Play as the Humans?

[RedRapture]

Can you play as the humans in this game? I'm getting tired of being shoehorned into playing the bad guys in these games when I really want to play as the humans and, ya know, work to save the species.

[karmazyn1]

Originally posted by ThetaCentauri:

I want to play as the antagonists! Take over the planet and building a mining empire!

You should check Satisfactory.

[MugHug]

Originally posted by WikiTora:

I too wish we could bring democracy to Pandora...

We are struggle to keep it in the USA so the odds for Pandora look poor.

[Thomas Andresen]

Originally posted by RedRapture:

There was a game that came out on the PS2 (I think, could be a different console) shortly after Avatar released that was part of the lore that showed the first 'war' between the humans and the Navi and it was very clearly stated that the Navi started it. In it you could play as a human soldier and even had the option to go traitor later on in the game or remain loyal to humanity. The fact this game doesn't have that shows that, much like the movie Avatar, storytelling has taken a back seat to pushing players to pick a specific side and distract them from a presumed lousy story with fancy graphics.

The choice in that game is really only about when the protagonist joins the fight against the RDA. When you decide to trust your mentor in the Avatar program regarding why the Na'vi started attacking RDA operations, or when you discover the evidence for yourself that RDA is doing terrible things to Pandora. There's a very big "oh ♥♥♥♥" moment when the protagonist discovers what their boss is actually doing only after deciding to trust him over the natives.

And the Na'vi did strike first, but only as a result of not just severe damage done to the ecosystem but also a potential threat against the entity known as Eywa. The worst was yet to come, and in the planning long before the Na'vi struck; the protagonist discovers, on either story path, RDA's plan to "hijack" Eywa, but the means to do so would instead destroy Eywa. This project turns out to be the very reason that the protagonist's transfer to Pandora was fast-tracked. The final mission, Hell's Gate, is always about stopping that project.

So sure, the game gives you that choice, but at the same time, it goes out of its way to tell you what an absolute fool you were to not trust the blue guys. RDA being the bad guys from the very start is not at all ambiguous. At best they were acting with reckless disregard for the consequences of what they were doing on Pandora, but only at first.

[RedRapture]

Originally posted by Thomas Andresen:

Originally posted by RedRapture:

There was a game that came out on the PS2 (I think, could be a different console) shortly after Avatar released that was part of the lore that showed the first 'war' between the humans and the Navi and it was very clearly stated that the Navi started it. In it you could play as a human soldier and even had the option to go traitor later on in the game or remain loyal to humanity. The fact this game doesn't have that shows that, much like the movie Avatar, storytelling has taken a back seat to pushing players to pick a specific side and distract them from a presumed lousy story with fancy graphics.

The choice in that game is really only about when the protagonist joins the fight against the RDA. When you decide to trust your mentor in the Avatar program regarding why the Na'vi started attacking RDA operations, or when you discover the evidence for yourself that RDA is doing terrible things to Pandora. There's a very big "oh ♥♥♥♥" moment when the protagonist discovers what their boss is actually doing only after deciding to trust him over the natives.

And the Na'vi did strike first, but only as a result of not just severe damage done to the ecosystem but also a potential threat against the entity known as Eywa. The worst was yet to come, and in the planning long before the Na'vi struck; the protagonist discovers, on either story path, RDA's plan to "hijack" Eywa, but the means to do so would instead destroy Eywa. This project turns out to be the very reason that the protagonist's transfer to Pandora was fast-tracked. The final mission, Hell's Gate, is always about stopping that project.

So sure, the game gives you that choice, but at the same time, it goes out of its way to tell you what an absolute fool you were to not trust the blue guys. RDA being the bad guys from the very start is not at all ambiguous. At best they were acting with reckless disregard for the consequences of what they were doing on Pandora, but only at first.

Funny, I remember playing it all the way through as loyal to the RDA.

Still, killing Eywa, a malevolent hive mind entity, will only benefit the Navi in the long run. It'll allow the Navi to thrive and grow rather than being routinely culled. Maybe with the being out of the way, humans could actually do good for the Navi. Imagine the change to Navi life if agriculture were to be introduced to them. The culture of warriors and hunters being what every Navi wants to be can be changed to allow for, well, everything a society needs to get out of hunter/gatherer territory and into being an actual society.

But, at the end of the day, it is made *very* clear that without the rock that the RDA harvests from Pandora, humanity is toast. With that being the case, I will always, always, *always* side with the RDA. If it's a question of which species goes extinct, I will always side with keeping humanity alive, as should you.

Course, I would have also done things very differently from how the RDA was doing things. I would have put satellites in orbit with kinetic rod impactors on them and given the Navi one chance to play nice. When they inevitably failed doing that, I would have systematically destroyed every Navi village on the planet with rod drops from orbit.

[Thomas Andresen]

Originally posted by RedRapture:

Funny, I remember playing it all the way through as loyal to the RDA.

Then you weren't paying attention to the story, or the protagonist's audio logs.

