If you don’t know about James Cameron’s upcoming flick Avatar, then you have surely been living under a rock (or play some really awesome games).
For those of you who didn’t listen to this week’s episode of The Lazygamer Podcast, firstly, shame on you! Second of all, we had a chat with Avatar: The Games’ Director of Art Animation, Brent George and he gave us the scoop on everything that we need to know about the game that is going to try and break the license curse.
Hit the jump for all the details.
The storyline of the game is not directly taken over from the movie and actually takes place two years before the movie, with the player taking on the role of another soldier named Able Ryder.
The planet Pandora is toxic to humans, which is why the Avatar program had been developed. DNA from Pandora’s local race called Navi has been taken and combined with human DNA to create a hybrid host body that humans can be moved into.
The Navi are 10 foot tall blue, elf-like humanoids and benefit not only from being able to breath the air but are also incredibly adept at traversing the harsh environments that Pandora has to offer.
The game plays in two distinct ways. As a human the game play out like a third-person action shooter and also involves the use of vehicles. When playing as the Navi you are met with a different style of gameplay that involves more traditional melee and ranged weapons and will not be attacked by the planet itself, which is almost “allergic” to humans as Brent puts it.
Brent explained that at some point in the game you will need to make a choice between the two races, which will then dictate the path of your storyline. This will obviously mean that there will be a good reason to play through the game twice.
One quick look at the game will tell you that a good amount of effort has been put into maintaining the visual standard that is being set by the movie. When asked, Brent told us that their studio was given access to the movie script, concept art and all other elements from the word go, allowing them to not only stick close to the films designs but also focus on other important areas with the saved time.
If you are one of the lucky people that will have access to a television with 3D capabilities by the time that Avatar releases then you will get to experience the game in full stereoscopic 3D goodness.
Avatar looks set to make sure that it does not fall into the usual category of terrible licensed games and hold itself up high as a good game in it’s own right. Whether it will or not is still something that we will need to find out for ourselves.
For all the information and a funny story about Brent actually playing games in his sleep, listen to episode 20 of The Lazygamer Podcast.
Last Updated: October 6, 2009
