Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an upcoming Ubisoft game that will take us into the world of one of the greatest movies ever made.
Players will find themselves plunged into the rich and vibrant world of Pandora, taking part in its own standalone story in a battle between native Nawi and human invaders. Running on the latest iteration of Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine for the latest consoles, we’re hoping this will be a showcase of what the Xbox Series X|S and PS5 can do.
We still have a lot to learn about Avatar: Pandora’s Frontier, but the game is arriving at a great time for the series. first of Four The new Avatar sequel, Avatar: The Way of Water, is slated to release in December 2022. Pandora’s Frontiers is slated for this year, but an exact release date is unconfirmed.
Things have been pretty quiet around Avatar: Pandora’s Borderlands for a while now, but we’re hoping that changes now that we’re finally in its release year. Read on for everything you know about Avatar: Pandora’s Frontiers so far.
Avatar: Pandora’s Frontier: Cut to the chase
- What is this? A game set in the world of James Cameron’s Avatar movies
- when can i play it? TBC 2023
- what can i play it on? PS5, Xbox Series X | S, PC and Amazon Luna
Avatar: Pandora’s Frontiers release date and platforms
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will release in 2023 for PS5, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC and Amazon Luna.
Pandora’s Frontiers was officially revealed during Ubisoft’s Ubisoft Forward Showcase at E3 2021. This took us all somewhat by surprise, but we’re still waiting for Ubisoft to nail down that release window. We Know (via GameSpot) (opens in new tab)) that the game had previously been delayed in Ubisoft’s fiscal year starting in April 2022 in response to the delay of Avatar: The Way of Water, which was eventually released in December 2022.
Pandora’s Limitless release, originally targeting 2022, is on track for a 2023 release, despite Ubisoft’s revelations (opens in new tab) It scrapped three unannounced projects in January 2023 and has further delayed its upcoming pirate adventure Skull and Bones to late 2022 due to poor performance.
Avatar: The Frontiers of Pandora Trailers
tech showcase
Ubisoft released a tech showcase for Avatar: Pandora’s Frontier and although it doesn’t show any new footage from the game, it does give a little insight into what the team plans to do with the new iteration of the Snowdrop engine. ,
first look trailer
Avatar: Pandora’s Frontiers was made a surprise reveal at Ubisoft’s Ubisoft Forward event at E3 2021. The reveal initially claimed the game would release in 2022, but has since been delayed to sometime in 2023.
The trailer gives us a look at Pandora, which arguably looks even more stunning than the 2009 film, from its strange fauna to the thriving flora and fauna. But all is not rosy in Pandora, as the RDA (or Resource Development Administration) haunts not only the world but those who live in it. But the Na’vi are not going down without a fight. Check out the trailer below:
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora: Gameplay and Story
Details are a little slim on Frontiers of Pandora’s gameplay and story, but we’ve been able to gather some possible snippets from the reveal trailer and Ubisoft’s site.
official site (opens in new tab) For the game it is described as a “first-person action adventure” set in an “immersive, open world”. The description also states that the game will take players into a “standalone story” where they will “play as a Na’vi and embark on a journey to the western frontier of never-before-seen parts of Pandora”.
The first-look trailer gives us a brief look at this first-person perspective. We also see a boat riding a mountain – which doesn’t look like a direhorse at all – suggesting that we have hope Be able to participate in mounted combat, or we’ll at least be able to cross Pandora on (sort of) horseback.
It looks like the world is also inhabited by creatures that we both saw in the movie – and haven’t, so expect some surprises. There also seems to be some sort of hub for the Na’vi to congregate. We’re hoping this could mean online play – we’re also hoping we can customize our Na’vi.
From the trailer, it also looks like the Na’vi, the natives of Pandora, will be facing the RDA just like in the film, who threaten to destroy their world and have significant weaponized technology at their disposal. The trailer shows RDA helicopters on the warpath, trying to destroy a Na’vi. The Na’vi jump onto a great leonopteryx, firing arrows at the helicopter before the final arrow fixed with an explosive device hits the vehicle, which then bursts into flames.
Avatar: The Borderlands of Pandora: News and Rumors
James Cameron shares his thoughts on Pandora’s Frontiers
James Cameron reveals his thoughts on Ubisoft’s upcoming game during IGN (opens in new tab) Interview in 2022. Confirming that he is taking a hands-off approach, he explained:
“We’re very excited about what Ubisoft is doing with their game authoring. I don’t tell them what to do – they know their world, their business, their market. We just take a hard look at what It’s not canonical in terms of Na’vi culture and what the RDA is doing on Pandora and all that sort of stuff.
Content from the post-launch years
Ubisoft is planning a long life for Avatar: Pandora’s Frontiers when it releases later this year it seems. in 2022 Q2 earnings call (via Tweaktown) (opens in new tab)), Ubisoft CFO Frederic Duguet said, “Pandora’s Avatar Frontiers is a big game next to the highly anticipated movie. Development is progressing well and there’s a beautiful world delivered by the Snowdrop engine. It’s going to be a very long game.” material distributed over several years.”
NPCs will “understand the state of the world”
In a video showcasing the technology behind the game, Avatar’s development team discussed how the game’s NPCs would behave and react more realistically in the game world. In the video, Lead Narrative Realization Designer, Alice Rendell, stated that “the different activities that NPCs can do in the world, and the different animations they have, make the world feel really alive”. As a result, according to Rendell, the team “wanted to take it a step further and create a system where our NPCs sense the state of the world – for example, weather, player progress, or time of day”.
Even plant life will react in some way, with senior technical artist Kunal Luthra explaining that “the advantage of Snowdrop is that it can handle fairly complex shaders.” “To add life to Pandora’s vegetation, we created several interactive shades that the player can interact with, real-time wind simulations and intelligent plants that react to your presence,” Luthra explained.
powered by snowdrop
We know that Pandora’s Frontiers 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 the engine. .
“In February 2017, it was announced that we are embarking on an amazing journey into the world of Pandora, together with Lightstorm Entertainment and FoxNext Games, developing a new cutting-edge game set on the beautiful and dangerous moon from the flagship Avatar film suffrage,” mass entertainment site (opens in new tab) reads.
“Our studio is leveraging our expertise and our proprietary technology, the Snowdrop Engine, to bring the wonders of Pandora to everyone. Players will be immersed in this amazing world.
A focus on current-gen
Developer Ubisoft Massive has detailed why Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora won’t be releasing on last-gen machines like the 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 rendering of a scene could be done on the PS5 and Xbox Series X thanks to their more powerful technology, explaining:[New consoles allowed] We have much better object detail than you would have, but even when you’re flying high in the air – to render a beautiful vista and far-away, where we also use ray tracing to create very distant shadows. Could be, you know, three or four kilometers away from you.”
It should also mean that areas such as dense forests and jungles will be able to load and render much more efficiently than previous generation technology. Such regions traditionally struggle to maintain a steady frame rate and texture quality because of the sheer amount of objects being rendered on screen at any given time.