Avatar Frontiers Of Pandora Review
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora action-advneture game by Ubisoft.
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GamingTranscript
00:00So Jasmine has been playing Avatar Frontiers of Pandora for us, the much delayed game.
00:05The main word that comes to mind when reading your preview and chatting to you about it
00:08is bewildering, both from the mechanics, the UI, the gameplay, the navigation, the story,
00:13the sound, the crafting, the world in general.
00:16This seems like a very bewildering game.
00:19Yes, that is the word.
00:23And the thing is it just doesn't feel finished yet, like what happened to me, I didn't write
00:27about it in the article, but like, I don't know if I can, I can say it, whatever.
00:31But basically what happened was I tried to do another quest first and I got to the area.
00:36It was like, oh, find a fire in the forest biome in the nether region of this map.
00:41And I got there and there's a fire, there's something on fire and nothing happens.
00:45I'm just watching it burn.
00:47I can run through flames, nothing happens.
00:49And then I called over one of the guys and I was like, hey, so I'm at like a quest location
00:54and like I found it in the quest log, why is nothing happening?
00:58And they're like, oh, you shouldn't have done that one first.
01:00And I was like, then why is it in my quest log?
01:02So it's not even working properly.
01:04They set us up in the middle of nowhere, halfway through, like 25% of the way through the game.
01:09So it expects that you know what to do, how to move around all the different items.
01:13There's nothing to help you like, okay, this is my quest.
01:17It's like, oh, there are three quests, but apparently, oh no, no, no, you have to pick
01:20that one.
01:21You can't do the other ones.
01:22I was like, but what if I wanted to do that?
01:24What if I wanted to like go out of order?
01:26Well, I'm sorry, our game is that buggy that you can't.
01:29You literally can't.
01:30I was like, is something meant to happen?
01:31And they're like, oh yeah, I mean, there's meant to be someone here anyway.
01:34And then they literally just moved on and didn't say anything else.
01:37I got to this like location, you have to find these specific fruit, which doesn't tell you
01:42how to find things, by the way, it's just like, find this fruit and bring it back to
01:46the HQ.
01:47So I find random fruit, I return and I speak to everyone and I can't find who I'm meant
01:52to talk to.
01:54Why doesn't it say on the map marker, oh, speak to this, like there should be something
01:57saying like something over their head, like anything, nothing.
02:00He's like, oh, if you go all the way upstairs, put it on that table, it'll trigger a conversation.
02:06How am I meant to know how to do that?
02:07And it's not like there's a fruit merchant or there's like, no, no, no, it's that table
02:12specifically and that table is not like got a yellow highlight thing.
02:15Nothing.
02:16There's nothing to guide you.
02:17And I'm not sure if they're going to add this in later, but like, you're not going to invite
02:20everyone around.
02:21This compass is blank, nothing on it at all.
02:24I'm running around the jungle, trying to make sense of my guns, like won't something attack
02:29me?
02:30Nothing attacked me.
02:31So I had to attack other things to get them to react to me because otherwise it's just
02:35like you're passing through this beautiful kind of empty world that doesn't react unless
02:39you've gone in order in these quests, these quest thingies.
02:43And I was trying to be nice because I spoke with the, with the developer a little bit
02:46later and I was, I was just like, I've got no idea what this game was about.
02:50And no, I couldn't pay you to like tell you, but then I spoke with the developer, he was
02:54really nice.
02:55And like, he explained that it's basically what they want you to feel.
02:58They want you to feel out of your depth.
03:00They want you to be on the same footing as this character that you play who has no idea
03:05what's going on.
03:06So in their mind, it's literally, as he said, that's a sign of success for us is if you
03:11don't know what's happening, you have to grapple with the strange new world.
03:15And I get, I get where they're coming from.
03:17I get that there's been like, there is definitely something about with souls, the souls-like
03:22genre making people feel out of depth.
03:24I understand that that's the thing that people like a lot at the moment.
03:28There's the exploration side of like the Zelda games, which just go out and explore things.
03:32But things do have to happen to you when you go out there.
03:35The game can't force you to interact with it or be that buggy that it doesn't interact
03:40properly.
03:41But the other part that they're bringing to it, which again wasn't signposted, is basically
03:45like to a certain extent, a survival horror.
03:47It turned into Resident Evil for you because when you did come across somebody who was
03:50shooting back, you didn't have enough ammo left.
03:52Yes.
