Avatar: The Last Airbender Game Concept

[Bright Sun Studios]

I've been thinking (and mentally developing) a concept for a possible future game I could work on and I'd like some opinions and what you guys think of the concept.

I know there already are a few Avatar based games like Four Elements Trainer and a Korra one which I believe something called Legend of Korra: Book 5 or something similar to that. But specifically for Four Elements Trainer (which I did enjoy), I didn't really feel like the game managed to capture the 'spirit' of the show. And that got me thinking about how I would handle adapting Avatar: The Last Airbender into an adult parody game.

So here is the concept I came up with: A game set during the 100 year war would still be best as it's such a great setting in the Avatar world, but I didn't want Aang, Katara and Sokka as the main characters. In fact, I wanted as much creative freedom as possible, so I decided to go with new characters. But I still wanted the main character to be an Avatar as the narrative potential to use all four elements as such a big part of what makes Avatar great that I didn't want to miss out on that. So I decided... why not make a game set in an alternative timeline of the 100 year war? A game that explores would have happened if Aang didn't freeze himself but actually died during the assault on the Air Nomad temples during the first Fire Nation attack with the help of Sozin's Commet. So that got me thinking... maybe the game could be about the next Avatar and the start of the war. But I didn't like that idea as we already have a Water Tribe Avatar (Korra) and I'm personally not a huge fan of waterbending. And then it hit me that if I set the game at the end of the 100 year war (where the actual TV show takes place), I could realistically make a story where there would be a Fire Nation Avatar (it would make sense for a water tribe + earth kingdom Avatar to die in 80 years of war, right?) during the war against the Fire Nation. If that Avatar also happened to be the younger sister/brother of Zuko and Azula (and thus the son/daughter of Ozai), that could make for some really interesting moral situations.

So here are some things I thought might be fun in such a story:
- Fire Nation Avatar, youngest child of Ozai
- Grew up in Fire Nation, but has to face the effects of the war on the other nations
- The world not being very Avatar-happy as the last 3 Avatars failed to stop the war
- Avatar possible being bad at firebending due to being scared of it because he/she grew up scared of Azula
- Maybe one of Ty Lee's older sisters could be a companion of this new Avatar
- The last Avatar, who was very positively received during her lifetime, disappearing suddenly just before the second assault of Ba Sing Se, leaving most Earth Kingdom people to dislike for failing them despite her having possibly good reasons for disappearing
- Ozai mistakingly claiming Azula is the new Avatar after the last one dies due to her abnormally powerful bending, only to claim th Avatar cycle is broken when he learns his youngest child is actually the new Avatar moments before he/she escapes
- Learing that Lu Ten (Iroh's son) died during the first siege of Ba Sing Se setting off enough emotional disturbance inside that Avatar so that he/she reveals her/himself by going into the Avatar State for the first time
- Being given tons of dialogue options in which you can choose which element you want to use to fix certain situations. The more you use one element, the better you get at it (possible eventually learing metalbending, bloodbending, lighting re-directing, etc. if you stick to one element) or you can choose to learn the all just enough to survive

If anyone has any feedback on this narrative concept or anything they'd like to add, let me know

 

[DarthSeduction]

I find the idea of Unique characters incredibly appealing, as a result, I think your final solution, which would include Azula and Zuko, is kinda undoing that.

What if instead the Fire Nation made it a priority to hunt down and kill any avatar before they could be a threat, and the Avatar did come to the fire nation, as someone like Iroh. He and Ozai could be friendly rivals through childhood, but as Ozai is groomed for the throne he becomes more and more cruel, and Iroh, being groomed as the next avatar becomes more and more unable to accept what Ozai is doing. Thus you create a great Hero Villain dynamic, and can make all your ancillary characters, aside from major players like Bumi. This gives you a lot of freedom to play in the world without harming anyone's impressions of beloved characters like Azula and Zuko. Iroh being the hero should also make it possible for him to retain fan love, as at least the way I see him, if Iroh was Avatar, he'd be opposed to what Ozai is doing.

 

[Bright Sun Studios]

I find the idea of Unique characters incredibly appealing, as a result, I think your final solution, which would include Azula and Zuko, is kinda undoing that.

