14 DAY TRIAL // This year’s edition of the San Diego Comic-Con is a major source of cross-media announcements and information, the latest of which being a video showing a massive 7 minutes of gameplay from the upcoming The Legend of Korra game.
The Legend of Korra is an animated TV series based on Nickelodeon’s famous Avatar: The Last Airbender, meant to function as the show’s sequel.
The story follows Korra, the titular character, fighting various villains by employing her mastery of an ancient art that allows the manipulation of the primal energies of water, earth, air and fire, similar in appearance to Eastern martial arts.
The plot begins with a mysterious character robbing Korra of her powers, which she struggles to regain over the course of the upcoming game.
The third-person beat’em up video game is in development over at Platinum Games, with an expected release date of Q3/Q4 2014. The game will be available on the Windows PC, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 platforms, as a digital product only.
The game is scripted by Tim Hedrick, one of the writers of the TV show, and will be congruent with the events in the series. Additionally, the cel-shaded visual style of The Legend of Korra video game has purposefully been adopted to emulate the look and feel of the animated series, just like it was in the Naruto fighting games.
Korra, the protagonist, will be able to switch between techniques on the fly, and select the best tool for the job, depending on what adversaries she faces.
Each of the four combat styles will present its unique characteristics, with airbending making her move faster and perform both close and long-range moves, waterbending being more focused on long-range attacks, earthbending on more powerful, but slower moves, and firebending emphasizing close-range moves and speed.
The footage shows that Korra is able to make use of her water, fire and earthbending abilities in order to take out a horde of incoming enemies, and she can also summon her huge and fearsome polar bear-dog, Naga, in order to get around faster and assist during combat.
IGN’s video also offers a glimpse of the upcoming action game’s control scheme, as well as giving an outline of the plot and the things you’ll be able to do in-game, also showing an on-rails running section where Korra rides on her bear-dog.
Developer Platinum Games is most famous for Bayonetta, a hit action title that had some pretty interesting and novel gameplay mechanics, so the upcoming adaptation of The Legend of Korra animated series should be a lot of fun.
