Avatar's renegade inspiration: Albion

[NavishouldbeIskai]

Ahoy there 

I have noticed many parallels between a computer game which had been released in 1995 and the movie Avatar. As I sought for "Albion" in this forum before, but didn't find anything, I thought it was about time to make them known.
So you can inform yourselves on Albion on these sites: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion_(video_game) http://www.bluebyte.net/eng/products/albion/index.htm http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/428/Albion.html.

After you have briefly read the story on wikipedia, you might conclude that there are parallels in the story. But being a graphic video game, there is more to it than simply story. For one there is the similarity between the alien species 'Iskai' and the 'Na'vi'. Not only are both races larger than humans, but they also have tails with the ability to grasp, just four fingers, cat-like eyes and the ability to communicate with each other by a strange physical connection: the Na'vi use their hair, the Iskai have a trii, a crystalline on their forehead, which, when united, enables them to share one another's emotions.
Like the Na'vi, Iskai live in close touch with nature. Their sourroundings are as strange as the world of Pandora: there are plants and fungi which go aglow under their steps, there is a great varity of animals.
As to the society of Iskai, they live in clans, presently ruled by a female councillor, while not cherishing a organized religion but being spiritistic with the belief in one goddess, which is made up of the spirits of the deceased.

Now there are many more shots in the movie and similarities in the course of the development of the story (in Albion, the space ship and the mining construction are eventually destroyed by the growth of an enormous plant as planet defends itself against the attack of industrialization) which could be emphasized.

In the end... play the game yourself if you don't want to rely on this short description. You can download it for free and play it via DosBox, a program for emulating the conditions for playing older games on new systems (1996 people used Windows 3.1  ). I recommend playing the game because it's worth it. It's graphics and engine are not up-to-date, but the story is good and that's what makes it atmospheric.

You got to be impressed with how much Albion and Avatar have in common, so I've been thinking a lot if someone involved in the creative process of producing Avatar (if not the director himself) had not played Albion and thought of using that material.

Anyways, other people seem to think so too, so otherwise I wouldn't have said anything

Avatar Similarities
http://ne0nic.livejournal.com/321.html
http://davidn.livejournal.com/359134.html

[kewnya txamew'itan]

I think you're taking this to a bit of an extreme. The plot of both is a fairly standard race-guilt one like that of Pocahontas (which was released the same year) (and to a certain extent the 1994 Japanese animated short of the same name) and then subsequently also Dances with Wolves and The Last Samurai before Avatar.

As for the similarities between the na'vi and the Iskai, the Iskai have substantially different feet (the pum na'viyä are more humanoid), the trii functions differently from tsaheylu seeming to be more a form of enhanced empathy whilst tsaheylu is a full merging of minds and the trii doesn't seem to be anywhere near a private connection as tsaheylu, lastly, the Iskai are proficient in the use of magic whilst the na'vi have none at all (besides the very biological Eywa).

Then of course Albion has the 'celtic' humans which have no real equivalent in Avatar.

So, whilst there are similarities, I don't think it's any more than two things playing a similar set of tropes which happens all the time in sci-fi (or even worse, Mills-and-Boon-style romance novels, they actually had a formula for coming up with a plot for those!).

[Mech]

Recently the game Albion came to my attention. I was also striken by the similarities to Avatar so I wondered if other feel the same, I googled "Albion Avatar similarities" and found this old post in our good forum

Here is another post I found concerning the two works, written by a cocreator of Albion: http://www.intelligent-artifice.com/2013/07/on-albion-and-avatar.html

I think the original poster has right here. However he forgot to mention some other similarities:

• The game's premise with a protagonist representing a futuristic, space-faring megacorporation who reaches a virgin planet of lush vegetation and primitive aliens who are in close touch with nature, like American Indians.
• The Iskai, like the Na'vi, perform mind-transfer which is a pivotal aspect of their culture.
• During the game you get some hints about the Iskai's elaborate language, with vocabulary and whole phrases. Of course it's not a language which you can learn and make new phrases with it, but you can see some consistent vocabulary and structure, obvious that the creators did some work here.

Now, forgive me, kewnya, but the basic similarities are quite striking and there is no point in pointing out the differences such as whether the aliens' feet are similar or whether there are also stranded humans on the alien planet. Of course, even if Cameron took inspiration from the game, he was not supposed to adapt the game itself. Even if he based the Na'vi on the Iskai, the Na'vi are his own creation and are not supposed to be identical to the Iskai, so they are blue and have fluorescent freckles whereas the Iskai don't.

Even if I believe that Cameron took inspiration from the game, I strongly object to accusations like "stealing" etc. He did took inspiration from previous works, but Avatar is his own creation and has its own value. Avatar was full of movie cliches, plot devices and archetypes we've seen before, but we loved it not because of the originality of its story, but because it was groundbreaking in other aspects. After all, there is a reason why Avatar became the most successful movie in history and Albion did not become the most successful game in history.

So, by acknowledging those striking similarities between Albion and Avatar we don't accuse Cameron for anything, and there is no point in "defending" him by pointing out the differences.

PS. As far as I know Albion was never released as freeware. Certainly it is "abandonware" and "you can download it for free" from abandonware sites as the original poster says, but that doesn't mean that it is distributed legally.