Let it be known to all that I will go to my deathbed as a hard line defender of James Cameron’s “Avatar” franchise. Jokes have been made for over a decade now, reducing its message and themes into a white savior narrative that deserves to be forgotten or is otherwise worthy of ridicule.
I contend that it is rather a story that demands viewers confront the idea that we all contribute to the perpetual cycles of violence and exploitation which have wrought death upon our planet. Cameron’s protagonist, Jake Sully, models the rational and moral choice in the face of such understanding to defect from the only world he has ever known and risk his life in revolutionary defiance against the state.
The absence of this thematic core makes Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora ring hollow. Ubisoft’s rendering of Pandora is undeniably stunning, thanks primarily to the fact that, as an adaptation of Pandora seen in the films, most of the work has been done for them. Just under this visual polish however, the game is a cheap imitation of the Far Cry series.
Frontiers is certainly a good match for the Far Cry formula, and it is natural to see why developers at Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment would steer that direction. The game involves exploring an open world through foraging and hunting for crafting materials.
Players also navigate a story of conflict typically between militant rebel groups and dangerous organizations, ranging from religious cults to authoritarian dictatorships.
In this game, your unnamed protagonist is a member of the Sarentu tribe, kidnapped as a child with several others and raised by humans in a residential school. This premise intentionally mirrors the real lived experiences of many Indigenous peoples who were subjected to cultural erasure during colonization.
The game unfortunately fails to do much with this idea, other than using it as a reason for why the Na’vi player character would be so familiar with human culture, but less so with their own (just like the player).
Following a series of confusing timeskips and hamfisted exposition, you are launched into the open world with a handful of mission objectives each introducing you to different open world activities. Among these, the most engaging is certainly sabotaging and demolishing military and industrial outposts.
When approaching one such location, the plant life within the vicinity can be seen to visibly wilt and lose color, and the surrounding air becomes gray and polluted. Shutting things down will restore the environment and can be done using stealth or by killing the guards stationed there. The game does attempt to moralize this decision to some degree but violence is unfortunately just the more fun way to play.
Avatar’s importance to Disney has rapidly increased in the past 10 years. Starting in 2014 with the construction of “Pandora – The World of Avatar” at Walt Disney World and now the concurrent production of multiple “Avatar” film sequels, the entertainment juggernaut has sought to turn Avatar into its next big franchise, like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Star Wars.
This game is just one more step toward the total dilution of James Cameron’s original vision. We can only pray that studio interference does not compromise future projects further.