Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora – everything we know so far
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Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an upcoming Ubisoft game that takes us into the world of one of the greatest movies of all time.
Dropped into the rich and vibrant world of Pandora, players take part in their own self-contained story in the battle between the native Na’vi and human invaders. Running on the latest version of Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine for the latest consoles, we expect it to be a showcase of what the Xbox Series X|S and PS5 can do.
There’s still plenty to learn about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, but the game comes at a good time for the series. The first of four new Avatar sequels, Avatar: The Way of Water, released in December 2022. Frontiers of Pandora is penciled in for this year, but an exact release date remains unconfirmed.
It’s been pretty quiet around Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora for a while, but we’re hoping that will change now that we’re finally into its release year. Read on for everything there is to know about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora so far.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora: to the point
- What is it? A game set in the world of James Cameron’s Avatar movies
- When can I play it? TB 2023
- What can I play it on? PS5, Xbox Series X|S, PC and Amazon Luna
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora release date and platforms
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will release sometime in 2023 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC, and Amazon Luna.
Frontiers of Pandora was officially revealed during Ubisoft’s Ubisoft Forward showcase at E3 2021. It kind of surprised us all, but we’re still waiting for Ubisoft to shrink that release window. We know (via Game Spot (opens in new tab)) that the game had previously been delayed to Ubisoft’s financial year starting in April 2022 in response to the delay of Avatar: The Way of Water, which was eventually released in December 2022.
Frontiers of Pandora release, while originally targeting 2022, is on track to release in 2023 despite Ubisoft revealing (opens in new tab) in January 2023 that it had scrapped three unannounced projects and further delayed its upcoming pirate adventure Skull and Bones due to underperforming releases in late 2022.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora trailers
Technical Showcase
Ubisoft has released a technical showcase for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and while it doesn’t show any new footage from the game, it does provide a little insight into what the team plans to do with the new iteration of the Snowdrop engine.
First look trailer
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was surprisingly revealed at Ubisoft’s Ubisoft Forward event at E3 2021. The reveal initially claimed the game would release in 2022, but has since been pushed back to sometime in 2023.
The trailer gives us a look at Pandora, which arguably looks even more beautiful than it did in the 2009 movie, from its quirky creatures to thriving flora and fauna. But all is not perfect in Pandora, as the RDA (or Resources Development Administration) appears to threaten not only the world, but those who live in it. But the Na’vi are not going down without a fight. Watch the trailer below:
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora: gameplay and story
Details on Frontiers of Pandora’s gameplay and story are a bit light, but we were able to gather a few possible snippets from the reveal trailer and Ubisoft’s site.
The official site (opens in new tab) for the game describes it as a “first-person action-adventure” set in an “immersive, open world”. The description also states that the game takes players into a “self-contained story” where they “play as a Na’vi and embark on a journey across the Western Frontier, a never-before-seen part of Pandora”.
The first-look trailer gives us a brief look at this first-person perspective. We also see a Na’vi riding a mount – which doesn’t quite look like a Direhorse – suggesting we will hopefully can engage in horseback combat, or at least we’ll be able to cross Pandora on horseback.
The world also seems to be inhabited by creatures that we’ve both seen and haven’t seen in the movie, so expect some surprises. There also appears to be some sort of hub where Na’vi can congregate. We hope this can mean online play – we also hope we can customize our Na’vi.
From the trailer, it also looks like Pandora’s native Na’vi will face off against the RDA, as in the movie, who threaten to destroy their world and possess significant weapon technology. This trailer shows RDA helicopters on the warpath, trying to destroy a Na’vi. The Na’vi jumps onto a Large Leonopteryx and fires arrows at the helicopter, before a final arrow, attached with an explosive, hits the vehicle, which then bursts into flames.
Avatar: Pandora’s Limits: News and Rumors
James Cameron shares his thoughts on Frontiers of Pandora
James Cameron revealed his thoughts on Ubisoft’s upcoming game during a IGN (opens in new tab) interview in 2022. Confirming that he is taking a hands-off approach, he explained:
“We’re really excited about what Ubisoft is doing with their game design. I’m not telling them what to do – they know their world, their business, their market. We’re just watching closely so they don’t do anything that’s not canonical in terms of Na’vi culture and what the RDA is doing on Pandora and all that stuff.
Years of post-launch content
Ubisoft is planning a long life for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora when it comes out later this year, it seems. In a Q2 earnings call in 2022 (via TweakTown (opens in new tab)), said Frederick Duguet, CFO of Ubisoft, “Avatar Frontiers of Pandora is a big game in addition to the highly anticipated movie. Development is progressing well and it’s a beautiful world delivered by the Snowdrop engine. That’s going to be a very long game in terms of content delivered over many years.”
NPCs will “understand the state of the world”
In a video showing the technology behind the game, the Avatar development team discussed how the game’s NPCs will behave and react more realistically to the game’s world. In the video, Alice Rendell, Lead Narrative Realization Designer, said that “the different activities NPCs can perform in the world, and the different animations they have, can really make the world feel alive”. As a result, according to Rendell, the team “wanted to take it one step further and created a system where our NPCs understand the state of the world – weather, player progress or time of day, for example”.
Even plants will respond in some way, with senior technical artist Kunal Luthra explaining that “the advantage of Snowdrop is that it can handle quite complex shaders.” “To add life to Pandora’s vegetation, we created many interactive shaders that can be influenced by the player, from real-time wind simulations and interactions to intelligent plants that respond to your presence,” Luthra explains.
Powered by Snowdrop
We know that Frontiers of Pandora is built on Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine, with games like Tom Clancy’s The Division 2, South Park: The Fractured But Whole, and Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle already using this engine.
“In February 2017, it was announced that we are embarking on an amazing journey into the world of Pandora with Lightstorm Entertainment and FoxNext Games, developing a new cutting-edge game set on the beautiful and dangerous moon featured in the iconic Avatar movie. franchising,” Massive entertainment site (opens in new tab) is reading.
“Our studio leverages its expertise and its proprietary technology, the Snowdrop engine, to deliver the wonders of Pandora to everyone. Players are immersed in this amazing world.”
A focus on the current generation
Developer Ubisoft Massive has detailed why Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora won’t be released on last generation machines like PS4 and Xbox One. As you would expect, this is for technical reasons.
In an interview with IGN (opens in new tab) in 2021 Nikolay Stefanov, technical director of programming, explained how much more of a scene can be shown on PS5 and Xbox Series X thanks to their more powerful technology, explaining: “[New consoles allowed] us to have much better object detail up close, but also when you’re flying high in the sky – to have a great long distance view and rendering where we can even use the ray tracing to make shadows super far away, you you know, two or three miles from you.”
This should also mean that areas such as dense jungles and forests can charge and render much more efficiently than on the latest generation of technology. Areas like this have traditionally struggled to maintain a consistent frame rate and texture quality due to the sheer volume of objects that must be displayed on screen at any one time.