The upcoming Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora game is going to tell a brand new story rather than have players replay the plot of the original movie. When announced at E3 this year, the new game from Ubisoft was unexpected since many were wondering if there was still an Avatar game in the works at Ubisoft. Now that there has been an official trailer and announcement, fans are eager to jump into the world of Pandora, which was first introduced in James Cameron’s Avatar, for themselves.
Avatar was originally released in 2009 and has received worldwide acclaim. The movie even became the number one all-time grossing film, although Avengers: Endgame broke that record. Avatar took place on Pandora in the year 2154, where humans are mining a mineral called unobtanium that is essential to the Earth’s survival. The native inhabitants of Pandora, the Na’vi, speak another language and breathe the native atmosphere of the planet. In order to establish relations with the Na’vi, humans have to transfer their consciousness to an engineered avatar of the Na’vi, personalized for each human. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is scheduled for release sometime next year and will be available on the new generation of consoles, PS5 and XBox Series X/S, and PC.
In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, gamers will play as a Na’vi and journey across a never-before-seen area of Pandora. In an interview with VentureBeat, the vice president of Disney and Pixar games, Luigi Priore, detailed the approach to Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and not making it just another game adaptation of the movie (via PC Gamer). “Gamers expect more now. They want to interact with their favorite characters and worlds, but they want to play new stories and do new things with those characters and worlds,” said Priore, and he’s not entirely wrong. Focusing on a new story gives players a chance to explore more of Pandora than what was shown in the original movie, which Priore described as “a great playground to play in.”
According to Priore, “The whole idea is to have it be part of the storyline of that giant franchise on Pandora. That’s why it’s called Frontiers of Pandora. It takes place on another frontier, another area of the moon of Pandora.” This sounds like the ideal approach that a franchise like Avatar should take since there is such a vibrant open world to explore, especially since the sequel movies may take place in other areas of Pandora as well. However, as PC Gamer points out, there is skepticism from critics surrounding the title. Since the theme of the first movie surrounds colonialism, the choice of the word “frontiers” in the title leads to questions and concerns.
With James Cameron’s Avatar having released more than a decade ago, fans are still waiting for the promised sequels. The alien world aspect of the original movie, and the anticipated settings of the sequel movies, lend the world of Pandora well to a video game medium like this. Though video games and movies historically don’t mix well, a new story based on the world of Avatar without being pulled directly from the source material is a good start. Although open-world games are at a precarious point, Avatar created a world that many audiences were eager to explore. An action-adventure game with a new story like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora has a good chance of satisfying gamers and Avatar movie fans alike.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will release in 2022 for PC, Stadia, Amazon Luna, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S.
