on the list. They get hired to guard some excavation. A chill job the recruiter told them.

Lara overhears them talk about going home to their families as she sneaks up and brutally murders them with her ice axe one by one until the ruins are flooded with blood. It's all self defense.

Well I mean she's British and rich, what do you expect?

In case ya'll don't know about Heinrich Schliemann...

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-many-myths-of-the-man-who-discoveredand-nearly-destroyedtroy-180980102/

Now you do.

He fucking dynamited what quite likely is the actual location of ancient Troy....in the early days, the field of archaelogy had a number of basically wealthy idiot assholes who fancied themselves as 'great men', who went around doing nonsense like this, and of course just actually stealing the artefacts and taking them back to museums in their home countries.

Schliemann obliterated the potential Troy site so thoroughly that archaeologists spent over 100 years looking at other potential sites... only to largely (not entirely, but largely) come to the conclusion that Schiemann's Troy site probably is the actual correct site....

... But he fucking blew it up.

Are there any games that accurately depict the activities of any kind of scientist?

The game is literally called "Tomb Raider". What did you think raiding meant?

In the latest game she triggers a massive flood that destroys an entire village, possibly killing hundreds of people, IN THE TUTORIAL STAGE!

Indiana Jones actually claims to be an archeologist, he would be a better target.

Same with Indiana Jones. Maybe he's slightly less terrible about it than Lara Croft, but the fact that he cares only about that golden idol and not about the entire temple complex around it with apparently still active traps, makes him a terrible archaeologist.

They're both very effective adventurers and tomb robbers, though. And at least Lara Croft doesn't pretend to be any better than that.

I know it is a game, but every time an ancient ruin got crushed while playing, I felt a lot of regret...

I kind of wish there was a chill game about discovering an old civilization (a.k.a. 20 years of work in 20 hours of gameplay).

To be fair, even some of the other characters in the games/movies recognize this and call her out for it.

I wonder what it would look like to try and resolve some of these problems in a way that still provides a satisfying platformer experience.

Like, what if instead of these ruins being a bunch of traps with some key magical artifact that she heavily disturbs while passing through, what if the game was a platformer where you had to essentially erect scaffolding and lay down tarps in advance of a larger team? And the goal is to basically use climbing and athleticism to navigate the environment without disturbing an incredibly fragile environment?

Lara Croft is basically a female Indiana Jones. Replace the whip with two pistols and the hat with triangular boobs.

tomb RAIDER