Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora – not a far cry from another famous Ubisoft series(pic: Ubisoft)

Ubisoft’s second attempt at an Avatar tie-in seems to have a lot in common with Far Cry, as well as some highly impressive graphics.

There’s no getting away from it, the fact that Swedish developer Massive Entertainment is making open world action games based on two of the biggest movie franchises of all time, back-to-back, is pretty weird. We had assumed that they would wait until Avatar was released in order to unveil their new Star Wars game Outlaws, which has been kept secret for so long, but to our surprise both were on show at the recent pre-Ubisoft Forward preview event, after Star Wars was unveiled at Xbox’s Games Showcase.

Star Wars doesn’t have a specific release date yet and is probably not going to be out until late 2024, but Avatar will be out this Christmas, which is earlier than expected. It’s not the first tie-in the series has ever had, though, with Ubisoft also creating a game for the original movie, which ended up being ignored like a wallflower at a school disco.

Since both films have managed the peculiar feat of making infinite money at the box office, while enjoying zero cultural impact afterwards, it was not initially clear why Ubisoft (or James Cameron, who appeared before us in a short intro video) expected things to go any differently this time. But after watching the footage and listening to the carefully worded descriptions it became more obvious what the game is: Far Cry 6 but on Pandora.

Nobody from Ubisoft actually described it that way but as soon as they started talking about exploring the open world environment – set on a previously unseen continent – and liberating areas by destroying human refineries and mining stations, it all started to sound very familiar. Especially when it was mentioned that regaining a new territory gave you access to new resources and plants only found in that area.

We’re not suggesting there’s anything wrong with this idea, and perhaps there are more changes to the formula that weren’t obvious from the short hands-off demo we saw, but once viewed in the context of Far Cry it all starts to make sense.

The plot is based closely on the timeline of the current two movies and revolves around the humans kidnapping young Na’vi children and training them up to be soldiers that will fight their own people. This process is interrupted by the events of the first film, which ends up with them being put into cryosleep – for reasons we didn’t quite gather – and then being woken up 15 years later so that the new game can take place at the same time as the second film.

The idea is that, unlike most other Na’vi, your character knows how to use human weapons and technology but, through a slow assimilation with initially wary locals, learns to use Na’vi weapons as well, including a range of bows, staffs, and javelins. It seems a little odd that you don’t play as an avatar learning the Na’vi way, as a parallel to the first film, but maybe James Cameron wanted to make that plot conceit a one-off.

Either way, it’s the same difference and does seem to allow for a fair amount of variety in terms of tactics, with the Na’vi’s weapons favouring a stealthier approach. We are worried that there’s less variety in terms of enemies though, with the only vehicles obvious in the demo being the standard mech and the smaller drone helicopter. The bigger one is seen in cut scenes too, so presumably that’s also an opponent, but there doesn’t appear to be anything new created just for the game – which seems a bit limiting.

The graphics are great, as you’d expect from The Division developer Massive, and the portrayal of the indigenous animals seems very interesting. Many can be tamed and the flying banshee/ikran is portrayed as more than just a mount, with the ability to customise and pamper them, since the films portray them as bonding with Na’vi for life.

You can also ride direhorses and there’s one particularly large beast, which we think might be new for the game, that only one tribe knows how to tame, so you have to seek out their help when you need the walking bulldozer’s help.

The demo wasn’t long enough to discern much more but there’s also apparently a two-player online co-op option, which is very welcome. Whatever other parallels there are with Far Cry remains to be seen, as much of that franchise’s appeal lies in its goofier sub quests and the ability to just mess about in the open world.

Avatar tends to take itself more seriously than that but whether James Cameron has put up a ‘no fun allowed’ sign we’re not sure. Certainly, if you’re a fan of the films then this looks like a very welcome authentic adaptation. If it really does play like Far Cry though, it may have an appeal beyond the film’s peculiarly ephemeral fanbase.

Formats: Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Massive Entertainment
Release Date: 7th December 2023

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Ubisoft’s second attempt at an Avatar tie-in seems to have a lot in common with Far Cry, as well as some highly impressive graphics.