The Legend of Korra

General rule of game design: the player character is always powerful enough.

Also, and this is a very minor note, Waterbenders in the show carried their water in waterskins, not vials or gourds. Katara upgraded to several waterskins when she was getting ready to fight on the Day of Black Sun. The only vial was some spirit water from the oasis she carried around.

Sorry, small thing, I know, but we all kept saying "vials" or "gourds," and it bothered me because they didn't really use either on the show.

Pulling water from the air only seems to work in small amounts from how Hama showed it.

Edited by lycropath on Mar 4th 2020 at 2:14:40 AM

That, or there just wasn't that much water in the air to begin with.

There is also the possibility of taking the water from plants, but that'd only be useful in some stages I think.

They where in the tropical part of the Fire Nation, so probably one of the more humid places to live in general.

One possibility would be to be to use the gourd system, but have it be pretty easy to steal water from enemies as well as have it regenerate from moisture in the air.

Place a shit ton of creeks and such

It'd still have to compete with earth, fire, and airbending all being freely available all the time forever.

There are a lot of interesting things you could do with waterbending as a resource-management system in a game where you're playing as a waterbender, specifically. But if you're playing as the Avatar, water needs to be as freely available as the other three elements or else it just isn't worth ever using.

That being said, it would be pretty cool (and much easier to work into the franchise chronology) to have games where you don't play as the Avatar. A waterbender-focused game could have a lot of really cool mechanics where you have to balance availability of water.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 4th 2020 at 3:19:28 AM

Maybe someone could hack one out of mario sunshine

I was also thinking maybe Earth and Air could be unlimited, while Fire causes overheating to pair it with Water.

Then I realized that sort of takes the fun out of playing as the Avatar.

I know we are not game designers (as far I know) but what kind of game do we want it to be? Avatar itself is a wuxia series with fantastic and some scifi elements.

I feel like an action RPG would be great for a general Avatar game. Fighting games would also be great, something like Tekken but with bending

Question:

Why is the idea of a Dark Avatar seen as kinda inherently fanficy and bad as a concept?

I'm not disagreeing. I genuinely don't know.

Edited by GNinja on Mar 4th 2020 at 11:41:03 AM

I think the name is what makes it sound like fan fiction.

Dark Avatar. Like they couldn't come up with alternative name for an Evil Counterpart so call it Dark Avatar.

Now there are names we have come to accept in official fiction like Dark Link, Dark Lord, Darksaber and of course The Dark Side of the Force. But at the same time, there have been attempts to give a more official name to these larger than life figures.

Sith'ari for the Sith's version of the Chosen One. Demon King for the description of Ganon in The Legend of Zelda. And Makuta for Teridax's title in Bionicle. It doesn't have to be overly complicated but it can offer a specific flavor for a character.

They could have used either

Incarnation

embodiment

In it's name,like..the.. Incarnation of evil..or The embodiment of Destruction because they sound cool

Edited by Ultimatum on Mar 4th 2020 at 11:56:45 AM

They could have just said that he too will become an Avatar to be honest and it would sound less hokey.

Plus it really contributed to Unhulaq's decline as a villain, wanting to bring the spirits back as a part of his beliefs sure, becoming a "Dark" Avatar is too Card-Carrying Villain.

Edited by lycropath on Mar 4th 2020 at 4:03:37 AM

Man was that concept wasted though.

The enormous implications & potential of an actual evil counterpart to the Avatar cycle empowered by its opposite God & its gone as quickly as it appeared.

After watching several videos on the concept, I've kinda come to sympathize with those who think that introducing the idea of binary good and evil forces into Avatar sort of undermines the eastern-influenced mythology of the whole thing. Originally, the Avatar wasn't good because it came from a spirit of complete goodness, it was good because it embodied balance. The right ratio of all things.

Under that idea, I don't see why you couldn't have a counterpart to the Avatar that was imbalanced or even have an iteration of the Avatar who was villainous. The Avatars make mistakes, so we know they aren't magically conditioned to be benevolent. Surely it could be possible for an Avatar to go bad.

Edited by GNinja on Mar 4th 2020 at 12:52:13 PM

I mean we don't know for sure Unalaq didn't create his own Avatar cycle. It's doubtful but still possible there's some kid out there that inherited Vaatu's power.

Word of God is there is no cycle cuz Korra killed him in an Avatar State. But Vaatu will be reborn within Raava and the Avatar in ten thousand years.

The consciences and advice of past lives are a thing, even if there is only one past life to fall back on.

The only ones who didn't have a past life to fall back on were Wan and, when she lost her connection, Korra. But they were good people with a sense of morality. And every Avatar after them will have access to their knowledge.

Firebending wouldn't make sense to overheat, but canon does say that breath control is important to a firebender's stamina so they don't wear themselves out to quickly and weaken their firebending.

You could have a gauge for your firebending that depletes as you use the element, and replenishes when you're not using it.

As for Earth and Air, while they're unlimited, the environment can still come into play.

Earthbending is useless in aerial and naval combat, while Airbending can have its own weaknesses, such as fanning the flames, or being useless in an underwater level.

Also, in populated areas, collateral damage might be taken into consideration, meaning that you'll either have to use short-range firebending and waterbending as opposed to earth-shattering attacks or powerful tornadoes.

I think it would make the most sense to have a game with multiple playable characters. Maybe the playable characters can be an Avatar, the next Avatar in succession when the first Avatar dies mid-way through in a tragic turn of events, the first Avatar's companions, and a few new companions when you play as the next Avatar, with the old companions also returning.

That way, you can have the experience of playing as an Avatar starting from a new town twice, and you can have the experience of playing as non-Avatar benders restrained by only one element. Maybe also throw in a non-bender in the team.

You could open the game with an older Avatar for an A Taste of Power situation then show them dying at the end of the prologue. Afterwards the game proper is about the next Avatar in the line. Possibly even them dealing with unfinished business from the previous Avatar's life.

Aang went against the wisdom of the other Avatars, though. They were uniformly in favor of killing Ozai, but Aang refused. And as you said, an Avatar can fail to even have a particularly strong spiritual connection.

So if Aang can disagree with prior Avatars, what's to stop a future Avatar from disagreeing even more strongly?