How Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s Parkour Compares to Dying Light 2

Parkour in games can be a risky thing. When it’s done right, parkour can lead to some of the best-feeling traversal systems in all of gaming, with players having unprecedented freedom in how they go about traveling through an environment and reaching their objective. But when those parkour mechanics don’t feel good, it sticks out like a sore thumb and can make the entire game feel like a clunky slog to get through. Thankfully, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora belongs to the former camp.

Though it isn’t necessarily the first thing that fans remember about the movies, parkour does play quite a big role in James Cameron’s Avatar universe, with the Na’vi repeatedly seen scaling trees, climbing walls, jumping off cliffs, and landing on the back of mounts. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora embraces this wholeheartedly, and delivers a fast and fluid parkour system, one that even rivals Dying Light 2.

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How Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s Parkour Differs From Dying Light 2

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s Movement Feels a Bit More Fluid Than Dying Light 2

Generally speaking, Dying Light 2‘s parkour has a fairly weighty feel to it. Though the game definitely strays into some more fantastical elements, Dying Light 2, at least for the most part, tries to keep its parkour realistic and grounded. To do that, the player’s speed is capped at a more realistic level, and their movements tend to feel suitably heavy. This gives Dying Light 2‘s parkour an immediate sense of stakes, as if any jump could result in the player’s untimely death.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, on the other hand, finds itself on the more fantastical end of the spectrum. Though the Na’vi are 9ft tall, lumbering giants, they’re always portrayed as athletic, agile creatures capable of scaling walls in seconds and balancing on the thinnest of branches. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora tries to capture that, giving its own parkour system much floatier feeling controls. From a surprisingly high-charged jump to the ability to land safely and slide along the floor gracefully after falling from a great height, much of Avatar‘s movements feel grand and elegant.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s Parkour Puts More of an Emphasis on the Environment

Dying Light 2 features a number of environmental parkour features. Players can run along walls, swing from ropes, slide down ziplines, and leap off pipes, most of which can usually be strung together in a seamless sequence to maintain the player’s momentum. As players progress through Dying Light 2, they’re given the option to upgrade factions, one of which gives the player access to more parkour features scattered around the environment, such as an increased number of air vents for gliding, and more trampolines to gain instant height.

But while Dying Light 2 has some parkour elements dotted around its map, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora‘s parkour revolves around its environment. In an average parkour run in Avatar, players will be using exploding mushrooms to bounce their way onto tall trees, bounding off leap pads to make it across wide gaps, clambering their way up ascending vines, and using giant leaves to break their fall. In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, it doesn’t feel like these environmental features are just put there by game developers for the sake of parkour, but feels like these are real parts of the world that players just happen to be interacting with a fun way, giving Avatar a deep layer of immersion.

Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora

Developed by Massive Entertainment and set to be published by Ubisoft, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an open-world game set within James Cameron’s popular Avatar universe. The title will highlight a new region of Pandora called the Western Frontier.

Released

December 7, 2023

Genre(s)

Action-Adventure