Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

The Legend of Korra bends the elements in a new game from the Bayonetta studio

Adam Rosenberg
By
legend korra bends elements new game bayonetta dev of screen1
Image used with permission by copyright holder

It’s easy to write off The Legend of Korra as kid stuff. An animated Nickelodeon series that’s inspired by Japanese anime (but created by a pair of Yanks). And a spin off from the Avatar: The Last Airbender series doesn’t exactly scream “adult-oriented subject matter.” It is, however, perfect fodder for the spectacle-driven beat ’em up video game combat that Bayonetta developer Platinum Games has a knack for.

PlatinumGamesThat’s what the team on Platinum’s upcoming Korra game thought when Activision first brought the project their way. “We watched Korra and thought it was on par with some of the best stuff that we have in Japan,” Platinum producer Atsushi Kurooka told Digital Trends in a recent interview (through a translator). “It took lot of influence from things that you see in Japanese animation and it was incredibly impressive. It was up there with a lot of our greats.”

Recommended Videos

Activision jumped when Nickelodeon first offered up the opportunity to tackle a game based on the Last Airbender spin-off series. The department that pairs the publisher’s licensed properties with development studios came up with a list of possible candidates, and Platinum was on it. Activision producer Robert Conkey knew right away that they’d found their studio.

Related

“I couldn’t think of a brand that’s more up their alley,” Conkey said. “The action that happens in the show plays right to their strengths. It’s super fluid, it’s fast-paced, it’s got spectacular aspects to it. It just felt like the perfect fit. So we brought it to them and they were just as excited about it as we were.”

Kurooka saw Korra as something of a challenge. Platinum has largely worked on its own creations since the studio was founded in 2006. Even last year’s Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a spin-off of Kojima Productions Metal Gear franchise, stepped away from the series’ established framework for a very different type of game, one that felt uniquely Platinum. This is a studio that’s proven itself with complex beat ’em ups again and again, and while Korra fits that style perfectly, it’s also the most restricted the team’s ever been in terms of realizing a vision.

Legend of Korra_Screen4
Image used with permission by copyright holder

“We hadn’t had many rules they needed to follow [before Korra]. It was more, ‘Oh, this might be cool, let’s do it,'” Kurooka said. “We considered it a really interesting challenge in terms of showing the world that we’re a versatile studio that can handle a variety of situations. For Korra, there’s a very strictly defined world that we needed to keep within. We felt like it would broaden our skillset to show that we could pull that off, staying inside the Korra world while still realizing the Platinum action style that we’ve become known for.”

From what we’ve seen of the game so far, the dev team hits that balance. Visually, the linear, level-based brawler looks like the TV show. Cel-shaded characters in the foreground play well against seemingly hand-painted backdrops. The animations pop impressively, bringing to mind Ubisoft’s Naruto-inspired adventure/fighting games. The screen gets very busy whenever combat reaches a fever pitch, but not in a way that renders the action difficult to follow.

“We felt like it would broaden our skillset to stay inside the Korra world while still realizing the Platinum action style.”

Then there’s the combat depth. On the surface, The Legend of Korra features basic brawler controls built around light/heavy attacks, dodges, and blocks. Platinum isn’t in the business of making button-mashers, however. Time a block right and you’ll parry an incoming enemy attack. Start a combo with one bending ability equipped — four unlock over the course of the game, corresponding to earth, water, fire, and air elements — and you can switch to any of the others on the fly.

Combat is designed so that each element complements the others, to better promote more varied combos. Earth, for example, is great for area attacks and for knocking enemies up into the air. Start out by sending a foe skyward with an Earth attack, then transition to juggling him using Water’s ranged attacks. You can then leap up with Fire armed, using fast, short-range melee attacks to finish the job, or dash through the enemy using Air so you can switch back to Earth and start the whole process over again.

Korra also has the ability to charge up her Chi by pressing and holding one of the attack buttons, releasing it when an onscreen visual cue comes into contact with her body. Do it successfully and you fill up a meter that, when charged, powers up standard attacks with additional oomph. It’s all about going bigger. Attack with the Earth element armed, and Korra starts hurling giant boulders. Attack with Air instead, and each swift melee strike spits out a herd of miniature whirlwinds.

The elemental “bending” that’s at the core of the series isn’t fully powered up from the outset. Each element has 10 levels of progression, and all four of them have to first be unlocked as the story unfolds. In the series’ universe, Avatars like Korra possess the rare ability to bend all four elements to their will. Unfortunately, some stuff happens at the start of the game that robs Korra of her abilities.

