Think of it like they took Lara Croft & turned her into a bland, boring, karen. In the more recent games she has lost her bust, widened at the waist & had some work on the face. Look at Aloy from Horizon or Mary Jane from Spiderman and you'll spot the same issues, changing the model to a less "sexy" version to promote "inclusion". Some like it, most don't.
You can't just look at a dictionary definition of Woke or SJW, both terms are far broader in scope nowadays but if anyone were to update the definitions they'd be cancelled by the twitter mob. To some going Woke or SJW just means make them ugly, lame etc; not respecting the source material, self inserting, & generally adding messaging that doesn't exist in the source. There's a reason Disney became known as Wokeny & stopped making money.
That said, I will be buying these, hopefully Physical so they sit next to my original trilogy PS games.
I wrote a response to your post based on the assumption that "the more recent games" meant TR2013 and later which kind of floored me really. I was on the verge of posting my response when I wondered whether Rise or Shadow had perhaps updated the models in a way that I hadn't noticed and apparently they did. I'm largely leaving my original response in place because I have no idea what you mean by "recent", you could easily be talking about TR2013 for example.
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When I started playing Tomb Raider, I was a teen and the collection of polygons that can be loosely described as Lara's butt registered on my randy scale. Considering that the design of the character in TR2013+ is a vastly more detailed version, I'm pretty sure if I was a teen playing those later versions, I would have preferred the latter, despite the fact that "oh no! Her tits are smaller!". She's still a scantily-clad woman with the kind of figure that movie stars have.
If that's what your idea of a Karen looks like, then either a) the Karens where you live are the sort that the four-letter-abbreviation sites whose first letter stands for 'Mother' would gobble up in seconds flat or b) your standards are brutally high to say the least.
You say that the adoption of a slightly less absurd character model than a double-D cup size with a waist size that screams "eating disorder" running around the jungle in a latex top is the work of "the woke mob", but have you considered that AAA-class computer games these days cost many millions of dollars to make with the expectation of making vastly greater sums in return, and to do that, computer game makers are absolutely going to want to make the games appeal to as many people as possible? If a boardroom of execs is presented with the logic of "we should only make the game appeal to a bunch of neckbeards who complain online that Margot Robbie's tits aren't big enough and her elbows are pointy" or "maybe we should try to make this game appeal to as many people as possible, because more sales equals more profit", which way do you think their wallets and the company's shareholders will be pushing them towards?
Also, according to wiki, Tomb Raider 2014 has sold more than 14.5 million copies (breaking a record for the Tomb Raider franchise). Its predecessor sold 3.8 million.
Just in case you were talking about the changes in the most recent TR game (Shadow of the Tomb Raider), I found this which includes a list of comparison images between the most recent trilogy of games, plus a load of comments that seem almost universally complimentary, so perhaps your appeal to the silent majority is nothing more than your wishful thinking. The general consensus there at least to me seems to be an acknowledgement that there are some minor changes to the model, but that it gives her a more human look and her expressions are more realistic than they were.
As that comparison list isn't terribly helpful IMO, I've collected some screenshots myself.
Tomb Raider 2, 1997. Is Lara a part-time extreme corset fetishist and/or suffering from an eating disorder along with her full-time adventuring career? I don't know, but maybe starving oneself half to death while also expecting to be in peak physical condition to survive in the jungle seems ummm... unrealistic?
Shadow of the Tomb Raider:
Her face does seem a bit more filled out there. To be honest, if I had gone straight from TR2013 to Shadow, I wouldn't have noticed.
Pixel-perfect complexion, exactly what one would expect from an injured adventurer!
Noticeable boobs? Check.
Yup, definitely present.
Hips seem proportional to chest, and there's room in the abdomen for functional organs like what one would expect from a person in peak physical fitness?
I found your waist comment amusing because from a sexual objectification standpoint, many men like a noticeable waist/hip area for various reasons.
Comparing to TR2013:
The body looks identical to me?
But comparisons aside, I'm really curious about something: In my mid-teens with hormones working overtime, gawking over a poorly-rendered 3D image of a woman in the era of dial-up Internet and sub-par access to porn is something that in hindsight I can understand. These days however I'm an adult. How old are you? Are you still gawking over 3D-rendered women? Aside from nineties-era Tomb Raider, I can't think of any other computer game character I've gawked at. If I want to look at porn (and I do so, regularly), I'll look at porn.
You can't just look at a dictionary definition of Woke or SJW
I agree. Would you therefore agree that neither term is sensible to use in general conversation?
As a side note, both of you are believers of this idea that Disney have stopped making money. It's pretty funny. Their net income for 2023 was $2.4bn according to wiki. I think both of you need to stop drinking the kool-aid that when companies don't act the way you want them to, then the Cult Of The Extreme Woke Left SJW Mob must have been behind it (I'm not sure what the mob are supposed to accomplish this, hurt Disney's feelings with mean comments until they lose the will to live?) and now those companies are going to wither like an old crone and turn to dust because that's what you think they deserve.