| Played on a CLX Gaming PC with RTX 4090 and a PS5 |
I know what everyone is thinking – it’s a Ubisoft game, so it’s FarCry with blue people. It’s the run-on joke that’s been ongoing since its initial announcement and I get it. However, when I previewed the game back in October, my worries were put to rest when I experienced that it was far more than just a reskinned game. Massive Entertainment, the people behind The Division, was entrusted in making not only a faithful, canonical entry to the Avatar franchise set just a year before The Way of Water, but they also managed to make one of the best movie-to-game adaptation to date; actually, are there any good ones? Oh – Spider-Man 2 on the PS2. Frontiers of Pandora emerges as a testament to the power of the SnowDrop engine, true to the core and attention to detail – becoming a centerpiece to next-gen technology. There are some shortcomings I’ll admit – and I’ll definitely talk about it, but I think at the same time, it’s easily overshadowed due to the sheer level of care and thought put into the project, that I can’t help but feel excited for what’s to come.
The Eywa Way
Just like the films, the forefront of the game’s allure is its visuals; the world feels genuinely alive at every turn – every fauna and flora, from docile to the hostile, presents an ecosystem teeming with tangible life. There are various insects scattered through the air, ground, and trees, while animals and predators engage in dynamic interactions. Eywa, the sentient life force of Pandora, feels more alive thanks to the bioluminescent nature of the world; every step you take, every shuffle through leaves, all react with a pulse, furthering the immersive factor. The vertical design compliments the immense scope of the games map; gazing up at geomagnetic floating mountains is sort of breathtaking. One of my favorite things to do is taking flight and soaring above the game’s volumetric clouds, even escaping thunderstorms, to reveal a clear sky. It’s not Red Dead Redemption 2 level of detail, but it’s great all the same.
The sense of wonder permeates every aspect of the game, enhanced by the near absence of UI elements. You get two options: Guided and Exploration. The Exploration mode, despite its initial challenges, fosters a genuine sense of discovery without feeling hand-held. You won’t get a loud and noisy screen of icons blocking your every vision, which spawned the awfully hilarious memes when Elden Ring launched. The three distinct regions of the Western Front are a testament to Massive’s dedication to detail. From the misted dampness, moss-covered Clouded Forest to the vibrant pallet of tropical assets within Kinglor Forest, each locale is a visual feast, with insane level to attention to variety and detail regarding fallen trees, rock formations, river and lake characteristics and more. There’s an enormous array of different flora that reacts to your every movement, each based on region and biome. I played this game on PC with an RTX4090 and the way they implemented RT effects ties to the settings itself instead of having a whole section for it; their raytraced techniques is a mix blend of path tracing and SSR ambient occlusion – and it honestly works. Exploring this dense world never took me out of the idea that this is a video game, it instead made me question it – it’s that mind-boggling. Remnants of past wars with the RDA can be found scattered throughout, like outpost and crashed ships – which I love. Like all things, it starts to feel a bit same-y the longer you explore a region, but it takes great effort to get to that point.
Hunting and gathering take center stage, grounding the game in the core ethos of the Avatar series. The non-linear progression removes the traditional XP mechanics, forcing players to engage with Pandora’s wildlife actively; the people of Pandora are fierce about Eywa as it is the life force that allows to give and take – damaging any facet of this planet is literally killing it. So, to respect this lore aspect – pelts, bones, teeth, leather, horns, ect all have rarity tiers, which are also affected by weather, time of day, biome location and conditioning. If you gather these without care, you’ll still get powerful crafting materials, but it wont be as prestine as it could be. Each animal/materials provides specific perks and stats as well, so while you can just slap any materials into the piece you want to craft, it wont yield the best results in the process – bringing a level of build diversity I did not expect, to be honest. Crafting almost becomes an art, with each piece contributing to the overall strength of your character. There’s co-op in this game, so in theory you’ll both have vastly different perks without even realizing it. There are some forms of progression, but it ties to the exploration aspect of the gameplay loop, like finding Bellsprig’s that spews green spores upon interacting with it, giving you permanent health increase. There’s also the Tarsyu flora that allows you to connect your Na’vi kuru, or the braided tendrils that’s attached to the head, speak to your Ancestors for gameplay enhancements such as double jump and resource-free fast travel, in addition of giving you skill points to further enhance your playstyle – which can be allocated to traits like Warrior, Hunter, Survival for upgrades like more damage with RDA weapons or carrying more health items in your pouch.
