Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s small tech demo talked about a lot of flashy details in a very short amount of time. The video shows off the same scenes and views from the game’s reveal at E3 but offers technical explanations of how the game does what it does. While the title looked ambitious even after its announcement, finding out how the operations for NPCs will take place and how the world of Pandora is being brought to life for players to experience helps to reinforce how much of a feat it
I recently popped down to Ubisoft’s offices just outside of London and was thrown into the multicoloured forests and floating cliffs of Pandora to do whatever I liked. There were some missions to follow as part of the preview build, but otherwise I spent two hours killing fascist military dudes, saving local inhabitants, and flying my Ikran - who I called Floof - high into the sky in search of new discoveries. There is a sense of wonder not dissimilar to the films, like you are discovering the world for the first time as a fledgling Na’vi who must also earn stripes within a tribe that has every reason not to trust them. On the surface this setting is ideal for an open-world game offering untold freedom and experimentation, but Frontiers of Pandora relies too much on past victories to ever escape their uninspiring shadow.
As beautiful as this environment looks, from the lighting and clouds to the reactive flora, the game’s NPC system continues to be one of the most interesting aspects brought up so far. Pandora’s lore as it has been previously established portrays a planet that is completely alive. The inhabitants of the world can connect with each other’s consciousness in an ecosystem where everything co-exi
It’s a good movie! Breaking new ground in the realm of visual effects while building upon the world James Cameron created in countless ways. It’s still pretty dry and predictable when it comes to storytelling and characters, but for the average joe it is more than enough for a film that provides rock solid entertainment value without inspiring much else. This brings us to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a new open world game from Ubisoft and Massive that aims to faithfully expand upon the filmic world with new characters, mechanics, and ideas. After a couple of hours with the game though, it sure seems like a souped-up version of Far Cry .
Story-wise, the four main missions we did involved us aiding the Aranahe clan of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in resolving an issue with the Klingor, bonding with our Ikran, taking down some flying machines of the Sky People, and assaulting one of their bases. Climbing the Ikran Rookery really put the environmental design to the test, giving us a circular chasm to climb and run up through where we interacted with some of the aforementioned flora, did a fun bouncing puzzle, and took giant leaps from place to place. It's such a simple task to give a player, but one that shines in terms of vertical gameplay des
The Snowdrop Engine was already impressive before it was upgraded for Frontiers of Pandora . With its specialized version of the Snowdrop Engine, the game can demand a lot more without hindering performance and delivers the beautiful world that players have gotten to see so far. The engine’s upgrade allows for NPCs and environments that are reactive and Immersive Sandbox Universes to the extent that flora and fauna may change behavior based on a player’s presence. Simply put, the engine has played no small role in making Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora look stunni
In the same vein, water is almost another character in the new movie. Many exploration games such as Abzu and Subnautica have shown that exploring oceans and lakes can be really exciting, so perhaps the game can use these new locations to create a new gameplay experie
Which isn’t a bad idea, and Avatar’s range of exploration and combat fits snugly into the blueprint, especially when you are on the side of one faction vying for territory against another. You’ll take over outposts by completing some pedestrian objectives, or save wildlife from patrolling grunts while exploring the world. There are also resources to gather, locals to help with everyday problems, and discoveries around which are designed much like modern Assassin’s Creed games. Although, most of these were already taken care of in the portion of the world I was allowed to explore, so it was hard to get an accurate idea of what moment-to-moment gameplay would be like aside from scripted missions. It wasn’t ideal, but Pandora remains a gorgeously massive place.
Although the game can learn a lot from the movie, it should not be limited to that either. Often, movie tie-in games are overly attached to the story of the film without bringing anything new to the table, and are quickly forgotten. In recent years, these games have seemingly fallen out of fashion, with more tie-in games being sequels, prequels or franchise-related rather than straight retellings of the same story. Frontiers of Pandora seems to belong to the latter category, but it can still borrow ideas from The Way of Wa