03:53And again, like I found out about crafting completely by accident just by exploring and
03:58you can't craft any ammo for anything.
04:01All you can do is there's like endless supplies of ammo for some reason in these abandoned
04:05bases, which are assumed to be from the enemy because the game takes place at the same time
04:11as the Avatar movies, but in a complete different area.
04:14So the idea is like you're fighting to hold down the fort on your end, whereas on the
04:18other side of the world, the movies are happening.
04:21Yeah.
04:22Well, the first movie, sorry.
04:24But yeah, in this, it was like I found myself just sort of being like, oh, I can just return
04:29back to this random base and loot it for more ammo, I guess, if I can't loot it.
04:34Not realizing that suddenly, oh, I'm in this combat heavy scenario.
04:37I've spent all of my bullets.
04:40I thought I was like out flying around in the sky on my lovely little Ikran called Carol.
04:44Suddenly, oh, you need to go and shoot down these bases with what weapons?
04:49My bows sucked.
04:51My bullets in the gun, they were just gone.
04:53It was just like I only had one gun as well.
04:55It was just this semi-automatic rifle just spraying and praying.
04:59And when that was empty, I had to leg it and fly off and try and find another base to raid
05:04for endless ammo.
05:06Again, maybe the designers have made it like that.
05:09Maybe that is part of the game.
05:10And you've talked about it being a bit of like a mix between Far Cry and Fallout.
05:14And there is elements within Fallout where sometimes you do get to a place and go, oh,
05:18I didn't prep for this.
05:19I haven't got enough ammo.
05:20I stumbled across this.
05:21I need to come back.
05:22So maybe there is that side where there are those inspirations.
05:25But I think that the way that the game looks, it looks like this beautiful cinematic action
05:30that is a bit more Far Cry with it's just fun.
05:33And I just think that I understand you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but people are
05:36going to maybe be coming to this thinking it is a more fun, jump in, have a bit of a
05:41laugh, jump out thing.
05:42And it turns out, no, this is a hard game that doesn't tell you stuff, doesn't tell
05:45you where to go, doesn't take out a craft, doesn't tell you the mechanics.
05:49And it is like punishing.
05:51And it's like the developers said to you, their design is for you to be lost and confused.
05:56Because like to its credit, at first I thought, OK, I'm aware that I'm starting 24 percent
06:01of the way in.
06:02Like maybe they explained these things earlier on, but it was just the fact that like if
06:05you were to just step into it, you would not have any idea what to do, where to go.
06:11And even like things that are interactable, like they have these little dots on the screen.
06:15I didn't realize that they were even important.
06:18I was like, oh, it's just part of the because there's so much happening that these little
06:22purple dots, these like pale purple dots just look like part of a flower.
06:25And like, oh, so it's like particle physics just going, oh, because you look around and
06:30only when you look at a specific thing, does it actually be like, oh, you can pick this
06:34for fruit if you want.
06:35There's nothing to sort of let you know.
06:38OK, so they've gone with instead of it being a UI kind of HUD thing where it like circles
06:42and it says a little bit of text.
06:44It's just a color sprite instead.
06:47And then you look at it.
06:48But bearing in mind that this is a completely new world.
06:51So they've developed new fauna and new animals that nobody's ever seen, which is amazing.
06:54It's great they've done that.
06:55But part of it, understandably, if this is like this is a flower I've never seen, you
06:59go, well, that purple thing could just be part of the flower.
07:01Yes, precisely.
07:02It's that thing where like for me, I'm just concerned that the world is so beautiful and
07:08there's so much to do that it just takes away from this story that's supposed to be, you
07:12know, this well-written, really complex sort of story about like patriotism and learning
07:18about your roots and your family.
07:20And there's this wonderful story that I, for me, just didn't come through at all because
07:24I spent half the time being like, how do I run?
07:27How do I how do I build stuff?
07:29How do I become one with this world that wants to keep me at such an arm's length?
07:34It felt like I was fighting against the game to just know what to do with my time.
07:38If you're trying to work out how to just make it from point A to point B, if somebody's
07:43giving you an amazing lore dump on your on your headphones, you're like, I am not listening
07:47to you because I just ran through a cloud that made me faster, but nobody ever told
07:52you that.
07:53So all of a sudden you're pinging around like, what happened?
07:54I don't know why that.
07:55Oh, I went through a blue cloud.
07:56There's also climbing elements that again, isn't how you have to shoot a certain thing
08:01to let the vines come down.