The Way of the Kuru
Controlling your Na’vi feels intuitive and responsive. It feels satisfyingly similar to Mirror’s Edge, offering a seamless blend of speed, sliding, jumping and whipping yourself up to higher places with alien sapling vines. Your Na’vi does get hungry however which allows for a cooking mechanic on top of crafting – your hunger debuff is pretty simple but adds a layer to resource management; rather than hindering the player, it subtly encourages strategic play, tying into health and energy management. The food you cook allows to replenish your energy and give temporary buffs in the process. You also have The Na’vi Sense – it’s a bit similar to AC’s Eagle Vision, but more than just spotting enemies. It has a limited field of view by design to feel as if it’s part of gameplay rather than a means to make the game easier. Sure, you can tag enemies and whatnot, but the key use of the Na’vi Sense is to learn more about the world around you – you’ll get information on your enemies, their background and weaknesses in addition to the rarity and condition of the flora around you. It’s a gameplay technique that was used in Watch Dogs and Division, but it just works more intuitively here.
Yes, of course there’s the ability to take flight here. Throughout your journey you will have the opportunity to bond with your Ikran. But you can also bond with a Direhorse, a land animal – which feels like Massive is paying homage to Red Dead Redemption 2 – which I’m all for. Both creature controls are tight and responsive allowing for some sick maneuvering and combat. Frontiers of Pandora is also layered with the ability to shoot weak spots from RDA mechs and hostile animals. You have one gadget called the SID hacking device, allowing for some light puzzle elements. It’s mainly used during story beats and taking down RDA outpost, alongside stealth play where you can hack the mechs, put them in maintenance mode, and rip them out of their rigs for a quiet takedown. It’s a step above anything we’ve gotten from the FarCry games; these outposts are varied and require more than just shooting and blowing things up – the use of your SID adds a layer of puzzle solving within the chaos; hacking, rerouting power, destroying generators, pulling levers, rotating valves, opening vents and diminishing its overall output before destroying the rest of the RDA troops yields additional materials/gear, with a chance for higher variants to be earned if done without being detected. It’s clear that Massive went to great lengths with their environmental design, and these outposts are no exception – there are multiple paths the players can take depending on their playstyle. I also like that over time as you topple these RDA outposts, the nature of Pandora heals from their pollution and is overtaken by the forest through overgrowth, moss, vines and the like.
I mentioned some of the things you can do while exploring like finding the Tarsyu and Bellsprig. Each region has unique activities like Memory Totems that’s designed to experience and appreciate the environment through storytelling, RDA Field Labs to help heal Pandora, a meditative mini-game called Memory Paintings that’s akin to Ghost of Tsushima’s flute activity, caves to delve in for loot and potentially more. However, as immaculate and interactive Pandora is, I find that the sense of wonder is dampened by the omission of ancient ruins or artifacts that’s accompanied by mystery and wonder to the exploration. See, when I stumbled upon the hidden Shrines in Breath of the Wild, it was more than just going in for loot and upgrades, it challenged me as a player through puzzle solving, while wondering about the architects of these Shrines. This is a missed opportunity in Frontiers of Pandora, and I hope Massive is working on implementing this element at some point of this game; if companies like CDPR has shown anything in the gaming industry with Cyberpunk 2077, is that it’s possible to vastly improve their games post launch via free add-ons.
The RDA and The Agenda
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora takes place a year before the events of The Way of Water. You are a young Na’vi enrolled into The Ambassador Program (TAP) by the RDA, which was seemingly established to raise young Na’vi in the human cultural sphere. They would become RDA envoys to the various clans and communities on Pandora, furthering the RDA agenda while letting the Na’vi benefit from human advancements. However, as Na’vi and human relations on Pandora soured, the program started leaning towards military and covert skills to be used in a more confrontational landscape.
