Ubisoft is Making an ‘Avatar’ Game…For Some Reason
Remember Avatar? Yeah, me neither.
For such a massive, record-setting blockbuster (and one that was a pretty solid movie), I can’t remember a damn thing about it other than blue aliens were fighting humans with a general theme of technology bad, nature good. If you were alive in 2009, odds are you saw it, but the fact that no one really remembers or cares about it anymore is a testament to how generic and unmemorable that film truly is.
So in a world where major game studios are constantly trying to outdo one another and media companies want to make hay off of recognizable IP, Ubisoft has decided to turn this forgettable blockbuster into a AAA first-person action-adventure game. The big question this brings to mind is, why? What are they trying to achieve here? Are they tapping into the massive Avatar fandom that doesn’t exist? Ubisoft’s motives here are more mysterious than anything Hidetaka Miyazaki has ever done.
They announced Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora during their E3 press conference with a cinematic trailer that doesn’t give much to go off of in terms of gameplay, but it is a pretty faithful recreation of the world of the movie. It’s also very pretty to look at, as the film was visually dazzling, but Ubisoft is notorious for misleading advertising especially when it comes to how good their games look. Making the game first-person is also an interesting choice considering the scenery might benefit from a third-person view, but I appreciate the willingness to take a risk here. They haven’t given much detail in terms of gameplay although it runs on the same engine as the studios famously fraught open world game The Division, so there may be some similarities. Ubisoft has a tendency to make very similar types of games across all their properties, all riffing on Assassins Creed to some extent. The main characteristics are:
- Large open world
- Map littered with too many objective markers
- Climbing to some sort of high point in the landscape to unlock areas of the map
- Enemy strongholds that must be cleared out to reduce hostility in an area of the map
Assassin’s Creed, later Far Cry entries, Watch Dogs, and others all do some variation of this, so it will be interesting to see how closely Avatar hews to this formula or if they take some risks and try something new. I can’t really blame them for sticking to their guns in the past as these mechanics have proved so successful that legions of open world games have borrowed them.
The studio is also working closely with Avatar director James Cameron on the project. The renowned director has seemingly devoted what remains of his life to producing a litany of Avatar sequels that will never be seen, so it’s nice that this property he cares so much about will see something of a new life in video game form and that he gets to have a hand in that process. For more coverage of E3, stick with us at Under the Wheels, and let us know what you think about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
