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NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora Has Been An "Ongoing Collaboration" With James Cameron's Production Company
Ubisoft's Massive studio wants to "push the envelope of technology."
www.dualshockers.com
Creative Director for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Magnus Jansen, recently sat down with Games Radar to discuss the team's ambitions for the title, and, in doing so, he revealed that Massive Entertainment wasn't simply handed the Avatar license and left to its own devices. Instead, there has apparently been a "close collaboration with the teams at Lightstorm Entertainment and Disney," Lightstorm Entertainment being Avatar creator and acclaimed director James Cameron's production company.
Jansen explained that one of the team's goals for the game was to create a reactive world inhabited by unique creatures, and this is being achieved with the help of Lightstorm. Jansen describes it as a "very collaborative experience," which has been consistent throughout the so-far 5-year development cycle, and has yielded positive and productive results.
He further described it as a "partnership," stating that the two parties have been exchanging ideas, trying to figure out what works best for the universe of Avatar. Both of them are, in the end, looking to bring the same mythos to life and enhance fans' immersion within it, albeit in different mediums.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will be a significant departure from Massive's prior The Division titles, which feature an urban landscape that's less inhabited by comparison, but Jansen has confidence in the team's proprietary Snowdrop engine, as so apparently does Disney and Lightstorm. Jansen explained that Massive showed Snowdrop to them to prove the studio was "willing to push the envelope of technology, just like they do in the films." He continued, stating that Snowdrop "was and still is the key foundation of our ongoing collaboration."
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is currently set to launch sometime in Ubisoft's next fiscal year, meaning between April 2023, and March 2024. It seems the team at Massive has set pretty high goals for themselves, so it's unsurprising that the development cycle has been so long. "The time has been spent on building a brand-new part of Pandora and creating the tools needed to bring it to life on the latest generation of console and PC hardware," said Jansen. Little is known about Frontiers of Pandora beyond the fact that it's a first-person open-world title, as Ubisoft has yet to show off any gameplay at all.
