As we race to the end of the year, it’s time once again to kick off our Game of the Year awards, diving once more into over a dozen different categories and celebrating the best video games of 2023.
18.12.2023 - 14:19 / venturebeat.com / Tom Clancy / James Cameron
Do you want to get the latest gaming industry news straight to your inbox? Sign up for our daily and weekly newsletters here .
Ubisoft published Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora as an original extension of James Cameron’s Avatar films on December 7.
The average review score on Metacritic for the first-person action-adventure game is 72 out of 100, which isn’t spectacular. The game reminded people, including our own Mike Minotti, a bit too much of Ubisoft’s Far Cry games. But the title from Massive Entertainment is pretty universally applauded for its amazing visuals.
I spoke with Cedric Decelle, vice president of technology and Snowdrop Director at Ubisoft; and Nikolay Stefanov, technical director at Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment about the graphics for the game.
Decelle spent most of his career on the Far Cry franchise and he became vice president of tech for Ubisoft Motreal in 2021, and he took over Snowdrop technology in 2022. Stefanov is a career graphics expert who also worked on Far Cry 3 and Tom Clancy’s The Division.
Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.
GamesBeat: When it comes to how this game got made, what’s the interesting technology story here for you?
Nikolay Stefanov: We wanted to transport players to the world of Avatar. Immersion was one of the highest priorities. We wanted to make sure that the level of fidelity, the level of detail was there, so that you can sometimes forget that you’re playing a game. You can feel like you’re in that world. Pandora is the star of the show.
In terms of tech, we had to move from the urban environments that were the focus of The Division to something that’s much more organic. Much more foliage. We also had to fulfill the fantasy of flying on a Banshee. We had to build a lot more systems for vistas, for quick streaming. Of course in the end you’re three meters tall. The amount of detail that’s there in the world also needs to be raised. We had to do a lot of work on micro-detail systems in order to raise that visual quality.
GamesBeat: Was there pressure in that people could see what the film looked like, and say, “I want the game to look like this”?
Stefanov: I wouldn’t necessarily say there’s pressure to match the movies. There’s certainly a desire to be as immersive as possible. One of the key things that you have in a game versus a movie is that you’re not just looking at an image on screen. You can move around. You see the environments reacting to you. The plants move around. There are different things happening when you go near them. You might get hurt by certain things. You might get a little buff from others. You can jump over them. You can destroy them if you’re inclined.
When it comes to visuals, yes, there’s definitely that aspect. The
As we race to the end of the year, it’s time once again to kick off our Game of the Year awards, diving once more into over a dozen different categories and celebrating the best video games of 2023.
We've reached the last month of an incredible year in gaming, closing the season with a final rush of exciting titles as the Christmas holiday period fast approaches. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora — out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series S/X — is easily the biggest launch in December, transporting players to the never-seen-before Western Frontier of Pandora, teeming with awe-inspiring creatures and luminescent vegetation. It's a bit reminiscent of the James Cameron movies, in the sense that you awaken as a Na'vi orphan and are thrust into battle against the Resources Development Administration (RDA), the corporation looking to harvest natural resources from the beautiful alien moon planet.
James Cameron is famous for the highly inventive tools he uses to make his movies, and the what it took to make Avatar: The Way of Water is no different. In an exclusive video shared with Polygon, the Titanic director is seen in action using a virtual camera rig that he used to direct his Avatarsequel.
Humans are horrible. You don’t need an allegory about the environment filled with blue aliens to tell you that. However, the joy of James Cameron’s Avatar isn’t in its humans, or the azure Na’vi, it’s in the vibrant, living world of Pandora. From the instant you start Frontiers of Pandora, it’s clear that Ubisoft has done an incredible job bringing this world to life, and while you bathe in the neon glow of its incredible wildlife, you’ll discover a people whose lives and culture you’ll want to protect.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a game this writer has been waiting a long time for. In many ways, it is the Hogwarts Legacy for fans of big blue folk and vibrant alien worlds. But with that apt comparison and Ubisoft Massive at the helm, does it do enough to stand on its own two feet? Or is it nothing more than a pretty tour through Avatar’s greatest hits? While it certainly is pretty and it does its best to hit those Avatar beats, Frontiers of Pandora actually won us over with one of the most enchanting open-worlds available on PS5.
Regardless of the jokes about Smurfs in space, there’s no disputing James Cameron’s Avatar is a mega-franchise that has made over $5 billion off two – yes, two! – films. Now, with even more movies on the way, the Na’vi and Pandora return to the world of video games in Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft’s Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. The first-person action-adventure game seems like a natural extension that’s rife with endless potential, but it ends up being a mixed bag of brilliance and blunder.
The Day Before went from one of the most anticipated games on Steam to an unqualified disaster. After spending months at the top of the platform’s most wishlisted list, the game’s release on Dec. 7 quickly led to a wave of immense blowback, tens of thousands of players seeking refunds, and the closure of the studio behind it.
Starting from tomorrow through January 5, 2024, we’re celebrating the holiday season with a month full of activities for our PlayStation community. As part of the PlayStation Plus Season of Play, PlayStation Plus members can redeem free avatars for PS5 and PS4 consoles, join eSports tournaments, earn points on PlayStation Stars and enter a competition for your chance to win amazing prizes. Activities for those who are not PlayStation Plus members are available as well.
From bustling New York streets to rolling Hyrule fields, 2023 gave us our fair share of fantastic open worlds to get lost in. With vast maps full of combat, puzzles, and intrigue, everyone steps into a new game world looking for something different, but all searching for escapism like no other genre can provide. This year, they took us to places rooted in the real world and fantasy, as well as our distant past and future. We unlocked the secrets of Hogwarts, slid through the shadows of ancient Baghdad, swung between Manhattan skyscrapers, leaped around the floating islands of Pandora, and dived into the Hyrulian depths. But which of these proved the most fun to spend time in? These are the best open-world games of 2023.
The Na’vi resistance fighter simulator is here, and like many other big-budget games, it has a big price tag to go along with it — so it’s only natural to see if Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is on Xbox Game Pass or PS Plus to save a few pennies.
Fans of James Cameron's sci-fi epics will be delighted that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora releases today on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
Ubisoft's Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is out fairly imminently, arriving on PS5 on 7th December. As a canon part of James Cameron's larger universe, an intriguing aspect fans can look forward to is the new creatures, characters, and storylines, which are already influencing other Avatar projects.