Loading into an Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora hands-on demo session for the first time, I was prepared to feel a little bit lost. What I wasn't prepared for was a gigantic, thriving world that, much like my flying ikran Carol, would hold me at arm's length for the most part.
Being one of a few open world entries amid the roster of upcoming Ubisoft games, a vast map is to be expected, as are all the bells and whistles that go along with it. I'm talking lore-accurate flora and fauna, verdant meadows and thick rainforests, and all manner of incredible beasts lurking throughout this visually arresting FPS. But as I struggle to get my bearings in a land of plenty, I'm concerned that developer Massive Entertainment managed to incorporate every trick in the open world handbook except the most important one.
Welcome to the jungle
Some of the best open world games feature sprawling landscapes of seemingly endless possibilities.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a beautiful game to get lost in, and doing so is very easy. That's not always a compliment, since finding my way to quest areas is an absolute mission in itself thanks to the lack of map markers. I've only just landed in Pandora and my quest instructions point me "southwest" of various places I have never heard of, in an area that appears to be a good 6 kilometers away according to my map. I shrug, and decide to forage for fruit instead.
The ability to lose yourself in Pandora and get totally sidetracked is, according to Massive's creative director Magnus Jansèn, "a sign of success in an open world game like this. That's because the story will wait for you". He's not wrong about that – this is a truly massive open world action-adventure, filled with chance encounters and friendly or hostile creatures as you move through it, and the lingering imprint of Assassin's Creed Mirage means I don't mind having a compass in place of a minimap. However, getting so lost in this verdant playground that I struggle to find my way back to quest areas feels like a misstep.
If you don't mind the hide-and-seek nature of hunting down your quests, the world of Pandora itself can still feel overwhelming. Purple dots highlight key items to investigate, but quickly get lost in the visual clutter. My eyes dart across the screen, trying and failing to take in all the flowers, colors, plants, leaves, trees, grass, lakes before me – and wait, is that a dinosaur?
"It's very reactive," Jansèn says of Pandora's intractable natural world. "It sort of pushes back. It's all the danger and beauty, but also at a higher level, there's the ethos in Avatar of sustainability and taking care of mother nature. In the actions that you do, there's a gentler touch, and that feeds into how you treat the animals." I want to see and experience all of it, but time is short during this brief preview session, so I carry on for my first encounter with a Pandoran animal.
By the time I climb the ikran rookery and bond with my extensively-customizable winged companion, Carol, I'm relieved to find a solution for my map mobility issues. Flying feels intuitive and smooth in Frontiers of Pandora, even using keyboard and mouse controls, and it definitely changes the way I play the game from here on out. It's far less daunting to tackle the wilderness sitting astride an ikran, but rich and vibrant as this landscape is, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora still risks isolating the player in the middle of it.
The curious push and pull between wanting to explore and getting to my quest location is disorienting in a way I've not experienced in other open world games. Pathfinding woes and a sense of utter bewilderment follow me everywhere, and I can't figure out whether the lack of hand-holding is refreshing or just plain annoying. But from a narrative perspective, at least, it seems to be intentional.
Getting crafty
Just as our own Joe Donnelly said in his hands-off preview earlier this year, the Fallout 4 and Far Cry 3 comparisons write themselves. Frontiers of Pandora might not be the post-apocalyptic wasteland of the publisher's past ventures, but to the newly reformed Na'vi orphan-turned-RDA captive I'm playing as, it's just as mystifying.
Jansèn describes our character as "a child of two worlds, but completely unfamiliar with [their] own home," leaving "the player and the player character on an equal sort of four-toed footing" in terms of scrambling to make sense of Pandora. This is one benefit of Massive's map marker neglect: without much guidance, I really feel like a bewildered outsider grappling with a strange new world.
The open world means agency. That means player control, that means I'm free to do what I want, and I don't have to dance to your tune, you evil game makers.
Magnus Jansèn (Massive Entertainment)
It's a sensory whirlwind from the jump. 3D surround-sound gives directional cues amid the visual onslaught, alerting me to passing animals or nearby hostile RDA drone scouts to shoot down. Some trial and error proves the odd plant life native to Pandora can be helpful at times; running through speed spore clouds grants a temporary movement buffs, while others groan curiously and combust right in your face. It also takes me far too long to realize that I can't just parkour up everything, or that shooting pumpkin-like fruits makes them sprout vines to swing and climb on. I can imagine the fluidity of running through the foliage, leaping from tree to vine with enough practice, but it's a knack I fail to master in 150 minutes.
Crafting and cooking also feature heavily in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, and the best thing is that you actually see your character preparing her meals. It's these little moments that make Avatar connect with me, small intimate everyday things that make this bizarre land feel more welcoming to me. Where you find a cooking pot, there's normally a crafting table nearby - though I've yet to work out how to craft ammo or loot it anywhere except from abandoned RDA outposts. This, naturally, would prove disastrous.
Out exploring nature, I find nothing is attacking me – so I attack it. I watch my dwindling arrow and bullet rounds deplete, and once I've slain my fair share of probably harmless animals, I head back to a nearby RDA base to go looting. It's not until later, when I'm finally faced with a combat-heavy mission, that problems arise. I love survival horror, but I did not sign up for Resident Evil levels of ammo conservation. After shooting down just two of the five helicopters, my SMG's spray and pray approach doing very little for me, I've run out of ammo and have to flee with Carol to stock up. Suffice to say I was more than a little bit bummed that I didn't get to experience some of the more technical combat elements – smoke grenades, two different bow and arrow sets, and a submachine gun – until my hands-on session was almost over.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is shaping up to be one of Ubisoft's most ambitious ventures to date. Its weighty gunplay, cinematic worldbuilding, and detailed soundscapes are in line with what you might expect from the Far Cry publisher. However, its exploration systems lack the polish and sense of identity I was hoping for. I can tell it would be easy to while away the hours sifting through endless jungle, but my concern still stands: without more structure, might it distract from the overarching story? Perhaps, and that's kind of the point.
"It's a roller coaster, it's authored, it's a wonderful patriotic story with twists and turns and great performances, great characters, and great set pieces," says Jansèn. "But the open world means agency. That means player control, that means I'm free to do what I want, and I don't have to dance to your tune, you evil game makers that want to put me on rails," he laughs. "This combination is a magical combination to me."
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