Avatar: The Last Airbender skins have landed in Fortnite, and aside from being expensive as hell, they’re pretty cool! I picked up Toph when I logged in last night, and I’ve already bagged my first victory royale as the iconic earth bender. She comes with themed hammers and her championship belt, while also being aged up like her comic book version to get around weird height issues that have forever plagued crossover skins for the battle royale shooter.

Katara and Zuko are also available, while Aang will be released as part of future quests with an Oppa glider and several other cosmetics themed around the show. Fans are loving it, and one of the finest things I’ve seen from the crossover so far is how the game handles Toph’s blindness. She is canonically blind in the show, and it is a major part of her character. She makes use of increased senses for more powerful earth bending and a greater understanding of the world that surrounds her.

Toph appears in The Legend of Korra as a much older woman, and will also be in future seasons of the Netflix show and other animated adaptations.

Toph was also perceived as weak by her family because of it, like she should never be let out of sight in fear something would go wrong. This led to her biting and rebellious personality, and a willingness to turn her disability into a strength, and something she isn’t afraid to joke about. She can’t see, but she can definitely crack a pun or two.

Several times throughout the show, Toph jokes about her lack of eyesight, telling friends that she has finally spotted something they’re looking for, only to realise she’s blind. Or Katara lets Toph know how lovely the stars are at night, despite the fact she can’t see them. It’s cute and never meant as an offensive jab at people with impaired vision, especially when it always comes back around to solidifying valuable friendships. In a stroke of genius, most of this has also transferred over to Fortnite and how Toph reacts to certain different emotes.

The first thing I did after buying Toph was have her use John Cena’s ‘You Can’t See Me’ emote as she waves her hand across her face like The Man Who Cannot Be Seen. The throwing popcorn emote also has Toph missing her mouth as stray kernels fly across the screen, while any emotes that track eye movements as part of their animations take Toph and her disability into account. Players are praising this as surprisingly rich representation, instead of just adapting the character to Fortnite and having her behave like everyone else.

Obviously, you can still see everything in-game perfectly fine while using her skin, although there are still great videos of people stitching together clips of Toph wandering into rooms filled with enemies only to be blasted to pieces because she can’t see them, with comments slamming her as broken because she doesn’t know where she’s going. It’s innocent fun, and reinforces the jokes we fondly remember from the animated series.

It can be easy to label Fortnite crossovers as lazy and cynical nostalgia grabs, and that has been the case in the past, but in recent months it feels far more considered. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles debuted in the game with arguably their best designs in years, while characters like Arcane’s Vi and Jinx or the cast of Amazon’s Invincible have been depicted in a way that somehow makes them belong in a game where pretty much every character is possible.

Fortnite has always been the most impressive example of a metaverse in the world, and will be destined to attract more and more different properties in the form of cosmetic skins. These might exist to promote shows and products, or to simply fold established IP into a game with such popularity that fellow companies would be foolish not to jump at the chance.

If we’re staring down the barrel of a future of Fortnite defined by similar and established IP, the least it can do is capitalise on why we find these franchises and characters so beloved after all this time, either by recontextualising our knowledge of them or expanding on them with additions that only Fortnite is capable of. Avatar is a perfect example of that, and with any luck, there will be plenty more like it to follow.

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Survival Battle Royale Systems 10.0/10 OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 84/100 Critics Rec: 94% Released September 26, 2017 ESRB T for Teen - Violence Developer(s) Epic Games Publisher(s) Epic Games Engine Unreal Engine 5
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Starting life as a tower defense game, Fortnite has become one of the biggest video games out there. Its battle royale mode dominates popular culture, featuring concerts by megastar musicians and crossovers with just about every brand imaginable, from Marvel to the NFL. 

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