Avatar: Frontiers of Pandorawas one of the biggest surprises of E3 2021. The Ubisoft sequel to 2009 movie tie-in gameJames Cameron’s Avatar: The Game,Avatar: Frontiers of Pandoralooks to return players to the planet of Pandora ahead of the movie’s long-awaited sequels.
Many Ubisoft fans were disappointed to learn thatAvatar: Frontiers of Pandorawould only be on next-generation consoles, but it seems that leaving behind the older consoles will allow the game to develop some revolutionary new systems and features. One of the biggest of these new features will come in the form ofAvatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s advanced AI.
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In a tech showcase with IGN, lead narrative realization designer Alice Rendell went into some more detail about how the AI will work. Rendell says that thanks to the game using Ubisoft Massive’s Snowdrop engine, best known for its use in theDivisionseries, NPCs inAvatar: Frontiers of Pandorawill be able to react much more realistically to their environment. The tech showcase did not delve too deeply into the details, but Rendell provides examples of NPCs taking note of the time of day, weather, player progression, or even the plants surrounding them. WithAvatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s beautiful visualsshown off in its reveal trailer, it definitely seems the team is taking full advantage of the Snowdrop engine.
In a separate interview with IGN, the game’s technical director of programming Nikolay Stefanov gave an example of how the new technology could work in the case of a big creature. Stefanov gave the example of the large creature carefully walking around plants and trees when it is calm but plowing through those same plants and destroying them if they are panicked or being hunted. Of course,Avatar: Frontiers of Pandoralooks like it has a lot of great features, but the described reactive AI could definitely help make the world of Pandora feel even more alive.
It will be very interesting to see what else is shown ofAvatar: Frontiers of Pandoraleading up to its release. The game has yet to have an official release window narrower than just 2022, but many fans are already wondering whether or notAvatar: Frontiers of Pandorawill release before or afterthe nextAvatarmovie. Hopefully,Avatarfans will receive more news on when they should expect to get their hands on bothAvatar: Frontiers of Pandoraand the movie sequels sometime soon.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandorais slated for release in 2022 on Amazon Luna, Google Stadia, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.
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