Test – Avatar: Pandora's Frontiers: The New Failure from Ubisoft

Between layoffs, restructuring, and serial failures, 2023 will be a particularly complicated year for Ubisoft.

It's a fact that French video game giant Ubisoft is not doing well. The company had a particularly complicated year in 2023 between layoffs and project cancellations. Despite the difficult year, the company was able to launch some new products. Its most anticipated title was undoubtedly the new production from Massive Entertainment (The Division) – Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.

Visually, Pandora's Limits is very successful.

You'll no doubt remember that Ubisoft had already ventured into the practice of turning Avatar into a video game, when the first Avatar was released. However, the game released at the time couldn't really leave a mark behind, ranking among game adaptations without much ambition. Frontiers of Pandora is overly ambitious. First of all, because it's a triple-A game with a huge budget. After that, because the developers not only modified the plot of the first two films, but also presented us with a new plot that allows us to explore the world of Avatar further. Finally, because in terms of construction, Frontiers of Pandora is a more ambitious game since it is an open-world FPS and, moreover, it is a title that fully exploits the potential of new generation consoles since it only works on Xbox Series and PS5.

The game is played entirely from a first-person perspective.

On paper, Frontiers of Pandora had everything to seduce. A huge world that you can explore as you wish, an advanced crafting system, an ambitious story in the world of Avatar and, above all, a bunch of new elements to discover compared to the films. Indeed, we must recognize its undeniable quality: its tremendous fidelity to the original material. Because Frontiers of Pandora is not only a game that allows us to explore the entire world of Pandora, but it is also an essential title with the world of movies. In the role of a young Na'vi who is taken in by the German Democratic Republic, then released by the Resistance, the player will freely explore the world of Pandora by researching the various tribes that inhabit it with the aim of uniting them for your cause and achieving victory. Pushing the invaders beyond the borders of Pandora.

However, it must be admitted: if the world of Avatar is wonderful and impressively built, and if the game presentation is meticulous with many dialogues and scenes, the story is not really exciting. And for good reason. Frontiers of Pandora, like most other Ubisoft products, is an overly ambitious game, going in all directions and forgetting to focus on a captivating adventure. You'll quickly notice the abundance of quests presented to you throughout the four corners of Pandora. Sometimes, it's a Na'vi who's disappeared, and we'll have to try to find them through pursuit. Sometimes, the quest to find materials to build a new bag… The quests are numerous, long, and tend to have you travel very long distances to artificially prolong the life of the game. Fedex Syndrome exists, even more so than in other open world games from Ubisoft. It is a shame that the pacing of the adventure is quite fragmented.

Please feel free to feel the impression of the player without having to replace the items and the loot and the craft that are fortified miserably in the neighborhood and understand that Frontiers of Pandora is not an FPS like this. the others. Before it was an FPS, Avatar was an open-world crafting game, where interactions with the Na'vi took up much more space than combat or exploration. We have to admit that we often get bored in this very long and uninspired adventure. We will also notice that even at the animal level, we have the impression that we are facing the same enemies all the time: a few mechas and helicopters, as well as a few wild creatures… and that's about it. Don't expect to be surprised on this adventure, that will never happen.

However, Ubisoft has redoubled its efforts to provide diversity in gameplay between investigation phases that will ask you to combine different items to discover new clues, small puzzles to solve, or even numerous crafting missions that will require you to go hunting or gather in the world of Pandora to find items. Which will allow you to craft the appropriate tools, weapons, and equipment…

It's clear that Ubisoft has gone all out and given us a very expansive open world game. The different lands of Pandora are a joy to explore. The problem is that the main plot and side quests are not really captivating and we soon end up getting lost in our quests… quests that go around in circles, tirelessly repeating themselves and doing nothing more than showing a very small part of life. Game potential.

If the game has very good intentions, it must be admitted that the concept has great difficulty in seducing people, and that is the fault of the sometimes questionable choices. We think, for example, of the progression system, which is not based on experience but the level system based on the number of skills unlocked and equipment. So Avatar leaves aside its RPG aspect to embrace difficulty leveling based on equipment. In other words, the stronger you are, the stronger your enemies become too. This isn't necessarily a great idea for an FPS game.

Pillow in the hand, the sensations are there. You truly feel like a Na'vi while exploring the plains of Pandora. If the exploration part works fairly well, it must be admitted that the map lacks a vertical mode – this can only be exploited on the back of the stand. If we encounter many creatures and enemies on the map, a certain artificial aspect appears. Combat also leaves you feeling that very little is the enemies' fault as much as they are naughty. Artificial intelligence is a real problem in Avatar. Enemies tend to follow well-defined paths and it's not very difficult to “cheat” the serial killing system. Very quickly, we also realize that some ideas, which are very attractive on paper, cannot necessarily work in hand. You'll regularly run out of arrows mid-fight, and then have to explore the surroundings to collect some branches and craft arrows… The storage limits are extremely frustrating and you'll soon find yourself constantly complaining about this excessive, over-the-top repetitiveness. crafting system. boring.

The same frustration with the constant (and very helpful) search for food: you'll have to follow a very specific direction to locate the resources needed to harvest. Please use Na'vi skin to decorate your home, and share a type of mini-jaw that you need to use with a good pressure to add fruit and arbre for example, in but with respect. from natural. This is all very loyal to the job, but with repetition, this kind of behavior also quickly becomes annoying.

The scenes are numerous and fairly elaborate.

Another bad flaw in the game: Like other Ubisoft products, Avatar is swamped with too many side quests. You will have to collect collectibles (records), destroy bases, activate laboratories, recover resources, contact plants to obtain skills, and loot chests. Avatar is so immersed in secondary activities that we often have difficulty finding our way through it, and end up missing the main thread, which is hardly actually defined… Here we are faced with a very sandbox game, in the end sometimes closer to a game Minecraft than Far Cry in its form.

In the end, we end up saying that we would have preferred a less ambitious game but one that does things better. Because very often we end up getting lost in this open world. Boring, repetitive, and ultimately not very inspiring in its narrative, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora nonetheless has the advantage of being a very successful game visually, with a moderately successful soundtrack (despite the lack of eye-catching themes) and stylish presentation. The game brilliantly exploits the capabilities of the Xbox Series and PS5 consoles and is a real treat for the eyes and ears. The beautifully artistic demo, Frontiers of Pandora, on the other hand, has a harder time convincing in terms of gameplay, with a formula that's almost copied and pasted onto the Far Cry formula, without the tension. In the end, while true Avatar fans will no doubt be pleased, many players will leave the board after just an hour of play. Which is a shame considering the huge potential the Avatar universe has…

Conclusion

Faithful to the world of the films, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora completely immerses us in the world of the films and stands out as one of the most beautiful games of the year 2024. An impressive technical demo, however, the title struggles to convince the first level with it. Gameplay, fault with missions that severely lack rhythm and force you to constantly repeat back and forth in a world that lacks life. With its uninteresting secondary quests, numerous side activities that tirelessly repeat themselves and a main story that's barely exciting, Frontiers of Pandora has a hard time convincing. Many players will also leave the board after just an hour of play… Ubisoft's formula is finding it increasingly difficult to convince. Today it is certain that the publisher must renew his proposals if he hopes to survive…

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