Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the preview of the Ubisoft open world
Avatar
Once upon a time there was a dream called Avatar. Released in 2009, James Cameron's film marked a major turning point in the film industry and surpassed the box office of Cameron's Titanic, which had held the record for nearly twelve years. He seemed to have been defeated by the success of Avengers: Endgame, then returned to Chinese theaters and even surpassed the Marvel Studios film, regaining the podium with an international box office that is still around three billion dollars. Mind-boggling figures that convinced 20th Century Fox to put four sequels in the pipeline, two of which are already in post production and will see the light respectively in 2022 and 2024.If all goes well, we will have to wait for the 2028 to see the epilogue of this five-part sci-fi saga, but in the meantime Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will also be released, the title unveiled at the end of the Ubisoft Forward and which caught everyone off guard, not least our Vincenzo Letter who for a moment believed it was the new Star Wars and was seized by a faint, in a moment of very high television that you can relive on our Twitch channel. Let's try to understand, however, what kind of game this new tie-in could be.
Frontiers of Pandora
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, an image of the game. In fact, this is not the first videogame tie-in inspired by the work of James Cameron. Already in 2009 it was Ubisoft Montreal who developed, for almost every platform, a mediocre prequel to the film, entitled James Cameron's Avatar: The Game, on which it will be better to spread a merciful veil. Frontiers of Pandora represents a real restart, in short, and the launch window should not surprise anyone: we are talking about a generic 2022, the year in which we should also see the second film in the room, which for the game would be an excellent springboard. launch. It is clear that, after all these years, the enthusiasm towards the brand has largely subsided, and Ubisoft will do well to wait for the release of Avatar 2 to ride the wave and give the new game, also developed by Massive Entertainment in collaboration with Lightstorm Entertainment and Disney, greater chances of success.Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, an image of the game. The trailer we saw is certainly spectacular, especially because, while showing no gameplay, it once again sports the muscles of Snowdrop, Ubisoft's excellent proprietary engine, in a new iteration that seems to run only on PC and next-generation consoles . The information on the game at this point is very little and we can only speculate. The trailer showed us some beautiful glimpses of Pandora, day and night, and an aerial battle between the Na'vi riding their leonopteryx and the RDA's AT-99 Scorpions. It seems that the fauna and flora of the alien planet will have a considerable importance in the economy of the game, given that the trailer lingers a lot on the creatures and plants and on the interactive relationship that the player can establish with them, touching the flowers or riding the animals.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, a game image. We must admit that the action scenes had us a bit worried: at the beginning we had the clear impression that Frontiers of Pandora was yet another arena-shooter in which players could choose whether to fight as the Na'vi or in those of the RDA and therefore face each other in more or less large spaces, in a kind of modern Warhawk branded Avatar. A formula that, let's face it, would also have made sense. The Ubisoft press release, however, confirmed the nature of the Massive game, which will actually be an action-adventure in the first person, a solution that is not at all obvious if you consider the developer's history.
The official details do not define a precise temporal location within the film saga: apparently, we will step into the shoes of a Na'vi and explore the Western Frontier, a region of Pandora that the film did not have shown. Our goal will be to protect the alien world and repel the forces of the RDA, practically the evil earthlings who want to bone it in search of the unobtainio.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, an image of the game. Difficult, therefore, to frame the intentions of Ubisoft and Massive, but we have some ideas: the fact that this is a first-person adventure immediately reminded us of Arkane Studios' Dishonored. The physiognomy of the Na'vi and their ability to stealthily move and make prodigious leaps thanks to their mighty muscles suggests a title in which stealth and survival elements could be mixed. Players, who apparently will be able to customize their alter ego to better empathize, could then freely explore the Western Frontier of Pandora and face the dangers represented not only by the humans of the RDA, but also by the wild creatures that populate the planet, as for for example, the ferocious thanators already seen in the 2009 film. It is likely that the player does not impersonate a real Na'vi, but rather an avatar, that is, a remote controlled simulacrum like the protagonist Jake Sully did before definitively transferring his human conscience there . In this way we may have to play two distinct parts of the adventure: one in which we are human and one in which we are Na'vi.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, an image of the game. But maybe we are running too fast with the imagination. At the moment, the thing that matters most to us is to understand the size and scope of the open world mentioned by Ubisoft in its press release. It is not a question to be taken lightly, especially after having released a trailer in which the Na'vi flit astride the majestic Last Shadows: this would mean guaranteeing a three-hundred and sixty-degree exploration within a three-dimensional space, and we can't even to imagine the complexity of such a solution, in which the stakes of the invisible walls would end up completely disassembling the illusion fueled by the first-person view, among other things. We will therefore have to wait for a real gameplay to find out about one of the most surprising announcements of this unusual E3 2021.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, an image of the game. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has potential. James Cameron's alien world shouldn't need any introduction, but it's been a little too many years since the first film and interest in the brand has certainly waned: with sequels coming out and over-the-top production quality, the game developed by Massive on behalf of Ubisoft could easily carve out an important space in the panorama of 2022. It remains to be seen if the gameplay will be able to enhance the imagination of the Canadian director and the promising formula of an open world adventure in the first person.
