Avatar: The Game: The Developer Diary
by David Hinkle 
{ Sep 19th 2009 at 3:00AM } 
Those of you looking to see some gameplay will notice some snippets above, though the video is mainly developers and Cameron talking about the game. Don't worry, though: Cameron doesn't pull another Cameron.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Solace @ Sep 19th 2009 3:24AM
I didnt know this guy had his own video game?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa2OpNTX9Ck&feature=related
Victor @ Sep 19th 2009 10:57AM
You mean Papa Smurf?
Negativecool @ Sep 19th 2009 3:35AM
James Cameron is starting to remind me of Peter Molyneux. I hope he can deliver on the evolution in storytelling he seems to be promising.
Stacky @ Sep 19th 2009 3:58AM
Haha, that's what I was thinking. Can anyone say "let down?"
Wes @ Sep 19th 2009 9:08AM
I'm with the Let Down! guy on this one. I'm watching the video clips from the games and I keep seeing space marines, space marines in vehicles and all the marines seem to be doing to interact with the world is shoot stuff.
Even when one of the developers is talking about how we'll really love how you can interact with this world, with the plants, with the people, the gameplay picture is someone firing a machine gun at a plant bulb followed by missiles being fired at Dinosaurs.
Wait, Space marines. Guns. Rocket Launcher. Explosions. Dinosaurs? Is this Halo 4: Space Marine Avatar Fights Dino Crsis?
el serpiente @ Sep 19th 2009 12:07PM
I think both movie and game are going to munch dog balls.
I really think James Cameron stumbled on a furry porn website one day, and said, "YEAH! This is what the kids like these days. Let's have a movie about a guy (handicapped, no less, who in addition to the virtual transformation an avatar endows, also regains the ability to walk, making it doubly powerful), WHO CAN BECOME A FURRY! And he'll fall in love with this hot furry broad on a magical mystical furry planet with giant tigers with flower boxes on their head.
Of course, as movies (and some history) have taught us, the more advanced a race is technically, the more lacking is their moral and spiritual fiber and greater is their willingness to selfishly exploit the less technologically advanced. While the more primitive race exists in a peaceful balance with their surroundings and provides the young AVATAR man with the spirituality that he had been missing all his life as an alienated being living within the futuristic military-industrial complex which he then subsequently rises up and rebels against.
Throw in those robot suits that were leftover from the matrix, and those dragons from the LOTR trilogy and BAM. Cinema magic.
r0bbiejc85 @ Sep 22nd 2009 5:27AM
Exactly my thoughts Negativecool.
This could well be a solid shooter and some impressive vistas (Lost Planet similarities??) but in the end, I can't see the revolution they're talking about. 'Interact with the world around you' - aka - shoot everything to see how it explodes. The technology behind the film is seriously impressive but I doubt the universe they are creating will have any of he believability or hook of HR Geiger's Aliens vision. The whole theme of environment and exploitation is hardly that original either. Anyway, I've got all fingers crossed for both the film and game!
Tyger @ Sep 19th 2009 4:04AM
I'm sorry, every time I see things for this Avatar movie, I immediately think of the nickelodeon show with the movie coming out. The show is way cooler I might add.
ybfelix @ Sep 19th 2009 7:15AM
Me too.. the font of title is even a little similiar.
Avatar the last Gunbender!
Chibi Chaingun - blackhivemedia.com @ Sep 19th 2009 9:35AM
FFS, get over it. It's not the Saturday morning cartoon. It's a movie from the god of sci-fi action movies. This is big league stuff, not the kiddy show.
lonesomefolly @ Sep 19th 2009 2:00PM
wait, it isn't the same crap?
SpaceFox @ Sep 19th 2009 11:26AM
I agree that Avatar:TLA is way better. I used to love that show when it was still airing, and I even got some of my friends and family into it too. Hope the movie for that turns out to be great.
And Chibi, Avatar:TLA is not a "kiddy" show, it's a deep, compelling show set in a great universe with great characters, and the action rocks. One of the best cartoons in a long time....
Aurailious @ Sep 19th 2009 4:22AM
Models and textures need to be greatly improved, not up to par with the latest titles.
I really don't see how this story is going to be any good, in general I don't see myself ever bothering to notice this. Maybe their marketing and promotion has failed to draw my attention. But, like always I'll keep an eye on it to see if is as good as some people are saying.
Plus, I hate blue people, green people are a lot cooler. Call me a racist, but ehh. I see this and its like "wow, blue people? great . . ."
