Summary

• The game Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora allows players to freely explore the planet as Na'vi, encountering new areas and creatures.
• The developers aimed to differentiate the game from typical movie-licensed games by capturing the uniqueness and interactivity of video games.
• The world of Pandora in the game is balanced between beauty and danger, allowing players to enjoy the stunning landscapes while also experiencing thrilling encounters.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora brings new life to the James Cameron franchise by giving players the ability to freely traverse the planet as Na'vi, exploring new areas and encountering a wide variety of creatures and clans. The game comes from developer Massive Entertainment, which previously produced titles like the Tom Clancy's The Division series, and publisher Ubisoft.

Screen Rant interviewed the creative director of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Magnus Jansen to discuss bringing new depth to James Cameron's world, balancing danger and beauty, and what will surprise fans most about the game.

Magnus Jansen On Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora

Screen Rant: First, I would just love to talk about what your process was like balancing, taking inspiration from James Cameron's world, while also managing to make something that differentiates itself and makes the experience feel fresh and new at the same time. What was that like?

Magnus Jansen: It's a great question or a train of thought, because this was something that was very important to us from the start. Because starting out, it's no secret if you know anything about video games history that when that movie-licensed video games or any licensed video game can be - it can turn out bad if you're just looking for a quick cash grab or just a quick thing. And I'm super happy to say now, especially back then when we started, that in the first meetings with Lightstorm, James Cameron's production company, it was super clear that they did not want to do that, a bad game or a quick, "Let's just you redo the movie and so Hollywood hopefully can get some money."

They actually were interested in the medium. Humble about that they weren't experts, which was great, very encouraging that they were humble about that. But also they knew strongly that to make a great game of Avatar and Pandora, we need to capture and really lean into what makes games unique. And that insight was super cool, and obviously that's insight that we agreed with.

So from the beginning we set out, "Okay, what's a great licensed game or what's a great game period?" Well, a great game is interactivity, agency; I am a player, I have a voice. I co-author my story together with the video game developers, they have their story, but then it's interactive and I play and I create situations. So that's all what we need to capture. Systems, central activity, freedom, go wherever you want - it's not a linear game, it's an open world game. So we did all that.

The other thing I think that is needed to make it great is that it's got new experiences, new things, new places, new characters, new stories. Because if it's just the same characters and the same story and the same places that's in the movie, then you're not going to be surprised. You're not going to have that, "Oh my god, I haven't seen this before" jaw drop, which is I think a big part of the movies. Like, "Oh my God, I have never seen this." It's an act of pure creation. And so we needed to do new animals, and to do that, we needed new environments that they could live in. So it all ended up with a bunch of new, and that I think is what makes it so good.

And I saw in another interview, you described the world as beautiful and dangerous, but not aggressive. Can you explain a little bit more about what you mean by that and why that's such a core part of this world's design?

Magnus Jansen: Right. So to me, when I watched the movies, especially the first one all those years ago, I came out of the movie theater and I had this feeling that I had been to a place, because the world was so - the crafting was so qualitative with such detail, not just in the technical expression and realization, but in all the backstory and the clans. And everything just was so well-made that it felt like a real place. And that's immersion - it's escapism, pure escapism. You're transported somewhere. And that kind of escapism I think is super powerful, and one of the big reasons I play video games. And to go to a place and be there, I think it's essential that it has a good balance of danger, but also just niceness to hang out.

So we know the world of Pandora is a beautiful and dangerous place as we see in the movies. It's like jaw-dropping and then something jumps out and tries to kill you, and we have to balance this. How hostile is the wildlife? How do they seek? Because they have smell, they could seek you out. And there were definitely parts in development where we were tweaking it so that if you just stood and watched the stars, eventually some predator would sniff you out and come kill you and eat you for lunch, and then we tuned that. Which is probably realistic - that's probably what would happen on Pandora.

Yeah.

Magnus Jansen: But then we tuned it so it became a little less hostile, as I said. Because if you want the action as a gamer, you'll seek it out. You can find the danger, you can find the RDA, you can find all that. But if you just want to sit and watch the sunrise, I think that's important that you can do that and not have the game world come out and try to kill you all the time. So I think that just chilling and being allowed to take in the sights is very important. And then you are the actor, you have the agency, you decide when you go and want to put yourself in danger.

And I know that this project has been in the works for many years. I'm curious the biggest sort of evolutions you've seen it undergo as a project since it first began?

Magnus Jansen: Oh, wow. There are a couple of big milestones, I think. In any video game or even software, there are these big stages, like alpha, beta, et cetera. And then before the alpha, there are sub-milestones before that. There was this point where we had our ikran, the banshee, your own personal dragon. We had those systems up and running, and then we had that working. And when we get the Vista system and the rendering up and running on the map we have of the Western Frontiers, which is what we call the new part of Pandora that we created.

And I think that when we got those two working together and you were just flying, and we got the floating mountains to be there because these are pretty huge things that are detached from the terrain. But technically there was some work to get that to be performant. That was a huge part, when you can just fly all over the map, I would say.

And I think there are these milestones when we have our very first cutscene that we got in. It was with Etuwa, who is one of the lead characters in the game, an Aranahe. She's the Tsahik of the rainforest clan that you meet early on in the game. I still that. That particular cutscene doesn't exist because we changed the script slightly, but I that very, very well when I saw that. So getting the performance capturing and doing that was amazing.

And then finally I would say, we got our big ray tracing, the sort of lighting engine upgrade came in around 2020 or 2019. That all sort of was rolled out in a big capacity, a big addition to Snowdrop. And that just changed the look of the forest completely to the better in an amazing way. So that was also just a huge milestone that I .

For my last question, I'm just curious what you think will surprise players and fans of the Avatar series the most about this game?

Magnus Jansen: I really love the banshee and the way we made it like a really special companion. Of course, you can pet it, but it has a favorite food, for instance, that you don't know about. And it's randomized for all players, so all players will have a different favorite food, and then you have to feed it. And you get to name it, and then you call it that name. You get to pick how it looks, and then you get to dress it up. And that sounds childish, but it is childish. I love it. I love that you get to play with it like that. So I think the banshee is truly a joy at all times. And then you talk to it when you fly, and it's like you say, "Good job Floof," or whatever you decided to name it. [Laughs]

The other thing is somewhat more broad, but I think just the depth of execution we did on all of the Na'vi clans. There's three clans, one for each region. Our rainforest region is called the Kinglor forest in the Na'vi , but as a dev, we've always called it the rainforest region. And then to our upper plains region or the grasslands region, which is completely different, a completely different clan. Their culture is different, they have different food stuffs, they have different crafts, they have different people, they have a different attitude.

There's these sublime differences but also subtle differences, and you just dive into their world, especially in the side quest and the side dialogue. I am super impressed with what the writing team and all of the art team and everyone that crafted that. It feels like when you go on a trip yourself to a different country and you just get a little glimpse of the culture, and it's very relatable because we're human when you take a trip. But it's also so interestingly different and I think that comes across between the clans. I think the team did a fantastic job there.

Source: Ubisoft/YouTube

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora releases on December 7, 2023 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Amazon Luna.