Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 232)

Trigger Happy
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Tomb Raider games (see fig. 13), this is a perspectival
construction in which the player can see the character
under control, and the representational viewpoint itself
is a completely disembodied one.
Disembodied? I mean that the view we are given
corresponds to no actual pair of eyes in the gameworld.
The point of view from which we see Lara Croft is
constantly moving, swooping, creeping up behind her
and giddily soaring above, even diving below the
putative floor level. We are spying on Lara even when
she is alone in the caves. The player can choose to
zoom in to a point just behind her shoulder, nearly
sharing her point of view, in order to guide her more
accurately across a chasm, but she remains oblivious.
Tomb Raider plays a lovely joke in one level, indeed,
which features a figure who imitates in detail all of
Lara’s movements. You assume it’s an enemy, and try
to shoot while dodging, panic-stricken, around the
room, until suddenly it clicks. Lara is standing in front
of a giant mirror. And of course only she is reflected,
because the pair of eyes through which you are
watching her in the digital world is invisible.
The important aspect of Tomb Raider’s
representational style, in fact, is that the modus
operandi has been borrowed not from painting but