New Avatar Featurette Online Cameron et al on film & game links
Here's a bit of excitement for a Thursday afternoon: a new featurette about the Avatar game from Ubisoft, with writer/director James Cameron and producer Jon Landau contributing at some length to the thinking behind the game and the movie. You can watch the full video below, with all its rather lovely footage of Pandora, but for those of you at work or in really, really quiet libraries, here are the important bits.
Says producer Jon Landau, "Avatar is an epic adventure fantasy set on the world of Pandora. Our hope is that through other mediums the fanbase get to explore the world of Pandora well beyond just the movie."
Cameron noted that, "This is the first time I've really been involved with a game from the inception of the movie project. What they said to us was, 'We want to make a game from inside your thematic ideas, outwards.'"
"Then the thought was, working with Ubisoft, well, wait a minute. We're working in a game engine; you're working in a game engine. Maybe some of the assets we've already generated, of which there are literally tens of thousands, are things you can use. The resounding answer back was, 'Yeah, give us everything you've got'. So we basically did a download of the world to them, and it worked out beautifully. So we figured let's build one world and create two ways of enjoying it, simultaneously: separately and in parallel."
On a wider note, Cameron says that, "Pandora is beautiful and deadly. When you're first introduced, the deadly part is what you see and then as you go deeper the beauty starts to unfold and you realise it's really paradise. It's really the Garden of Eden."
Hmm, so by the sounds of it whatever else happens, the game will be visually pretty impressive. Also, as you'll see if you watch the full thing, Cameron agreed to and amended extensions to Avatar's mythology in the game, meaning that it's all canon and part of the same world. All in all, promising stuff.
Jesus talk about blowing your own horn....Jesus he made a movie about a ship and I didn't see the end coming in that Movie but wait it sank........Its so over hyped......Were not the American Public,He thinks hes George Lucas I think.....Poor Bastard.Although Terminator was good...Avatar = James Cameron inflated Lead Balloon!!! ... Read More
Empire, seriously, what’s this obsession with Avatar??? It’s like Cameron says jump boy, jump: empire jumps and then says, is that high enough for you MR Cameron. He says, sit boy, sit and like a good, obedient dog, Empire sits willingly looking for approval. Cut this bullshit out. It’s not news and it’s certainly not journalism! Of course Cameron’s gonna say that this game, visually is gonna be beautiful and mesmerising, don’t make it true though... And to q... Read More
I know that there is the temptation to take just any Avatar-related bits and pieces released by the studio as news-value, but please, empire! You guys excell at the film stuff, leave the gaming stuff to people who do know something about it. "Promising Stuff" is not exactly what I would call this. The same concept has been around far too many times and the jungle vegetation type setting has been handled better and more fully realised by Crytec with Crysis. Matrix: Path of Neo comes to ... Read More
I played this for half an hour or so at a GAME manager's conference I just attended.
It was really average in pretty much every way, shame as I thought this would be one of the few exceptions to the 'Film-Game adaptation= Shit!' rule. I played the 360 and Wii versions, the 360 one was average, the Wii one utter crud.ew some vehicles, played around in the mech suits and shot at things in the general third person view and all of it has been done before and better. ... Read More
This is pretty much the same spiel that the developers on Enter The Matrix gave. Add to that that the trailer for this game was even more underwhelming than the one for the movie.
They ought to be using the game to sell the game, not their level of collaboration with the film-makers. ... Read More
