In the show it makes for some nice world building, displaying how the Fire Nation oppresses others and Team Avatar’s propensity for helping others. Following that, Team Avatar (as our heroes dub themselves later in the series) sets out to teach Aang water bending, and emancipate some small villages from their Fire Nation colonizers. It’s not uncommon for games to kick off with a boss fight to show players the ropes of combat, and Aang’s escape from Zuko’s ship would make for adequate teaching of the game’s regular traversal mechanics. It sets up the story well, and in the case of a video game, is a proper set up for a combat tutorial. In the first couple of episodes, Aang is awoken after a hundred-year slumber by Katara and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe, where they (and the audience) are then introduced to Prince Zuko, who immediately captures the Avatar. While Aang and his friends/protectors Katara and Sokka spend the duration of the show globe-trotting on his trusty sky-bison sidekick Appa, helping others, and of course, mastering all four elements, the Fire Lord’s disgraced son Prince Zuko is tracking the Avatar down to capture him and restore his honor.Īlready it’s one of the video game-iest sounding plots of all time, but the show often takes it a step further. The Avatar – a symbol of peace and harmony reincarnated through the ages – is the only one who can master all four elements, and in the case of our hero Aang, The Last Airbender, put an end to the hundred year war and colonization by the Fire Nation, by defeating the nation’s ruler: Firelord Ozai. Select people can control their nations respective element through “bending,” telekinetically controlling the element through martial arts. (Spoilers from here on out for Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra) Storyįor those unfamiliar, the world of Avatar is divided into four nations based on the elements: Air, Earth, Water, and Fire.
Avatar should have been a video game for the sake of giving its own world and story the delivery it deserves, as the necessary components are clearly baked into its DNA. The video game medium suffers from this unfortunate misconception as well, but has been making strides in its adolescence with the advent of high-profile, mature, story-driven titles like this year’s God of War, 2015’s The Witcher 3, and 2013’s The Last of Us.ĭon’t worry, I’m not suggesting that Avatar should have been a video game for the sake of photorealistic visuals, exploding heads, or shoehorned unicorn-mounted sex scenes – none of those things (especially the latter) would bring anything of value to the property. The new Netflix announcement only pours salt on this wound – we’ve already seen the story of Avatar told properly in the passive medium of television, and the adaptation reminds us that animation is still regarded as inherently less important or less valuable than live-action to the general public.
#Avatar the legend of aang games series
You don’t have to go far on the internet to find a myriad of fan-articles about the unfortunate bastardization of the series in video games, or Nickelodeon’s poor treatment of the IP as a whole. Of course, the franchise has been scorned by the medium in the past with its THQ licensed adaptations in the 2000s receiving mixed reviews at best, and Platinum Games’ 2014 attempt at handling the Korra game being so maligned that it was de-listed from digital game stores this past December – a damn shame, seeing as the two were basically perfect for each other.
Something that it should have been in the first place: a video game. Something fans could really sink their teeth into, that would allow them to take their time and savor every morsel of Avatar’s intriguing and detailed world and story.
#Avatar the legend of aang games tv
So earlier this week when Netflix broke the internet by announcing that the streaming monolith will be rebooting the franchise as a live-action TV series, I found myself simultaneously excited and disappointed – excited to see a proper live-action version of Avatar that wasn’t marred by inherently racist prerogatives and blatant cash-grabbery, but disappointed that it wasn’t something…better.