We come face-to-face with the man behind the Avatar

Having worked for Ubisoft for three years, Kevin Shortt cut his teeth with the company as a scriptwriter on Far Cry 2, and a story designer on Lost Via Domus with Patrick Redding. Working with Ethan Petty and John Meadows, his next assignment was the Avatar game, although as he tells us, it’s not the average movie tie-in

Could you tell us a little about the main character, Ryder?
He’s a signals specialist, from Earth. So he’s been brought in to the RDA and the main reason is, as a signals specialist, he’s the one guy who can help the RDA find this sacred site [on Pandora] that they’re trying to find. It becomes a primary goal for the players. But as soon as he arrives, his arrival almost sparks the Na’vi, because they realise that the RDA are going to go ahead with this plan to find the sacred site. The Na’vi don’t know where the sacred site is either, and they’re after it as well. So early on, the player gets a choice of where they want to go, with the RDA or with the Na’vi. They have to decide what they think is the right thing to do.

Does the game act as a prequel to the film?
That’s a good question because it’s important to establish this. It’s not a prequel. It’s not as if this sets up the movie. A real important thing for us and for James Cameron especially was that he has this whole world, this whole moon with tons of stories, and it’s important for him to show all these different stories. He wanted to see different aspects of Pandora. So when we came up with the story we were very specifically not trying to tie it to the film, we’re not trying to give anything away, because we wanted to make sure that you don’t need one to see the other. If you want to play the game, great, if you want to see the movie, great, but you don’t have to do both.

… continued