In 2009, director James Cameron achieved a worldwide hit with Avatar on the big screen. As early as 2017, Massive Entertainment announced an adaptation of the popular narrative universe. In 2022, it will probably be time: The open-world title is designed to impress players with its open game world.
Background - What is known about the game world of Frontiers of Pandora
As in the 2009 film hit, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will take place in the fictional jungle world of Pandora. The First Look Trailer from June 2021 gives a first cinematic insight into the green game world, which is to function according to the principle of an open world. Among other things, the hardware of Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 and Windows PC is to represent the detailed world of Pandora. Not much is known about the implementation of the game world yet, but the well-known Na'vi appear as central characters in the trailer.
This also presents a detailed flora and fauna. Instead of the first dynamic gameplay scenes, only the render optics of the trailer has been revealed so far. However, according to developers, the game world will come to life virtually through the Ubisoft Snowdrop engine. Snowdrop was already used in games such as Tim Clancy's The Division (2016) and Mario + Rabbids Kindom Battle (2017).
Massive Entertainment - The developers of the Avatar game
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is the work of an established name in the world of gaming: Massive Entertainment. The Swedish studio already worked on Tom Clancy's The Division including its sequel and World in Conflict (2007). With this experience, the studio now wants to bring Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora to home screens.
An optimized Snowdrop engine will help with this, allowing for the depiction of complex vegetation. Frontiers of Pandora will also allow for vertical exploration of the game world: from the densely overgrown jungle at the bottom to the cloud-near worlds of the sky on the backs of Pandora's flying creatures.
According to Ubisoft's Tech Showcase, real-time ray tracing, global illumination, and complex reflections will be used on powerful hardware to highlight Pandora's bioluminescent creatures. Dynamic weather and a dynamic day and night cycle will also play a role in the game world. At the same time, according to the Showcase, reactive NPCs will populate Pandora's game universe, which can react to the state of the world including weather.
The Future of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
The official gameplay of Frontiers of Pandora has not yet been released. The first trailer and the Tech Showcase suggest that it will be a complex open world that is supposed to convincingly present the vibrant jungle worlds of Pandora.
Massive Entertainment has already proven with Tom Clancy's The Division that it is capable of realizing technically demanding game worlds for modern hardware. But how believable and robust the open world of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is will only be proven by the game's official release in 2022.
