Disney’s D23 Presents Avatar Blowout

With Avatar: The Way Of Water now only a couple of short months away from hitting cinemas, Disney is starting to lean into the franchise’s potential as the wave of Avatar video games continues to grow in size. Today during Disney’s D23 Games Showcase, they showed off two of their titles, the Ubisoft developed and Published, Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora, and one that was known by a much smaller number of players, the mobile MMO from Level Infinite (a Tencent subsidiary), Avatar Reckoning.

Neither game presented a great deal of itself for the watching audience, Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora only lasting for a few seconds, while we consumed about a minute of Avatar Reckoning with developer commentary. The small taste of Frontiers of Pandora was likely due to a larger showing likely being on the docket for tomorrow’s Ubisoft Forward showcase, but the details on Avatar Reckoning were fascinating for those keen to engage in tradtional MMO activities, PvP FPS shooting, and more, all on your mobile phone.

The Avatar Reckoning trailer depicts a Na’vi, one that had been previously customised, dropping onto the terrain of Pandora in a very Fortnite-like way, while once things got up and running we saw the player-controlled Na’vi taking on threats from the local fauna to the RDA troops, including their incredibly slow moving circular saw boss encounter. Multiplayer was the primary focus of the trailer given the game’s MMO DNA, with the trailer highlighting the game’s PvP gameplay, which evokes the one of most standard shooters, as well as its PvE systems. Avatar Reckoning is supposedly due to come out “soon” according to the trailer, though a more specific window is currently unknown.

As for Frontiers of Pandora, the game never cut to a full trailer, with Disney & Marvel Games Showcase host, Blessing Adeoye Jr. talking over some B-roll footage. “In Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora, you will be immersed in the beauty and danger of the alien moon, and experience a living and reactive world firsthand as a Na’vi. You will explore new environments, and interact with all new creatures, plants, and characters from the never before seen Western Frontier, fighting against the RDA in a brand new stand-alone story, for PC and next-gen consoles”

The official description of the game, from developer Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft reads as follows:

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a first person, action-adventure game developed by Massive Entertainment – a Ubisoft studio, in collaboration with Lightstorm Entertainment and Disney. Built using the latest iteration of the Snowdrop engine, and developed exclusively for the new generation of consoles and PC, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora brings to life the alluring world of Pandora with all of its beauty and danger in an immersive, open world experience. In this new, standalone story, play as a Na’vi and embark on a journey across the Western Frontier, a never-before-seen part of Pandora. Explore a living and reactive world inhabited by unique creatures and new characters, and push back the formidable RDA forces that threaten it

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora does not yet have a release date, despite it being delayed to 2023-2024. Perhaps we’ll learn more tomorrow at the Ubisoft Forward.

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