After escaping TAP years later, you become part of the Resistance in the Western Frontier. The RDA has established a foothold in this previously unseen part of Pandora, and the Resistance’s goal is to stop the RDA from polluting the land, killing the wildlife, and disrupting the natural balance. As a child of two worlds, you are uniquely able to understand this conflict and bring it to an end, all while learning more about your own clan and what it means to be Sarentu. This is an admittingly very interesting set up for me, I love the promise of high-stakes story beats, and Massive absolutely delivers in that front.
Unfortunately, I found that several elements hindered my immersion. For one, I just don’t understand why there’s any level of fade-to-black transitions to cutscenes. I hate it. Plain and simple. It’s disruptive, takes me out of the game every time, and it happens far too often. I mean, just talking to side characters for additional quest also fades in transition. It’s immensely irritating, I’ll admit – and this technique needs to be eliminated from gaming. It’s baffling that a game running on such powerful engine result to this primitive design philosophy. While story execution is at its finest here, Ubisoft still has a huge problem with dialogue delivery. To be fair, most Na’vi actors did a hell of a job conveying emotion at the right time. But the human actors? The most boring bunch I’ve seen in a while. There’s this one key character named Priya, this supposed genius that comes off forcefully quirky in a setting that’s supposed to be dire. I think there needs to be a level of humor in everything, but it has to fit the tone, and this pink-haired character is not it for me. Additionally, there were some story moments that was designed to be impactful executed poorly. It doesn’t happen often, but enough to remember. There are incredible set pieces that genuinely shocked me – I mean like, same level as the nuke scene in the original Modern Warfare. I won’t spoil it, you would just have to see for yourself.
There are a few gameplay shortcomings – I mentioned that at the opening, right? Alongside plot excution flaws and missed opportunity with exploration, gameplay also suffers a bit. For one, weapon options are limited – although there are tiered variants and the option to add 2 mod attachments that alters the look of the weapons, there’s still only 7 types and 1 disposable weapon like the RDA rocket launcher. There are 3 different bows, a throwable spear, a sling stick that launches various explosives and a EMP grenade. Yeah, you can get bows with different arrow types like fire, poison and impact grenades each with different stats and perks – but what happened to pistols, snipers, SMGs, swords, spears, shields? I understand there’s an established connected universe, but you’re going to try to convince me that there’s no additional weapons mentioned above? The fantasy to have your 10ft tall Na’vi charging through a legion of foot soldiers with a tall shield and then spearing through a mech with your 35ft long heavy spear could have been insane!
Additionally, while the enemy is challenging, their otherworldly ability to laser you from any distance is irritating. There are mechs that mortar strikes your position from any terrain level, behind any barrier, with pinpoint accuracy. What?! This is coupled by wonky awareness level; you are immediately spotted by the entire base no matter where you are 85% of the time. Sometimes you are not, but that doesn’t happen often – thankfully all of this can be fine tuned with patch notes.
Note: Avatar: I must preface this, Frontiers of Pandora is by far one of the most functioning games this year, I did not encounter a single bug or performance issue in the least. Damn near pristine.
Exploring the world also has its shortfall – you will encounter NPC’s hunting and gathering, some you can interact with and offer materials or point of interest which I think is very cool – sadly, their lifeless mannequin posture removes me from the immersive factor once again. It’s not super terrible, but when you present the level of density and interactivity that Avatar has, these shortcomings tend to pop out more than you think. The lifelessness spreads across all NPC within clan settlements and so on, doing very Bethesda-like things just standing around with no real way to disrupt their behavior, like you wish you could. It doesn’t hinder the overall experience, but it’s worth noting nonetheless.
REVIEW SCORE: 8.5/10
From The Division to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Massive Entertainment delivered an experience that’s worth your time. Their SnowDrop Engine is at its peak here with immaculate scope and density while reaching a level of interactivity you don’t see very often. It may not be perfect, but the overall experience offers a unique take to the open world gameplay loop in making hunting and gathering actually fun to do.
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