Glenn @ Sep 19th 2009 6:17AM
OW, all those white flashes hurt my eyes.
Epileptics beware...
freaparn @ Sep 19th 2009 10:57AM
The problem I see with this is that they seem to actually believe they're reinventing the wheel, but nothing they're showing me is that remarkable. Lines such as "it's not really a movie, it's not really a game, it's *an experience*" make me think there's more marketing than actual creativity backing this project.
Ah well. Wait and see, I suppose.
Bravo6 @ Sep 19th 2009 1:31PM
I hope this is as awesome as they all try to make you think, but the movie and the game both look pretty bad to me so far. When I see clips from either, I think there's some new WoW update coming out or something.
I have to say though, I'm impressed with their ability to write backwards on glass.
jarhead906 @ Sep 19th 2009 3:46PM
The game is going to be exactly like any other movie to video game production.
I don't know what would compel any other sane person to think otherwise.
Alcevious @ Sep 19th 2009 7:51PM
I really think Avatar could be something great. It seems to me like James Cameron wants to set up a universe like the Star Wars universe with a movie or two and a set of books and games and serious lore. If they can do something like that then I can see myself really getting into this.
Matt @ Sep 20th 2009 7:56PM
Love or hate Cameron, he knows how to make special effects extravaganzas. Yeah the movie won't have much in the way of story, but are any of us actually going to see it for its story? Who wouldn't want to be put into the body of a ten foot tall blue alien and set loose on an alien planet? It appeals to the ten-year-old in me that wanted to be in the cockpit of an X-Wing fighting the Empire. Yeah it's borrowing from a vast array of current popular culture, but that argument is so tired. It would be nice if every movie made was based on an original premise, but this is reality. Some of those blatant copies have actually been quite good, too.
The game, though... I can't say it compels me at all. In all I've seen about it, I've found very little that looks interesting/new/different. Looks like a pretty standard third-person shooter. The movie isn't likely to have much of a story, so the game really isn't going to have much to work with there. So they go for visuals? Given that they're almost certainly developing for all platforms, that seems unlikely. The only thing that they've touted is the ability to play parts of the game from the Navi perspective, and it's not like that's anything that hasn't been done before.
I could be pleasantly surprised. The movie could have a deep and compelling plot that complements the visuals and sucks me in. The game could be the first to break the movie-game curse. Neither is likely, but I can dream.
ProgHead @ Sep 20th 2009 9:58PM
I don't know if anyone knows this around here, but Avatar, the movie from James Cameron, is inspired by a sci-fi book that was very successful some decades ago, if I am correct between the 70's-80's. Cameron is (as he allways done) building the whole world, conceptually to life through a movie; and of course, the idea of trying to build that whole wolrd, into another form of media is very interesting for a mind like Cameron's. I mean, he's just a nut with technology and our form of media and entertainment that we use ever week, is a new world. I believe the plot of the movie has the ability to be really good, since its based from a successful sci-fi book in the likes of the Dune saga. And because my father remembers reading it and saying that it was surprisingly mind-blowing.
On another note whats that animated show Avatar: The last airbender? And why is everyone so nostalgic about it? Did it air only in america? was it successful? Im from portugal in europe, and I find it quite odd that I dont know it, since every show, animated or not, that has success in america ends here, sooner or later.
Matt @ Sep 21st 2009 10:53AM
I would love for it to surprise me with a deep plot. I think most of us are thinking of Cameron's track record of making technical showpieces with little plot (Titanic anyone?) I hope he proves me wrong. Good sci-fi is hard to come by.
Speaking of good sci-fi, you wouldn't happen to know what the title of that book is?
ProgHead @ Sep 22nd 2009 10:59AM
The title of the book actually is The Avatar by Poul Anderson; although James Cameron has all the credits in the writing for the movie, Poul Anderson was singled out by being on of the author who influenced him, so it appears that its only loosely based, and not a book-movie transformation so I was induced in error. However, it seems that the main protagonists issue of being paraplegic is based in Poul Anderson's 1957 short story "Call Me Joe".
However that doesn't mean that Cameron wont do a substancial easy-deep plot for the movie. Movie critics have been saying that it seems to add some bits of the philosophy of Dances with The Wolves by Kevin Costner, and Cameron allegedly said that not only was this movie based for his love in all the sci-fi books he ever read, and that he wanted to improve or honor the Edgar Rice Burroughs type of narrative. It is really an ambitious project from his part, but I believe he wont dissapoint. I mean, I can't remember the last time he did (although Titanic ain't a movie I like, it really was a great enterprise).