Originally posted by RedRapture:

Still, killing Eywa, a malevolent hive mind entity, will only benefit the Navi in the long run. It'll allow the Navi to thrive and grow rather than being routinely culled. Maybe with the being out of the way, humans could actually do good for the Navi.

I'm not sure where you pulled that from, because the only malevolence ascribed to Eywa in any official stuff is in the opinions of various members of the RDA who also happen to subscribe to the "it's hostile to humans so therefore it's evil" mentality.

I'd sympathise with that argument if the Na'vi didn't possess any form of individuality, but they most certainly possess every bit as much individuality as humans. Eywa is most certainly not a hive mind at all. Is it some form of consciousness? Most certainly. The Na'vi has a connection with it, that's almost certainly indisputably true, but in no way are any of the flora and fauna, including the Na'vi, directly controlled by this consciousness. Even more, one of the things the protagonist learns in the first game is that the removal or destruction of Eywa would extremely likely doom all the moon's flora and fauna entirely, and that the idea that doing so would "free them" is literally a dangerously ignorant thought.

Originally posted by RedRapture:

But, at the end of the day, it is made *very* clear that without the rock that the RDA harvests from Pandora, humanity is toast. With that being the case, I will always, always, *always* side with the RDA. If it's a question of which species goes extinct, I will always side with keeping humanity alive, as should you.

Humanity doomed itself and is now fully reliant on a cartoonishly greedy and exploitative corporation to survive? At that point humanity wouldn't be worth saving, regardless of whether the cost is the utter extinction of another sentient race.

That aside, from what I recall from the first game, while it's indisputable that humans and Earth are in a bad place, as best I could tell, humanity being doomed without the efforts of RDA is mostly internal propaganda.

[xxman]

So from what I understood from your statement. you blame humanity on destroying the earth -of which we have no evidence in-story- and therefor humanity does not deserve to live. But a species like the navi which has no hopes of interstellar travel duo to being enslave by a plant like super intelligence and therefor doomed to die in the next few hundred thousand to a million years deserve survival more than humans?

[karmazyn1]

Originally posted by xxman:

So from what I understand, you statement because you blame humanity on destroying the earth of which we have no evidence in-story, humanity does not deserve to live. But a species like the navi which has no hopes of interstellar traveller duo to being enslave by a plant like super intelligence and therefor doomed to die in the next few hundred thousand to a million years deserve survival more than humans?

I think that Navi population is carefully controlled by plant-bio-superbeing. Navi is no more than element of the authoritatian eco plant super empire. Planet feels in danger so it recodes flaura and fauna to fight hostile organizm - humans. Once the job is done the eco system will come back to normal so small tribes of Navi subjevated and carefully monitored and controlled not to advance beyond tribal, green technology.

[xxman]

Originally posted by karmazyn1:

Originally posted by xxman:

So from what I understand, you statement because you blame humanity on destroying the earth of which we have no evidence in-story, humanity does not deserve to live. But a species like the navi which has no hopes of interstellar traveller duo to being enslave by a plant like super intelligence and therefor doomed to die in the next few hundred thousand to a million years deserve survival more than humans?

I think that Navi population is carefully controlled by plant-bio-superbeing. Navi is no more than element of the authoritatian eco plant super empire. Planet feels in danger so it recodes flaura and fauna to fight hostile organizm - humans. Once the job is done the eco system will come back to normal so small tribes of Navi subjevated and carefully monitored and controlled not to advance beyond tribal, green technology.

Which would mean they are doomed to die with there planet. The only way to truly survive is to leave Pandora not to be subjected by it. Say what you will about humans at less they are not slaves to their planet.

[Die Hand Gottes]

Originally posted by RedRapture:

Can you play as the humans in this game? I'm getting tired of being shoehorned into playing the bad guys in these games when I really want to play as the humans and, ya know, work to save the species.

Plays the Avatar game from 2009 where you can play through as a human and also as a Na'vi and I thought that was great
the game still looks pretty good today and is still worth playing.

[RedRapture]

Originally posted by Thomas Andresen:

Originally posted by RedRapture:

Funny, I remember playing it all the way through as loyal to the RDA.

Then you weren't paying attention to the story, or the protagonist's audio logs.

Originally posted by RedRapture:

Still, killing Eywa, a malevolent hive mind entity, will only benefit the Navi in the long run. It'll allow the Navi to thrive and grow rather than being routinely culled. Maybe with the being out of the way, humans could actually do good for the Navi.

I'm not sure where you pulled that from, because the only malevolence ascribed to Eywa in any official stuff is in the opinions of various members of the RDA who also happen to subscribe to the "it's hostile to humans so therefore it's evil" mentality.

I'd sympathise with that argument if the Na'vi didn't possess any form of individuality, but they most certainly possess every bit as much individuality as humans. Eywa is most certainly not a hive mind at all. Is it some form of consciousness? Most certainly. The Na'vi has a connection with it, that's almost certainly indisputably true, but in no way are any of the flora and fauna, including the Na'vi, directly controlled by this consciousness. Even more, one of the things the protagonist learns in the first game is that the removal or destruction of Eywa would extremely likely doom all the moon's flora and fauna entirely, and that the idea that doing so would "free them" is literally a dangerously ignorant thought.