08:02But again, because you were dumped 25% into the game, you're like, I'm sure there was
08:06a tutorial that told me this, but I didn't know it.
08:09And again, like even with that, there's no purple dot on the vine fruit saying vine fruit
08:13shoot me.
08:14It's just like, oh, you should know how to do this by now.
08:17Climbing getting around isn't like a smooth kind of parkour Assassin's Creed kind of feel.
08:21There's no sort of like obvious thing to do.
08:24And you can't jump as high as you might think.
08:26And I was grappling with that.
08:27But once you get to the top of this beautiful like animal rookery, you're on the back of
08:32this beautiful bird called an Ikran and you're swooping and that feels really nice.
08:37But then it's like, oh, find a sky island with purple trees to continue the mission.
08:41There are about a thousand of these sky islands.
08:44And I literally was like, where?
08:47There's nothing on my mini map telling me to go anywhere.
08:50It's not being specific.
08:51It's like find a sky island with purple trees on it.
08:52It didn't even say like south, southwest.
08:54No, no.
08:55Sky island with purple trees.
08:56So you're looking, you're up there flying around, looking at thousands of islands going,
09:00am I literally going to have to check every single one of these?
09:02Yes.
09:03I was, am I going to, like, my heart sunk.
09:05I was like, am I going to have to fly around the map?
09:07I can see on the map there are a bunch across the map on the other end of it.
09:11And I, my heart sank.
09:12I was like, am I going to have to fly like a hundred kilometers across the map to find
09:17this place?
09:18Obviously it wasn't too far, but I did spend a good like 20 minutes circling, making sure.
09:24To fair play to them, they are trying something very hard and it is very tricky to have that
09:29amazing exploration that you only get in a few games.
09:33But clearly I think that they've missed the mark and it's very unfortunate.
09:38Yes.
09:39I definitely think that the Boo Ultimate comes from, again, this feeling of not knowing what
09:43the game, what it wants to be like.
09:45Is it an FPS?
09:46Like, am I meant to be going around shooting everything?
09:49Is it like an open world adventure exploration game?
09:51Is it a survival game?
09:52Precisely.
09:53Is it a survival horror game?
09:54Like, what am I meant?
09:55What does it want to do?
09:56I feel like it's trying to do a lot of things and it does most of them competently.
10:01But the problem arises when I have no idea what the actual purpose of me exploring is.
10:07What will I gain from doing this?
10:08It's that the question for me was, what are the stakes involved here?
10:12Will I even get anything if I go off the beaten path?
10:14Or will it just be another few thousand yards of just jungle?
10:19Which has been partly Starfield's problem.
10:21But this seems like on another level.
10:24Starfield at least told you where to go.
10:27It was boring getting there, but you need to do what you're doing.
10:32It's definitely something that there will be people that want to just run around and
10:35have a good time and experience.
10:37People that are massive fans of the movies will love it because to me it feels more like
10:41a walking sim of Pandora.
10:44So there's that benefit to it where it's very artistically driven.
10:49It's very lore driven.
10:52But if you're not as interested in that, then you're literally just fighting through leagues
10:57and leagues of jungle just to get from A to B and you don't know why you need to be there.
11:03And it comes out in a couple of months.
11:05Yeah, in December I'm quite sure.
11:07So it's not far away and I don't know, let's hope that maybe they add a little bit more
11:13in terms of pathfinding.
11:14I'm not asking for...
11:15Let's hope that the first 25% that you didn't play has some more tutorials.
11:18Maybe there's something else to this and maybe some more pathfinding.
11:23I must say 25% of the way into the game and that's when you get the flying bird for the
11:28first time.
11:29That's 25% of the game that you're going to spend walking around on foot.
11:32I didn't even think about that until now.
11:34This bird makes map mobility so much easier.
11:37You can fly places like 20 times faster.
11:40You don't know where you're going.
11:41But you can get to somewhere where you don't know where to go quicker.
11:43Yeah, you can fly.
11:44Whereas 25% of the game in, you've been wandering.
11:47Just wandering around.
11:48Oh my god.
11:49On foot.
11:50Okay, well, fingers crossed that they completely change the game in the next two months.
11:53Yeah, I mean, you know, there's hope, there's hope.
11:56I mean, Ubisoft are technically very good when it comes to open world games.
12:01I'm just hoping that that comes through in the final version for this.
12:04I really do.