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In many ways, James Cameron’s two record-breaking Avatar movies, set on the alien planet of Pandora, resemble video games. They harness cutting-edge graphical technology in service of thrills, tell straightforward stories elevated by meticulous worldbuilding, and feature lengthy sequences in which characters examine the breathtaking nature of their settings.
Indeed, the entire premise of the first Avatar movie, that a former marine is able to inhabit the alien body of a Na’vi and thus see and encounter the world as they do, taps into the fundamental escapist appeal of gaming. And so here is Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, giving fans of the movies more of that, now with a controller in their hands.
The year is 2138 and a group of Na’vi children have been captured by the villainous human colonisers of Pandora. An introductory montage details the youngsters’ abusive and manipulative upbringing before the game gives you control of one of them in first-person, just as they’re about to break out. The opening 15 minutes are a disorientating swirl of strobing lights and claustrophobic metal corridors, but on nearing the outside world, the orchestral score swells and a bright light fills the screen. The game delivers an “opening vista” that wholly does justice to its wide-eyed source material.
Developed and published by Ubisoft, this is an open-world adventure that partially addresses some of the genre’s shortcomings. There are fewer icons on the vast map, and on being given a quest, you’re offered a short description of where to go, for example “south-west of the Hometree”. Often, you’re tasked with foraging specific ingredients that tend to thrive in particular biomes (though take care to pry off fruit or plants delicately so as not to damage them). The idea is clear, and mostly successfully executed: to bed you into this tangled ecosystem and encourage you to think and act appreciate the nature-loving Na’vi rather than the resource-stripping human occupiers.
This being an Avatar game spread across 30-40 hours, you can expect a deluge of hippie-ish platitudes from your blue buddies. Where the movies’ human (and human-descended) characters cut through the soporific script with colloquial asides, in Frontiers of Pandora you spend most of your time with the Na’vi. As individuals, they lack definition and, by the 15th hour, you may have trouble remembering who is who, such is the soup of sincerity here.
The necessary bite comes from the game’s potent combat. Gigantic Na’vi arrows thud satisfyingly through tiny human chests, while mechs are able to rip through your alien skin in seconds. These encounters often take place at massive refineries whose noxious black smoke has made the surrounding areas drab and lifeless — a vital, arresting counterpoint to the iridescent prettiness elsewhere.
Frontiers of Pandora doesn’t so much offer a new perspective on Cameron’s sci-fi fantasia as intensify it. Take the ascent to the rookery of the ikran (the birdlike creatures the Na’vi ride) high in the Hallelujah Mountains, as exuberant and joyful a platforming sequence as you’re likely to play all year. But this is a video game, and one poorly judged leap will send you plummeting through the canopy. Interactivity leads to these kinds of incongruous moments, and it gives Frontiers of Pandora its own goofy, idiosyncratic personality.
★★★★☆
Out now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S