Originally posted by RedRapture:

But, at the end of the day, it is made *very* clear that without the rock that the RDA harvests from Pandora, humanity is toast. With that being the case, I will always, always, *always* side with the RDA. If it's a question of which species goes extinct, I will always side with keeping humanity alive, as should you.

Humanity doomed itself and is now fully reliant on a cartoonishly greedy and exploitative corporation to survive? At that point humanity wouldn't be worth saving, regardless of whether the cost is the utter extinction of another sentient race.

That aside, from what I recall from the first game, while it's indisputable that humans and Earth are in a bad place, as best I could tell, humanity being doomed without the efforts of RDA is mostly internal propaganda.

This is official lore: The RDA is growing an algae that is used to feed most humans on the planet and the planet itself is vastly overpopulated, an urban sprall out of necessity. Humans are starting to get off the planet due to ships that can only operate because of matter/antimatter reactor powered ships like you see in the movie. Power is only maintained in the cities because of matter/antimatter reactors, power which allows the RDA to grow the food humanity needs to survive. The only way to successfully run the power plants is through the unobtainium mined on Pandora.

When humans first came to Pandora and discovered the Navi during mining for the Unobtainium, they were attacked on sight by the Navi. They attempted to negotiate with the Navi so they could mine the mineral in peace, given the Navi appeared to have no use for it. The Navi, again, attacked the humans on sight. Humans grew the first avatars thinking if they were in avatar form, the Navi would negotiate. There's a common pattern here: The Navi refuse to negotiate. They are directed to do as they are by Eywa, which routinely culls the Navi population when it gets too large. Eywa deliberately keeps the Navi in a hunter/gatherer state and does not allow them to be anything other than barbarian savages, attacking anything not of Pandora with a xenophobic fury that beats out anything humans have displayed.

You can believe me or not, you can love it or you can hate it. It is what it is.

Anyway, my previous statement still stands. This is a war between two species for survival at this point, and you have chosen the Navi as the side to survive. I would and will always choose humanity. I hope Humanity goes full on Super Earth on Pandora and wipes the Navi out of existence, only preserving the species on the planet that have a usable resource. If none of them exist, or farming creatures is too much of a hassle, terraform the planet and move excess humans from Sol over to Pandora. This will allow Earth to recover and let humanity survive their overpopulation crisis (that won't happen given current population trends but Cameron never lets fact interfere with his fantasy) and revive the Earth.

I have no sympathies for a barbaric, hostile race that refused the chance to peacefully negotiate when it was offered, nor do I have any sympathy for some evil plant hivemind overlord and its slaves. Burn them all to the ground and then mine under their ashes for the resources we need.

Either way, my original question has been answered. No, you cannot play as the humans in this game. So, I won't be buying it.

[URKA_777_†]

I want to play as human soldier, and kill those blue aliens.

HUMANS FIRST!

[Powellinho.72]

Originally posted by URKA_777_†:

I want to play as human soldier, and kill those blue aliens.

HUMANS FIRST!

and cut that tree down, lots of loggs for the fire, got the marshmallows ready.

[Heimdall]

Originally posted by URKA_777_†:

I want to play as human soldier, and kill those blue aliens.

HUMANS ONLY!

fixed it.

[Black Raven]

Originally posted by RedRapture:

You really gotta learn to pay attention to tiny things like background story.

Say the person who missed the most important details....
Humanity was dying because it destroyed its own eco system, and strip mined and destroyed its own planet instead of investing in renewable energy.

And Navi didn't attack, the negotiations fell through, but the humans forcefull went and mined and start to destroy their home planet, so the Navi fought back.

If they had't fought back the humans would just destroyed another world all over again because they never learned from the past mistakes.

[RedRapture]

Originally posted by Black Raven:

Originally posted by RedRapture:

You really gotta learn to pay attention to tiny things like background story.

Say the person who missed the most important details....
Humanity was dying because it destroyed its own eco system, and strip mined and destroyed its own planet instead of investing in renewable energy.

And Navi didn't attack, the negotiations fell through, but the humans forcefull went and mined and start to destroy their home planet, so the Navi fought back.

If they had't fought back the humans would just destroyed another world all over again because they never learned from the past mistakes.

That is correct if by 'fell through' you mean the Navi refused any negotiations with the humans beyond 'you leave and we won't attack you'. Earth may have been dying or nearly dead due to overpopulation, but the company represented in the movie was not only trying to mine the mineral to keep power running on Earth, keeps ships able to fly, and fighting the aggressive Navi, they were also growing a super-nutritious algae that was feeding most of the planet.

Now though? The Navi fought back, and the humans have gone from 'preserve the planet as much as possible' to '♥♥♥♥ everything on the planet, strip the life for all its got because we'll burn it all out and terraform the planet.' Real nice upgrade for them.