Platforms: PC, Xbox One, PlayStation Five
Typical: after waiting a very long time for an Avatar entry, two appear nearly simultaneously. Frontiers of Pandora was announced in 2017, so its lengthy wait hasn’t been as torturous as the 13 years between James Cameron movies, but you might easily forget it was ever planned. However, any such forgetfulness is advantageous because this turns out to be a nice surprise.
The game casts you as an anonymous Na’vi from the previously undiscovered Sarentu tribe, a group of storytellers, and is woven around the two Avatar movies released to date. After being abandoned as a young child, you were raised under the Resource Development Administration’s evil “The Ambassador Program,” also known as TAP in-game. TAP is designed to try and shape young Na’vi into adopting human viewpoints in order to “bridge the gap” with Pandora’s other residents. But the escape opportunity is created at the end of the first film by Jake Sully’s revolt. Well, almost: instead, you’re thrust into stasis and awaken sixteen years later to re-establish a connection to your ancestry and support the growing movement opposing the exploitative “Sky People.”
It should come as no surprise that the pushback from Ubisoft—more especially, from Massive Entertainment, the studio behind The Division—comes in the shape of an open-world adventure that blends combat and first-person exploration with a healthy helping of crafting, cooking, and hunting. It’s easy to draw parallels between it and “Far Cry in space,” especially with some odd design decisions like having a character maker for your blank-slate protagonist even though you never see them and no other character ever reacts to their appearance anyhow. However, it’s difficult to imagine a genre more appropriate for venturing into Pandora’s lush wilderness.
The best way to get back to Pandora before Avatar 3 is here.
Just the sheer beauty and weirdness of this strange, bioluminescent world makes the familiar open-world routines of clearing out enemy camps or unlocking fast travel points far more engaging. This strange, bioluminescent world pulses with life, with ferns that retreat into hiding as you approach, mushrooms the size (and function) of trampolines, and fauna of incredible variety that can help or hinder you. A truly transcendent experience along your character’s journey, being able to bond with and fly an Ikran (Pandora’s dragon-like banshees) opens up new avenues for exploration and allows you to take in the breathtaking skies and peculiar floating islands of the world.
However, Massive leaves tracking objectives unclear, possibly to highlight how elegantly this new Pandora section has been designed. This is intentional; in the options, you may even alternate between the “exploration” and “guided” modes. Regretfully, it can be difficult to consistently stay on task for quests or locate the appropriate supporting character to talk to, even when the former option is chosen. For a while, it’s fun to just wander around and take in the beauty—especially if you happen upon an RDA mining rig or other polluting infrastructure that you can destroy to restore the health of the surrounding area. However, if you want to actually advance the story, you’ll have to spend a good deal of time pressing the button to activate your Na’vi senses in order to see the glowing highlight that indicates your next stop.
However, Frontiers of Pandora introduces some clever variations to the open-world paradigm. For example, character leveling is mostly determined by the caliber of the gear you manufacture rather than an XP grind, which encourages you to refine your Na’vi and hunter-gatherer skills in order to forge better gear. This is where foraging comes in handy as well. Certain components can be damaged during harvesting, and others may have superior qualities depending on the location and weather. If you forage wisely and gather components at the right time, you may be able to craft a more potent, beloved weapon or piece of armor. It’s a fantastic feature that deeply establishes your connection to the outside world while touching on the fundamental ideas of the Na’vi that we’ve seen thus far on screen.
Combat also strongly relies on workmanship; even with access to weapons, powerful bows carved from Pandoran woods frequently feel far more potent. As a result, longbows and hunting bows replace shotguns and rifles as preferred weapons, especially after you acquire talents that increase your carrying capacity. One shot to the exhaust port of an RDA mech, followed by a quick retreat as your adversaries start to fear, is a truly unique experience. You will ultimately be able to tear people out of their armored bodies, though, if you like your conflicts to be a little less covert. This tactic really brings out the Na’vi’s intimidating size and might.
Anyone who has played comparable games will be familiar with many of the talents, powers, and general gameplay mechanics in Frontiers Of Pandora, but what really sets this game apart from a re-imagined Assassin’s Creed is its narrative. In the same way as The Way Of Water revealed more clans, the game’s larger goal of bringing three Na’vi tribes back together allows for a closer look at the many cultures that make up this intriguing universe. In the meantime, Cameron’s big-screen examination of the horrors of colonialism and exploitation is ideally matched by the RDA’s attempts to brainwash the Sarentu tale weavers through TAP in order to control the very soul of the Na’vi. This is particularly evident when one considers the horror of the real-life kidnapping of generations of children from indigenous cultures on Earth. Indeed, it’s as subdued as “Unobtainium,” but it certainly aligns with the Avatar universe’s current themes.
In the end, Frontiers of Pandora doesn’t really break any new ground, but it does a fantastic job of integrating the open-world format with the mythology of Avatar. This is the greatest method to visit Pandora before Avatar 3 comes out, barring the transfer of your consciousness into your own Avatar body, and it’s also one of the best movie-to-game adaptations in recent memory.