“I’m not going to go into too much detail on it, but a mysterious old guy … appears and ends up taking away Korra’s bending abilities. Her bending abilities have been taken away before by Chi-blockers … but that only lasts like an hour,” Conkey said.

“This time it feels like it’s something a little more permanent, and it’s not something that anybody’s seen before. So the story involves Korra figuring out (a) can she get her bending back and (b) who is this guy and what is he doing here? He’s hired this army of thugs and they’re everywhere; they’ve invaded Air Temple Islands, they’re all over Republic City, and she needs to figure out what’s going on.”

That’s as much detail as Activision or Platinum is willing to share about the story at this point. It’s set between the second and third seasons of the TV series, picking up after Korra’s season-ending decision to (spoiler alert) leave a gate to the spirit world open in the real world. The events of the game deal with the consequences of that decision, concluding with an epic boss battle that Platinum created in collaboration with the showrunners.

“We’re really excited about the boss battle at the end,” Kurooka said. “We worked together with the show creators — it was a collaborator between Platinum and the creators of the show, Mike [Dante DiMartino] and Bryan [Konietzko], and their team. Working together with them, everyone agreed on and determined the concept, and then it was up to Platinum to figure out how this villain would work. We think it’s going to be really awesome, the type of action you’ve come to expect from Platinum.”

The Legend of Korra comes to PC and PlayStation/Xbox consoles in 2014 as a download-only game.

Editors' Recommendations

Adam Rosenberg
Adam Rosenberg
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…
Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story is a bittersweet eulogy for Riot Forge
A variant key art for Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story.

Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story is a new game about getting out of your comfort zone and connecting with others. In many ways, that's also the story of Riot Forge. The publishing label pushed its corporate parent Riot Games out of its AAA design instincts to expand the world of Runterra. There's only so much narrative you can weave into something like League of Legends, and all of Riot Forge’s games offered unique perspectives that enriched this world. I found fulfillment in that strategy too, as someone who enjoys the world of Runeterra, but didn't want to play League of Legends itself. It’s a treatment that few well-known franchises get outside comic book universes, Warhammer, and Star Wars.

Unfortunately, Bandle Tale is the last of its kind for now as Riot Forge has been shuttered as part of recent Riot Games layoffs. That’s a shame, not just for League of Legends, but the video game industry at large. If nothing else, Bandle Tale is worth checking out as a bold move from a major studio, which is something that's becoming increasingly rare.
A solid sendoff
Developer Lazy Bear Games’ Bandle Tale takes place in Bandle City, home to many of the cute, furry Yordle creatures that League of Legends players are likely familiar with. This gives us our first look into their society, which is fractured when a portal network is destroyed during a party toward the start of the game. After that, it’s up to the player, who had isolated themselves for over 100 years, to reunite the portal network and find their lost friends. Like most Riot Forge titles, Bandle Tale is narrative-focused and has more of a humorous edge than the label’s other games.

Read more
Every key detail from Xbox’s business update: new console, multiplatform games, and more
Xbox's logo used during the Extended Games Showcase

Microsoft just released the latest episode of the Official Xbox Podcast, and it contained lots of crucial details on the future of Xbox. Microsoft addressed everything from how many games it will make multiplatform to the arrival of Activision Blizzard games on Xbox Game Pass to future Xbox hardware.

If you don't want to listen to the full 23-minute podcast and want more details than what's shared in the Xbox Wire post about the discussion, here's a quick rundown of the biggest points made during the episode.
Four Xbox games are going multiplatform
To kick things off, Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, addressed the multiplatform Xbox game rumors. "We made the decision that we’re going to take four games to the other consoles. Just four games, not a change to our kind of fundamental exclusive strategy,” he said. “We’re making these decisions for some specific reasons. We make every decision with the long-term health of Xbox in mind, and long-term health of Xbox means a growing platform, our games performing, building the best platform for creators, reaching as many players as we can."

Read more
The video game industry has laid off thousands this year. Here’s what that means for you
game developer layoffs january 2024 overwatch 2

Layoffs have unfortunately become a nearly nonstop occurrence in the video game industry over the past year. In 2023, over 10,000 workers at game studios lost their jobs, according to data from Game Industry Layoffs. In January 2024 alone, Kotaku reports that over 6,000 developers have already been laid off.

Layoffs at Microsoft hit particularly hard for players, as nearly 2,000 Microsoft developers were let go after years of optimistic promises from Xbox leadership over the Activision Blizzard acquisition, and a survival game project was canceled. While that's been the biggest wave so far this year, we've seen plenty of other companies cutting staff, from Riot Games to Eidos.

Read more