Hear Me Out: ‘Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’ Is Ubisoft’s Best Open World In Years

I am not an Avatar fan. Like many people, I saw the first movie, half-remembered it for the next decade, and skipped the sequel. So it was with a mix of morbid curiosity—and the allure of a decent bit for the group chat—that when I saw surprisingly favorable impressions emerge for the new video game tie-in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, I thought I might actually give it a shot. What’s the worst that could happen? 

To my absolute shock, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is not just one of the better games based on a film franchise in recent memory, but a breath of fresh air and one of the best open world games Ubisoft has published in years. 

Ubisoft’s recent open world-focused output has looked to the past. Far Cry 6, while functional and enjoyable, felt stuck in 2010. Assassin’s Creed Mirage is a very intentional step back into the same era to rediscover firmer footing for the series after years of ever-expanding RPG-ish bloat. But the goblin inside me craves novelty, which Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora—developed by Massive Entertainment, the studio behind Tom Clancy’s The Division series—manages to deliver while building on the fundamentals Ubisoft has built up across its wide portfolio of open-world franchises. 

Traversing the lush and beautiful game world of Pandora in first-person is never a chore: Movement feels great and the game is full of massive vines that give you an endless stamina boost to free-run, alien blobs that launch you into the air, and fungi to double jump on. This is a big step up from the braindead “press left stick forward and occasionally press A” method of traversal I’m used to in Far Cry and Assassin’s Creed. I’m only 12 hours into Avatar and haven’t yet unlocked the flying mount, but I’m looking forward to adding that to my repertoire. I’m sure it will feel just as good as the rest of my traversal options. 

Combat at this point in the game involves a Far Cry-ish formula of some initial stealth, followed by shooting bows, lobbing bombs with a lacrosse stick, and when facing human enemies, pulling out a machine gun. You can sprint, slide, and dodge—it feels tight, punchy, and quite smooth. And while I understand the opinion expressed by some reviewers that the shooting feels incongruous with the rest of the game’s eco-granola vibes, I think it works. The player is incentivized to only use bows on animals, because you get a bonus for “clean” and “merciful” kills, and using a gun ruins crafting supplies. The humans ravaging the alien planet I live on, however, deserve no such quarter. To them, my big, goofy blue fella is Doomguy ripping and tearing through hordes of demons. 

This is just one example of the thematic coherence that permeates the game in enjoyable ways. The open world is essentialized in a way I haven’t felt since Far Cry Primal, as there is a definite need to hunt and collect supplies for crafting and healing. Adding to the allure of that admittedly common gameplay loop is the fact that you’re on an alien world, scanning flora, initially unsure of what might be helpful to craft arrows. The story of Avatar doesn’t do much for me—it’s simplistic, problematic, etc.—but I can appreciate the inherent stakes it injects into a video game: Rolling up to a belching smokestack in the otherwise pristine jungle really makes you want to yeet every exoskeleton-wearing corpo MF there into oblivion with a vengeance. Put away the bow, pull out the Tommy gun. It feels a lot different, and better, than rotely clearing “outposts” filled with the latest iteration of uninspired gun-toting enemies. 

On the note of thematic coherence, it seems clear that Massive Entertainment zeroed in on delivering what I imagine is an Avatar fan’s fantasy: Embodying a Na’vi avatar, looking down and seeing your huge blue feet and loincloth flowing in the breeze, towering over normal-sized humans, and so on. This, too, feels immersive and executed with care, with gameplay and cutscenes both being in first-person. 

There are early signs that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will ultimately fall victim to the typical open-world bloat and overused, repeating quests that typify Ubisoft’s output. Powering up abandoned research labs feels rote, even if completing these tasks results in receiving a new quest. But it’s still the company’s most engaging and fun open world to explore and fight through in years, and I hope executives take note. At the very least, Massive Entertainment’s upcoming open-world Star Wars game, Star Wars Outlaws, is looking good already.