WhenAvatar: Frontiers of Pandora’smovie inspiration was released over a decade ago, it had some of the best visuals of any film at the time.Avatar’sstunning computer graphics and special effects allowed for seamless transitions between live-action shots and animated ones. A lot of technology went into making the movie one of the most technically innovative films of the time, and now it looks likeAvatar: Frontiers of Pandorais keeping the innovative spirit of the franchise alive.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’ssmall tech demotalked about a lot of flashy details in a very short amount of time. The video shows off the same scenes and views from the game’s reveal at E3 but offers technical explanations of how the game does what it does. While the title looked ambitious even after its announcement, finding out how the operations for NPCs will take place and how the world of Pandora is being brought to life for players to experience helps to reinforce how much of a feat it is.
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Avatar’s Snowdrop Engine
The Snowdrop Engine was already impressive before it was upgraded forFrontiers of Pandora. With its specialized version of the Snowdrop Engine, the game can demand a lot more without hindering performance and delivers the beautiful world that players have gotten to see so far. The engine’s upgrade allows for NPCs and environments that are reactive and immersive to the extent that flora and fauna may change behavior based on a player’s presence. Simply put, the engine has played no small role in makingAvatar: Frontiers of Pandoralook stunning.
The depth of these reactive pieces of the environment might still be a bit vague but the demonstrations given so far are exciting. Certain flowers that players come across appear to react to their presence immediately. During the daytime, this may be as simple as blooming but at night the interactions can become incredibly complex light shows. The presence of these complex systems inAvatar 2is likely, but their execution in a playable game is incredible.
Avatar’s Bioluminescence and Environments
Using ray-tracing and advanced shaders that respond to one another, it looks likeFrontiers of Pandorahas taken the bioluminescent visuals from theAvatarmovie and made them a mainstay in the game. The tech demo showed off the beautiful blues and pinks that will saturate the landscape after dark to put on colorful light displays. The few scenes where this is shown deliver awesome realism and help to generate an environment that feels almost as tangible as the forests one can find throughout the real world.
The game’s wider landscapes also take advantage of the leap in technology to deliver beautiful views and populate a staggering amount of assets. In the sky, volumetric clouds add depth asplayers fly around on Banshees. These areas may have only appeared as a blue background on less advanced systems. The cloud cover and real-time wind may not generate ecosystems as diverse as the ones players will likely find across the surface of Pandora but it is still an awesome display of what the game is trying to do.
As complex as these details are, they still look to be tightly and neatly stacked next to one another. While many gamers may be used to open-world adventures where the densely populated areas and open wilderness feel like, they are lacking something the other hasFrontiers of Pandoramay have a true balance between them. In environments where animal and humanoid NPCs are all part of the ecosystem, it is hard to think of a way where their interconnected nature will not be present on the ground and in the skies. The proper execution of this could be incredibly important for the game andthe futureAvatarsequels.
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Avatar NPCs
As beautiful as this environment looks, from the lighting and clouds to the reactive flora, the game’s NPC system continues to be one of the most interesting aspects brought up so far. Pandora’s lore as it has been previously established portrays a planet that is completely alive. The inhabitants of the world can connect with each other’s consciousness in an ecosystem where everything co-exists.
So far, it sounds like this aspect of the planet is being tested as a main feature of the game through the in-depth NPC reactions to players and their decisions. Being able to react to certain obstacles differently depending on aggression or mood, and the acknowledgment of the player’s progression seems particularly complex. Most, if not all, games have features or quest steps that prevent players from reaching an area before they are intended to, and whilespeedruns are a great challenge,Frontiers of Pandora’ssystem sounds like an all-encompassing approach to these steps.
The concept that NPCs, most of which seem to be animals so far, are able to understand player progression implies a relationship between the player and the world around them. The dynamic aspects of the game and the Snowdrop engine it is using already sound incredible but a truly evolving game is always exciting. Open worlds that actively evolve as players progress have become more common, the main conflict inThe Witcher 3is an example, butFrontiers of Pandorasounds like it may have taken this up a level.
Avatar Is Next-Gen Only
The extra attention to detail might be what setsFrontiers of Pandoraapart from other titles when it releases. Much like theAvatarmovie, the expression of detail from the smallest pixels and interactions in the system up to the largest is likely what will make the game feel more unique from other open-world adventures over the next few years. With all this detail and how much the world of Pandora seems to be doing at any given timethe decision to keep the game on next-gen consolesand PCs makes more sense.
Even with how hard it has been to get a hold of next-gen consoles it is likely only the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S consoles could handle the workload ofFrontiers of Pandora. Where PCs are upgradable the static nature of console hardware probably has no ideal technical solution for the game to be realized correctly on last-gen consoles. The decision was likely hard to make but the commitment put into theAvatargame has helped Ubisoft earn Disney’s trust.
Waiting for technology to catch up is another part of the series though. TheAvatarmovie waited for years for technology to be able to handle its vision and with the new generation of consoles and PC hardware where it is now is probably the best time to start the franchise’s series of games. It might mean waiting a bit longer for some fans but the best result possible comes from the game being on the hardware it needs whenFrontiers of Pandorareleases in 2022.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandorawill launch in 2022 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Stadia, and Luna.
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