At E3 2021, Ubisoft showcased the first look at its new open-world licensed game, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Ubisoft announced it would be working to create a video game based on James Cameron's massively popular movie franchise several years ago, but has been silent on that front ever since. This is the first real look at Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and it looks pretty incredible.
There had been plenty of speculation over whether Ubisoft's Avatar game was canceled or not after so much silence, but its reemergence proves that the team at Massive Entertainment has been hard at work to bring the game to life on the latest and greatest technology. Whether or not there are any plans to connect it or release it with James Cameron's 2022 untitled Avatar sequel remains to be seen, but Ubisoft is carving out a piece of the universe for itself.
At it's E3 2021 presentation, Ubisoft debuted the first trailer for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora at its E3 conference, showing an in-engine look at the lush world of Pandora. It's not clear what the plot of the single-player game is, but Ubisoft confirmed it's a first-person, open-world title that seems to stand independent of the films. The long-awaited Avatar game will also bring players to a new, unseen part of Pandora with new characters and creatures. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is slated for 2022, and Ubisoft says it will be available on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Google Stadia, and Amazon Luna.
This is not Ubisoft's first attempt at an Avatar game, as the publisher previously made a game based on the first film. It wasn't very well-received and was one of the last notable efforts made at releasing a tie-in game with big blockbuster films. That said, it looks like the publisher is attempted to enrich James Cameron's universe this time around, as opposed to directly adapting it. With luck, that could yield better results for players.
Ubisoft Massive is also working on a new open-world Star Wars game, but that licensed title likely it won't get too deep into development until Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is much closer to being completed. Given the movie sequel won't release until December 2022, it's possible Ubisoft will try to time the release of the game to release in Holiday 2022 alongside it, but the game's 2022 release window could easily pin the release elsewhere on the calendar. Whether or not James Cameron made any creative contributions to this project or has been closely monitoring the project is also unknown, but it seems likely that Disney is keeping a watchful eye over its very valuable IP.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will be available for PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Google Stadia, and Amazon Luna.
Source: Ubisoft