Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Review

When Avatar, the highest grossing film franchise of all time was announced to be getting a video game adaptation and was partnering for Ubisoft, I was both curious and had a few questions. 1. How have we not had more Avatar video games in the years since the first film and 2. How would this collaboration with Ubisoft play out. On one hand I could see a lot of components that would translate well to an Ubisoft style title, but also a lot of areas where this project could easily fall apart if not handled correctly. Now after playing through Frontiers of Pandora, I’m glad to report that the game is a fun experience, whether you’re a massive fan of the source material or not. And while it’s not a perfect game, it’s clear that it’s been made with a lot of love for the series and provides an experience that complements the films rather than solely relying on retelling them or impacting what’s already come before.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a first-person open world adventure game where you take control of your very own Na’vi that was raised by humans. The RDA continues its quest to take over and colonise Pandora. Your character grows to join a group of resistance fighters and set out on a quest to recruit other Na’vi clans and companions to assist in your quest of taking down the RDA and releasing the grip they have on Pandora and it’s resources. A journey that allows you to naturally explore and build relationships with the world of Pandora and its native inhabitants the more you progress through the story.

The game let’s you explore the rich world established in James Cameron’s movies but is set on the Western frontier, a separate part of the world to the main focus of the films and kicks off between the first and second Avatar movies. I liked that this allows the game to utilise the rich world building established in the films but then tell it’s own story, without having to rely on characters and moments pulled from the source material specifically.

One of the first things you’ll notice upon being set free in the land of Pandora is just how visually gorgeous this game is. The vibrant greens, blues, reds and purples of Pandora’s native flora and fauna really pop on the screen and the jungle landscapes are lush and packed with detail. This is not only the best looking Ubisoft game, it’s one of the prettiest games to come out this year, period. Frontiers of Pandora has so many gorgeously vibrant environments to see and explore and the world feels alive and the environment often reacts to your presence. Something that is often lacking in many open world games. There’s no shortage of open world games these days, but with many of them, the world is a known commodity and is just a host for the story and adventuring to take place in. But here, the world is so different and interesting that I found myself actively wanting to explore more of it and interact with the various flora and fauna I came across just to see how it would react, if it was friend or foe and what the consequences of doing so would be.

Thankfully, the game seems like it’s been designed around having you experience this amazing and alien world by bringing the environments to the forefront of your focus and doing away with the typical HUD you’d expect to see in most other open world games, and especially other Ubisoft titles, cleaning up the experience massively.

Frontiers of Pandora encourages you to actively explore the world. The mission objectives it provides act more as a list of hints at times of what directions, landmarks, biomes or specific points of interest to look for rather than offering an on-screen map, riddled with objective map markers. This, combined with your’s character’s Na’vi Vision, an ability that highlights key locations, enemies and collectable items allows you to navigate the world and complete the set objectives seamlessly, without having to spend time in menus looking at maps, or navigating through the world just following an onscreen compass rather than taking in your beautiful surroundings and immersing yourself within the experience.

Navigating the world is also a fun gameplay experience, thanks largely to the agile nature of the Na’vi. Their increased agility lends itself well to rushing through jungles, parkouring over and under objects and you’ll often utilise this speed during combat to outrun enemies or get into position to hit optimal weak spots on foes. So even though you don’t have the same level of firepower as the RDA, your speed combined with your strategy can still result in the win when it comes to combat. And when travelling on foot just won’t do, you can also take to the skies on the back of an Ikran to get a view of the grand distant vistas of Pandora and travel across it’s lands in quick fashion

Similarly to other recent Ubisoft roleplaying titles, Frontiers of Pandora also incorporates a skill tree that allows you to enhance yourself with new abilities and perks as you continue to progress through the game. On top, there’s a crafting system allows you to enhance your Na’vi by crating and upgrading gear to buff health and defence, enhance resistances and even damage output against specific enemy types. It provides a space to utilise all of the resources you collect throughout your journey in Pandora, such as various types of moss, creature teeth and bones etc to create new weapons and outfits for your character. The game lets you upgrade individual components of your outfit including things such as your head, chest and arm guards, through to your waist cloth, ankle guards and even weapons. And I appreciated that even with the vast array of items and upgrades that can be crafted, the designs of the gear still fit visually within the art direction of the Avatar universe and didn’t push the boundaries too far to the point where the character looks like closer to something we’d see in a Marvel action movie by the end.

The moment to moment gameplay loops directly back into the crafting side of the game as when you’re doing hunts or foraging resources, the quality of the ingredient directly impacts how good the output of that material will be when used for crafting. Sneakily taking down a beast swiftly with a bow for example is going to provide a higher quality resource compared to a beast that was riddled with riffle bullets.

While the most of Frontiers of Pandora is pretty solid, there were some areas of the game though that did fall a little flat. I found that while fun for the most part, the mission structure, especially those that involve taking back enemy bases from the RDA does grow quite repetitive by the end of the game. I also found that by the end of the game, I had little to no connection with many of the companion characters you encounter throughout the game. That’s not to say that their individual involvement wasn’t interesting, I just found that many of them had no long lasting impact on the journey and that it grew increasingly hard to differentiate who was who a lot of the time, given how similarly most of the Na’vi appear and how difficult many of the names are to remember. For a story about building connections and forming a rebellion, I would have loved to have a greater sense of camaraderie by the end of the journey than what I actually felt. I do need to commend the actual performances of the characters though, they were all-round solid and helped sell the motivations of the characters and the lip synching tech used is some of the best in recent games, this results in a performance that is as immersive as it is visually impressive.

Overall, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a faithful and welcome addition to the Avatar movie franchise. It takes the established world building and builds upon it with an original quest to provide a way for the player to experience the vibrant yet dangerous world of Pandora first hand. While it does have some room to improve when it comes to late mission and character design, it’s clear that the better parts of Ubisoft’s game catalogue have built Frontiers of Pandora up to what it is. Claiming its traversal and gun play from Far Cry, strategic use of planning and use of technology from Watch Dogs and its stealth and strategy mechanics from Assassin’s Creed. I’m keen to see where the team at Massive take the next entry if they’re given the chance to work on a sequel game.

A PS5 review code was provided for the purpose of this review.

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