What if instead the Fire Nation made it a priority to hunt down and kill any avatar before they could be a threat, and the Avatar did come to the fire nation, as someone like Iroh. He and Ozai could be friendly rivals through childhood, but as Ozai is groomed for the throne he becomes more and more cruel, and Iroh, being groomed as the next avatar becomes more and more unable to accept what Ozai is doing. Thus you create a great Hero Villain dynamic, and can make all your ancillary characters, aside from major players like Bumi. This gives you a lot of freedom to play in the world without harming anyone's impressions of beloved characters like Azula and Zuko. Iroh being the hero should also make it possible for him to retain fan love, as at least the way I see him, if Iroh was Avatar, he'd be opposed to what Ozai is doing.

Your idea here is a bit unclear to me. In your idea... is Iroh himself the Avatar? Or would a new character similiar in personality to Iroh be Avatar? Because Iroh and Ozai are brothers, so if Iroh was an Avatar, that wouldn't make him a 'friendly rival' of Ozai. They would still be brothers. But there are a lot of other problems with this:

- This dynamic is way too similar to the dynamic that Fire Lord Sozin and Avatar Roku have (it's bascially an exact copy of it)
- Ozai was never 'groomed for the throne'. Iroh was. Iroh is the older brother, but Ozai screwed him over when Iroh was trying to conquor Ba Sing Se. His wife killed their father (Fire Lord Azulon) and faked Azulon's last wish to be that Ozai would be made Fire Lord instead of his older brother, Iroh.
- Time-wise this wouldn't be possible unless the next two Avatars after Aang (water and earth) would both die very young.

I do sort of see your points of potential problems with re-using characters, but I feel a lot of people would love to see those characters again and they'd see it as a missed opportunity to not include them. Zuko wouldn't play a major role, but missing out on Azula just feels wrong to me. I also don't see why using Ozai and Iroh would be any different from also including other fan favorite characters.

I'm not trying to say you're wrong, but I'm just trying to more deeply understand your opinion and suggestion as it sort of confused me a little bit. Either way, thanks for your interest in the project. Hopefully more people will post their own opinions about these issues

 

[DarthSeduction]

that wouldn't make him a 'friendly rival' of Ozai. They would still be brothers.

My brother and I have a friendly rivalry

This dynamic is way too similar to the dynamic that Fire Lord Sozin and Avatar Roku have (it's bascially an exact copy of it)

I forgot that was a thing, so you're right there.

I also don't see why using Ozai and Iroh would be any different from also including other fan favorite characters.

Ozai is pretty basic mustache twirling evil, even if people like his character, it's very difficult to write it incorrectly. Also, as an "elseworld" story, changes to Iroh would be forgiven in the same way that Superman:Red Son is, and the latter is a much less faithful adaptation of a character than Iroh as Avatar would be. That was, my thought process, however, as I said again, you're correct that this has already happened.

- Ozai was never 'groomed for the throne'. Iroh was. Iroh is the older brother, but Ozai screwed him over when Iroh was trying to conquor Ba Sing Se. His wife killed their father (Fire Lord Azulon) and faked Azulon's last wish to be that Ozai would be made Fire Lord instead of his older brother, Iroh.

I assumed that as Avatar there would be rules about not ruling over any nation, but I admit I am not familiar enough with the lore for this.

- Time-wise this wouldn't be possible unless the next two Avatars after Aang (water and earth) would both die very young.

Yes, that would be the case, essentially the deal would be that the Fire Nation intentionally hunted down and killed them as soon as they showed up.


As far as using people fan favored characters, there are two issues in my opinion, the first is, holy fuck is avatar 34 overdone. Honestly, if you wanted to you could probably make a whole game using rule34 images that already exist and not even break consistency. The other reason is, I'm far more intrigued by a story in the world but with new characters and stories.

To put that in perspective, after I have a few more games under my belt, I'll consider throwing my hat in the ring to make a Star Wars based game. But rather than doing a story people know and using fan favorites like Leia, Darth Talon, Bastilla, or Ahsoka, I'll simply create my own saga. Star Wars' galaxy and timeline is vast and the amount of things I could do in it are insane.

It seems you have enough Avatar Knowledge to do that yourself. You could have something based 50 years after Korra, a new Avatar, could even be fire if you want, a new war, etc. By creating your own story you have a lot more control over how it plays out, you can make the characters behave exactly how you want them to, you can even create characters that are similar to the fan favorites, though I'd suggest against directly ripping something like Toph off, because then you'd just get shit for it. But there's no reason you can't have a Tsundere bordering on Yandere older sister like Azula or a Ty Lee type character to adventure with the MC.

OFC, this is just my 2 cents. I'd be interested either way, since I'm sure your take could be pretty good, but meh.