Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Reeks of Fan Service in The Best of Ways

Highlights

• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora embraces fan-service, catering to fans of James Cameron’s Avatar universe with iconic moments and elements from the movies, creating a spot-on recreation.
• The game puts a spin on familiar story beats and borrowed set pieces, adding depth but changing the context to make them feel fresh and exciting.
• Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora introduces new canon lore to the Avatar universe, expanding the world with new Na’vi clans, fauna, and flora for fans to explore and delve into.

Fan-service is always a tricky thing to get right, both in movies and in video games. When working with material from a big film franchise, there’s presumably a temptation to just throw every bit of fan-service at the player, from major character cameos to popular weapons and locations to iconic past lines of dialogue. More often than not, a subtler approach tends to be for the best, though Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora might be an exception to that rule.

From what fans gathered from all the pre-release trailers, it seemed as though Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was going to be a game that that caters to fans of James Cameron’s Avatar universe first and foremost. While the gameplay definitely looked a little too similar to Far Cry, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora‘s world and general atmosphere made a strong first impression in its early trailers, looking like a spot-on recreation of the movies’ best moments. And now that Avatar is out, it feels safe to say that’s exactly the case. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora leans all the way into fan-service, but that’s far from a bad thing in this instance.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Puts Its Fan-Service Front and Center

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Plays Like a Greatest Hits of the Movies

While there are plenty of original ideas and story beats in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, many of its best moments do feel as though they’ve been lifted directly from the Avatar movies, though that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The beats are the same, but Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora tries to put a spin on each of its borrowed story elements, either adding more depth to the moment or changing the context significantly to essentially make it a brand-new moment.

One of the best examples of this is Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora‘s main plot. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora sees players take control of a young Na’vi who’s spent his entire young life imprisoned in an RDA facility below Pandora’s surface. Upon breaking out, the player-character is tasked with reuniting the three Na’vi clans of the Western Frontier in an effort to push back the RDA forces in the area, all the while reconnecting with the world of Pandora and the spirit of Eywa.

This premise follows very closely in the first Avatar movie’s footsteps. As a Na’vi, players will reconnect with nature by participating in ancient rituals, learning the language of the Na’vi people and discovering long-lost customs. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora also heavily borrows some set pieces from the first movie, with Jake Sully’s first flight being practically remade in video game format in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora during the mission where the player first bonds with their Ikran and unlocks the ability of flight. These moments never feel cheap, though, as Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora goes out of its way to understand and embrace what made those moments so special in the first place, which in turn makes these missions feel more like reliving an exciting moment than just treading back over well-worn ground.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Is Filled With New Lore

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora‘s fan-service doesn’t just rely on remaking moments fans have already seen before. One of Frontiers of Pandora‘s greatest strengths is its introduction of new lore, all of which is completely canon to the wider Avatar universe. From Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora‘s four new Na’vi clans, to the planet’s new fauna and flora, the game’s codex is packed with new tidbits of lore for fans to delve into.