Early into this game there’s a point where, after your character has spent years inside the cold, hard walls of a human facility, they emerge out into the dazzling, open world and it absolutely took my breath away.
A feeling I haven’t experienced in gaming since The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, where your player-character escapes the Imperial Sewers and is confronted by a wash of green hills and blue skies. The alluring promise of a world to explore.
Frontiers of Pandora is beautiful. A kaleidoscope of colour, an assault of shapes and sounds, vibrant in flora and fauna. Truly, what the team at Massive Entertainment have created in the world itself is as mesmerising as it is striking as it is dreamlike and cannot be undersold. Those who watched the Avatar film, felt the same wonder Jake Sully did in being in that environment for the first time, will doubtless feel the same bright-eyed excitement here.
There’s variety aplenty in the three major areas of the game. From the towering rainforest, serene rivers and beckoning heights of the floating mountains in Kinglor Forest to the windswept, grassy seas and azure lakes of the Upper Plains to the misty and redwood-like atmosphere of the Clouded Forest. Within each area are distinct biomes that you weave between as you explore, each very different from the others.
For those experienced in the open-world RPG, there will be little in Frontiers of Pandora that revolutionises or dramatically changes what you’ve experienced before. Especially if that experience involves the Far Cry or the later Assassin’s Creed games; once again an expanding map reveals points of interest that provide equipment, lore, skill points or other such collectibles.
Another staple of such games, the “enemy camp”, is here in force. Though, to Massive’s credit, I was very much encouraged to do them this time. In Frontiers of Pandora, the area around these camps is polluted – turned into sludgy brown land, with water turning putrid and dead animals dotting the desolation.
Once you complete these outposts, Pandora reclaims what once was. The land returns to its lush and vibrant self, animals repopulate the area and resource-bearing plants grow again. In the bigger facilities, Pandora takes root completely – buildings and vehicle wrecks are entombed with vines, trees grow, rivers burst forth, waterfalls form, and quarries and trenches become pools.
There is more to appreciate. When it comes to crafting, for example, particularly high-quality plants and animals provide better quality material. Harvest this in the best way (with a quick kill and no suffering regarding animals and a quick harvest in the right conditions regarding plants) and you’ll get the best material – this goes on to craft equipment at the highest end of its stat range.
There’s also your companion Ikran you get relatively early into the game. Ascending the iconic floating mountains to the vertigo-inducing heights is jaw-dropping and the taming of your own Ikran is a genuinely great moment in the game. This opens up a flying mount to get you around the very large world faster and reach previously unscalable mountains and cliffs for loot. Whilst you can’t name it yourself, the list of names you pick from being spoken by your character in game is at least a nice compromise. The fact you can leap from a height and be scooped-up by your Ikran with a button-prompt never got old.
Movement was also an absolute treat to experience in this game. Your character moves beautifully around the world with a system that is fluid, very easily mastered and incredibly satisfying. Trampoline-like flowers and mushrooms boost you through the air, plants with catapult-like leaves send you soaring and giant leaves slow your descent as you plummet through the canopy.
Alas, it isn’t all good news. The characters are completely forgettable, the main villains are cartoonishly evil and the ham-fisted way the story is delivered had me reaching for the skip button any time there was people speaking. My interest in the narrative was kept very much alive in the fact new and different geography opens up with story progression, but I still couldn’t name you more than a couple of characters.
There are some moments that scratch out a fun story in the game, of particular note an investigation through an old facility whilst being hunted by some of Pandora’s meaner beasts was a highlight, as was seeing the devastation on the faces of the Na’vi who find a hunting outpost that was being used for killing animals for parts on an industrial scale. Unfortunately, these are few and far between.
However, if it’s a return to Pandora you seek, if its being able to explore that universe from the ground to the sky and immerse yourself in its atmosphere and vibrancy, if you like that tried-and-tested open world, action RPG format and have thought how much fun it’d be to have it based on Avatar, then this is for you.
Personally, I relished my time in this game and that isn’t stopping any time soon. If a game can engage me from the simplest act of just running around, if the world is characterful enough itself to compensate the blandness of the humans and Na’vi both, if I can be completely hooked in that same child-like fascination Avatar grabbed me with back in 2009, then I’m all for it.
