Things We Know About Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora

Weapons are quite varied as well. Thanks to her unique background, the protagonist can handle different types of firearms, or she can go for a quieter approach with a bow and arrow, or combine them with explosive arrows. A big part of the appeal of Far Cry is the variety of weapons and ways to accomplish tasks. It looks like Frontiers of Pandora is going to deli

Your mileage with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will vary depending on two things: your love for Far Cry, and your love for Avatar. If you’re the only person on this planet who loves both of these things more than anything, then I have some amazing news. Otherwise, this feels like a visually stunning open-world game without the mechanical or narrative depth required to help it stand out in a year of masterpieces. I want to see more from the full game, but only for the benefit of my doubt that it offers something beyond these lukewarm initial impressions.

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 .


If there is a section of the game that lets players infiltrate the RDA, the possibilities for microtransactions increase substantially. The avatar frontiers of pandora hairstyles series already has weapons, helicopters, and other vehicles that have been created specifically for the world of Pandora. Unlocks could include the various assault ships, trucks, and gunships that players could use to take the land and find Unobtanium. Locking these behind paywalls or making them easier to grind toward with a premium currency could make Frontiers of Pandora more like Assassin's Cre

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.
When trying to track down an objective, instead of a map marker you are given a handful of generic descriptors that are meant to encourage natural exploration of the world, but in most cases I would simply follow the quest icon and walk around awkwardly until I stumbled upon what I was searching for. Pandora is a fairly homogenous mixture of bright colours and alien fauna, meaning it was difficult to pinpoint proper landmarks or feel like I was making a mark on a place I would come to fondly memorise. It felt like an extra hurdle, and one that doesn’t do enough to differentiate itself from its contemporaries. Sprinting can feel weirdly slow too, making on-foot traversal of Pandora a bit of an afterthought once you have access to a flying mount who can be summoned from literally anywhere. When I could fast travel or soar into the sky, walking around on my lanky blue legs didn’t feel worth the trouble without knowing exactly what side missions would await me on the ground.

The first thing I noticed when jumping into the game was how much of its control scheme and gameplay mechanics feel transplanted from Ubisoft’s long-running open-world series. I can pull back a bow similarly, or sprint forward to clamber up platforms in ways that feel almost identical. You can’t shake the similarities, so much so that it wouldn’t be a stretch to label Frontiers of Pandora as a licensed side project, one that takes an existing universe and applies the Far Cry model to it.

Combat is also very easy , or it at least it was in the preview build. Human mechs that I recall taking out dozens of Na’vi in the films can be downed with three arrows or fewer than a full magazine of bullets in Frontiers of Pandora, turning outposts into a cakewalk. You are also very tall, so human enemies can be brushed aside with a light punch unless they’re hiding in the mountains or atop tall platforms aiming snipers at you. Even as a new species in a video game that could easily expand on the types of technology and weapons they have access to, Massive hasn’t done much here to take advantage of that. I can use some sort of cool launcher that can fling poisonous or explosive projectiles, but when it’s more of a chore to use than existing weapons, there wasn’t much of a point. Much of it feels uninspired.