Review: ‘Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’ delivers on the promise of the wild blue yonder

With the $2.3 billion box office smash that was 2022’s Avatar: The Way of Water, James Cameron’s ecologically conscious sci-fi fantasy cemented its place as one of the biggest entertainment franchises in the world. And yet, it’s widely noted that there’s not a passionate Avatar fanbase on the same level as the MCU or Star Wars. Well, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora may be a big step to that finally happening.

You will slide on the loincloth and pick up the bow of a player-created Na’vi. The conceit is that you and your friends were captured as children by humans soon after their arrival on Pandora. The intention was to groom you into becoming an RDA operative, though the events of Avatar result in the programme being immediately shut down. The order is to terminate you, but you and your friends are instead placed in cryostasis and are unthawed a year before the events of The Way of Water.

From there it’s out into the “Western Frontier,” a new region of Pandora not yet seen in the movies. Despite this being a fresh environment, anyone who’s seen Avatar will immediately recognize the rainforest flora and fauna, flying rocks, and magic trees — and the first tribe you encounter aren’t a million miles away from the forest-dwelling Omatikaya of the films.

Just another Ubisoft open-world game?

Let’s get some things out of the way up top. Yes, Frontiers of Pandora is a Ubisoft open-world game with all that that entails. Thankfully there are no towers to climb to reveal the map, though the overall design will be familiar to anyone who’s played a Far Cry game. You must explore the map, take on missions, accrue resources and gradually upgrade your gear, all the while attacking enemy bases of increasing difficulty.

To be fair to Ubisoft, the Avatar setting fits neatly into the Far Cry template and it’s easy to see why they went this route with the license. That said, there are a few wrinkles that come with the territory.

The first is that Frontiers of Pandora is almost entirely played in first-person, meaning you don’t often get to actually see your Na’vi warrior. Like Cyberpunk 2077, you have a wide range of cosmetic customization on offer, all somewhat undermined by the only part of your character usually visible being your wrists and ankles. To be fair, the game does switch to third-person when you’re riding a mount and there’s an online co-op mode to show off your tribal-chic accessories, so I guess it’s not entirely wasted.

The focus on first-person also weakens the feeling that you’re playing as a Na’vi. In terms of gameplay you’re not doing anything a human character couldn’t and it’s only in the photo mode that you see your character inhabit Pandora. Perhaps third person would have been better?

The crafting mechanics

Frontiers of Pandora also leans heavily into one of my least favorite modern gaming mechanics: crafting. Yup, this is one of those games in which you obtain armor and weapons by getting the recipe, perusing your “hunter’s guide” to figure out where to pick up the right kind of moss and animal parts, and then head to a crafting table to construct it. Now I do 6% more damage against RDA opponents. Whoop.

To be fair, if crafting mechanics suit any franchise, Avatar is it. While it is arguably just busy work, progression relies on you learning how Pandora functions, which dovetails nicely with the overall narrative of your captive Na’vi reconnecting with their people and how the human invaders are wrecking the ecosystem. Engaging with crafting is also mandatory as story missions have gear requirement levels. You can attempt them under-leveled, but even two levels below what’s recommended will see you die in a few shots.

But it’s a testament to Frontiers of Pandora‘s overall quality that someone who hates crafting mechanics as much as I do was willing to push through them to get to the juicy fun at the core of the game. Developers Massive and Lightstorm have bent over backwards to make traversing the forest smooth and streamlined. From practically the minute you break out into the lush jungle you’re able to acrobatically leap, slide and abseil through the environment at speed.

Taking to the skies

That sense of freedom only increases when you eventually bond with your Ikran and take to the skies. I’ve had a lot of great gaming experiences this year, but flying through a bitter thunderstorm and ascending the clouds to find peaceful serenity while a remix of James Horner’s awesome score plays is up there with the best.

Combat is also satisfying. Regular human soldiers are cannon fodder, though the RDA’s AMP suits provide fiercer resistance. Thankfully while humanity has mastered interstellar travel they haven’t quite figured out how to make an arrow-proof glass cockpit, and sending a massive heavy projectile through them never gets old.

The world-building

Frontiers of Pandora also fleshes out the lore of James Cameron’s world in a way the movies simply don’t have time for. There’s a fan Wiki-level of geeky detail in the descriptions of Pandora’s wildlife, presumably much of it from Cameron’s extensive story bible. I particularly loved encountering the sleepy zakru, giant elephantine creatures who snooze with their trunks stuck deep in the ground sucking up nutrients. A Na’vi tribe follows the zakru migration over the plains and sets up camp around them, caring for them and drinking their milk for sustenance and their culture is deftly sketched out in just a few scenes.

Learning this granular detail retroactively makes the movies better. I rewatched Avatar and The Way of Water while reviewing this and, in a testament to the developers’ attention to detail, everything I saw in the movies tessellates perfectly with the game. Sure, watching the movie and being able to name the plants in the background is about the most useless information imaginable, but it tickles the nerdy side of me.

I was skeptical about Frontiers of Pandora. I’d thought I was burnt out on the Ubisoft open-world formula, didn’t want to play a game with heavy crafting mechanics, and assumed this would be a quick n’ dirty Far Cry reskin. But I had a blast exploring Pandora and making sure each and every polluting human invader got a honking great arrow through their chest.

In an era when movie-licensed action games are surprisingly rare (Star Wars aside), Frontiers of Pandora reminded me how great they can be in the right hands.