When I first previewed Ubisoft’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora way back in June 2023, I said it was the first time I was interested in the juggernaut franchise. Even in the two years since, I’ve stood by that statement; I just don’t really care for that world, as pretty as it undeniably is. With Frontiers of Pandora, though, I saw promise in something that took the stunning aesthetic of the James Cameron films and mixed it with Far Cry-esque gameplay mechanics.
With all of that said, I must also confess that I never ended up actually going back to Frontiers of Pandora. In my defence, it came out in that unfortunate December period for games where it got buried under wider The Game Awards discussions, for which it was ineligible, plus general end-of-year business. As a result, I didn’t get around to it, especially since 2023 was already such a stellar year for new releases.
But in a glorious comeback befitting of a cinematic epic, Frontiers of Pandora is getting a new lease on life with From the Ashes, a big story expansion that connects to this month’s Avatar: Fire and Ash film. You can even jump right into the expansion without playing the main story, provided you own the base game. (A new $54.99 “From the Ashes Edition” bundle is also being released to include all of this content.)
In this way, developer Massive Entertainment gets to position From the Ashes as both an exciting complementary chapter to the ongoing Avatar saga for longtime fans and a fresh start for people like me who missed it the first time around. And after playing a few hours of From the Ashes at Cameron’s LA-based production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, I find myself ready to finally jump in.
Right off the bat, it’s clear that Massive has made a smart decision by focusing on So’lek, a fan-favourite supporting character from Frontiers of Pandora. This gives it just enough ties to the base game for returning players while also making it a solid standalone story. In From the Ashes, we follow the Na’vi resistance soldier as he awakens to find his home in flames, setting him on a desperate quest to find his scattered Sarentu family and face off against both the RDA and Ash clan. The inclusion of the latter faction is especially interesting, as they’re a group of ruthless Na’vi warriors known as the Mangkwan that serve as the antagonists of Fire and Ash.
Naturally, this narrative synergy has led to a particularly close collaboration between Lightstorm and Ubisoft.
“From a communication standpoint, I’d say on any given week, we have somewhere between three to five meetings from various different disciplines, across Lightstorm and across our Ubisoft family,” says Joshua Izzo, Lightstorm executive VP of franchise development. “So, from game design to art or hard surface or story approvals, everything — we’re in constant communication, and that’s how we keep our level of authenticity to that such a high standard, so it feels like it belongs in the Avatar universe.”
He says From the Ashes has especially benefited from this years-long partnership.
“There’s a huge level of trust and now, our Massive team, they know so much of the rules of the road, whereas 3, 5, 7 years ago, we had to have multiple conversations about game mechanic A, B or C,” says Izzo. “Now, however many years on, they’ll come to us with solutions pre-baked to say, ‘Based on the world that you are building and based on the world that we’ve also created, we have a better understanding of Avatar from a gaming perspective.’”
Experiencing Pandora in a whole new way
Perhaps the greatest example of Massive’s “better understanding of Avatar from a gaming perspective” is the developer’s astute acknowledgement of the fact that there are those who didn’t play Frontiers of Pandora because it’s a first-person experience. For some, first-person just isn’t their preferred style (see: the backlash that CD Projekt Red originally got for going this route with Cyberpunk 2077), while others actually find themselves feeling sick while playing in this POV. Therefore, Massive is introducing a brand-new third-person mode in both the main game and From the Ashes.
But as you’ll often hear from game developers, adding options for both first- and third-person views isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. In fact, the amount of consideration and work that goes into this might surprise you.
“I remember when I told the team, we have to do third-person, everybody was freaked out. ‘What? In a little bit more than a year? It’s not possible!’” explains Omar Bouali, the Toronto-based creative director of From the Ashes. “It was a lot of work. Like, we [re]did all the animations, we [re]did everything with the camera systems… We can also switch between first- and third-person on the fly; you don’t have to go to the menu.”
He says the team even avoided “shortcuts” like having perspective changes in situations like the player entering vents. While he notes that players would have “accepted” these POV changes in Frontiers of Pandora since they’re also in other games, the team ultimately challenged itself to maintain consistency between the respective modes. “I’m super proud of what we managed to deliver on third-person. We didn’t just move the camera back!”
Personally, I appreciate both POVs for different reasons, and so I like the idea of having options. At the start of my demo, I was tasked with infiltrating a large tree fortress that the RDA had taken over, a sequence which culminated in a skirmish with the Ash clan and their RDA soldier buddies. I quickly found that the scope of this massive setpiece was better conveyed through third-person because you really get a proper sense of just how tall the nearly 10-foot Na’vi male warriors really are.
