Ubisoft has confirmed that a lot RDA’s military vehicles to be appearing in Frontiers of Pandora . The gameplay overview showed the protagonist destroying several of them, including a mech suit and an SA-2 Samson. Whether the player will be limited to destroying them, or if they can in fact operate the RDA’s vehicles, is not yet cl

The other thing I think that is needed to make it great is that it’s got new experiences, new things, new places, new characters, new stories. Because if it’s just the same characters and the same story and the same places that’s in the movie, then you’re not going to be surprised. You’re not going to have that, “Oh my god, I haven’t seen this before” jaw drop, which is I think a big part of the movies. Like, “Oh my God, I have never seen this.” It’s an act of pure creation. And so we needed to do new animals, and to do that, we needed new environments that they could live in. So it all ended up with a bunch of new, and that I think is what makes it so g

Magnus Jansen: Oh, wow. There are a couple of big milestones, I think. In any video game or even software, there are these big stages, like alpha, beta, et cetera. And then before the alpha, there are sub-milestones before that. There was this point where we had our ikran, the banshee, your own personal dragon. We had those systems up and running, and then we had that working. And when we get the Vista system and the rendering up and running on the map we have of the Western Frontiers, which is what we call the new part of Pandora that we crea

The game will take place in the 1800s, long before the events of the books and movies, although there are some important Harry Potter characters alive at the time of the Legacy game who might appear. But for the most part, the game will be trying to tell its own story independent of what people are already familiar w

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.

Magnus Jansen: It’s a great question or a train of thought, because this was something that was very important to us from the start. Because starting out, it’s no secret if you know anything about video games history that when that movie-licensed video games or any licensed video game can be – it can turn out bad if you’re just looking for a quick cash grab or just a quick thing. And I’m super happy to say now, especially back then when we started, that in the first meetings with Lightstorm, James Cameron’s production company, it was super clear that they did not want to do that, a bad game or a quick, “Let’s just you redo the movie and so Hollywood hopefully can get some mon

And I think that when we got those two working together and you were just flying, and we got the floating mountains to be there because these are pretty huge things that are detached from the terrain. But technically there was some work to get that to be performant. That was a huge part, when you can just fly all over the map, I would

Analyzing the reveal trailer, it seems that Frontiers of Pandora will be about exploring the planet as an Avatar Frontiers Of Pandora missions and won’t be about following the RDA. Without guns to play with, the best possible comparison is most likely Far Cry Primal , which actually didn’t have any microtransactions and only one DLC pack. Still, the Ubisoft title had opportunities to monetize with weapons and clothing cosmetics – it might just have seemed out of place in the prehistoric sett

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.

On the opposite end of Pandora, far from its lush natural environments, humans have begun to expand their presence on the planet at an alarming rate. The first film sets up the many interests humans have in the planet and its resources, and The Way of Water explains that, because of their technological advancements and funding from the RDA organization, they’ve been able to essentially build a full city on Pandora in a matter of mon