From this POV, my fellow Na’vi and I towered above the RDA humans, enhancing the fantasy of embodying these Pandoran creatures. It also lets you better appreciate the new melee attack, which Bouali said was added based on player feedback. Seeing these pint-sized enemies go flying as my spindly warrior attacked never got old. And of course, there are other combat benefits like the ability to shoulder swap to peek and aim around corners, which proved especially useful in a cat-and-mouse fight I had with a Mangkwan commander.
On the flip side, I found myself preferring first-person for platforming sequences. Later in my demo, I got to play a section of the base game where you obtain your own ikran in a rookery high among the clouds. From the eyes of my Na’vi character, I found the act of ascending lush greenery, sprawling tree trunks and awe-inspiring multi-coloured plantlife to be much more immersive than it would have been from third-person, as if I was the one making these daring leaps. On the big screen, I never found myself invested in Jake Sully’s taming of his ikran, Bob, but getting to go through that majestic experience myself? Well, that’s something else entirely.
Meanwhile, Bouali says the new POV allows for different kinds of cutscene-based storytelling.
“I’m super happy that we managed to deliver third-person in both the main game and the new expansion, but we can say that the expansion is ‘third-person first’ because in the main game, we didn’t change the cinematics — they’re still in first-person,” he says. “But for From the Ashes, all of our cinematics are in third-person, so we have camera cuts and cinematics that take place somewhere else. So you could see, like, what happened to the Sarentu or [RDA Major] Bukowski. These are things that we couldn’t do in first-person, so it’s something I’m excited about [with these updates].”
For Lightstorm, the inclusion of these new options also holds a lot of potential for the wider Avatar franchise.
“I’m really excited for the hopeful broadening of our audience, because if you’re a fan of AAA PC/console gaming, and you’re an action-adventure game player, then you might not have played the original base game because of first-person,” says Izzo.
“And that was something that our fandom spoke very loudly about, and Massive, in an unbelievably wonderful way, addressed that in a way that’s stupendous. Now, if you want to get into our world and you’re a gamer and that’s your gameplay style, we’re literally offering you the best experience you possibly could have in an Avatar game right now […] It’s an amazing action-adventure title that even if you’re not an Avatar fan, you’re gonna find something to love.”
Adding more for fans and newcomers alike
But Massive has added many other options besides the new third-person perspective.
“I remember when I first pitched this expansion to the team and also to Lightstorm, I had a slide with a bunch of posts from Reddit and X and all that — ‘We want third person, we want New Game Plus, we want melee, want takedowns! We want [so and so…]’ So almost everything that we’re doing for this expansion, in terms of improvements and additions, come from the players,” says Bouali. “One thing that came up a lot was [tweaks to] the combat, and because we’re playing a different character, we wanted to push these new combat mechanics so they’d be more visceral, more fast-paced.”
As I played the demo, I got a real sense for what he meant. Besides the aforementioned new punchy melee attack, you have a bunch of new takedowns that enhance your repertoire while making the ultra-pretty game look even better. Indeed, there’s nothing quite as cinematic as seeing your striking blue warrior bound towards an RDA mech, smash his hand through the glass and then forcefully throw him out of it.
Bouali says stealth has also been improved, which I got to see in another From the Ashes mission that had me tracking down Pandoran creatures that had been taken by the RDA. This had an intriguing detective feel compared to the decidedly more explosive earlier quest and let me better appreciate the new silent takedowns and improved enemy detection. This mission culminates in a thrilling setpiece in which I have to free a massive animal that’s being restrained by the RDA while fighting off troops — a neat twist on the traditional boss fight.
All in all, I really enjoyed my time previewing From the Ashes. Even as a newcomer to Frontiers of Pandora, it’s easy to see how much Massive has been listening to the community to improve that core experience, and I’m eager to give it a proper shot now. As someone who just likes enjoyable open-world games once in a while, this looks to be a solid offering. At the same time, the connections to Fire and Ash, in particular, should prove tantalizing to the Avatar faithful.
It’s also just refreshing to see Lightstorm recognizing all of this, too. After all, it’s entrenched in the mainstream entertainment space that still often doesn’t understand video games. But as Izzo points out, video games offer uniquely powerful storytelling opportunities, and he’s thrilled for Avatar to be a part of that world, especially in cases like mine where gaming experiences can even welcome in new fans.
“We understand that that is a way to allow our fandom and the world at large to have a piece of our universe that expands our story, builds on our lore, is approved by the filmmaker’s offices as part of our larger story canon, and just stands by itself as an amazing piece of entertainment,” he says.
“That’s something that you can’t get on screen in two-and-a-half, three hours. You really are able to tell very beautiful, elegant, long stories in the interactive space. And that’s important. It’s important for players, and it’s important for us as a storytelling vehicle.”
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora — From the Ashes launches on December 19, the same day that Avatar: Fire and Ash opens in theatres. The free third-person update will come to the game on December 5 and be included with From the Ashes on day one.
Image credit: Ubisoft
