It's easy to forget that there's an Avatar game coming out in two months. A year out of step with the movies and missing the big rush of games we had through September and October, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is arriving very late in the holiday season in a slot that usually means the game is rushing to beat its 'before Christmas' deadline. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Cyberpunk 2077 shared this 'first weekend of December' release date back in 2020, but let's not think too hard about that. I'm more curious about Avatar than anything else, and it could still be a winner if it does things right.
Frontiers of Pandora isn't just out of step with the movie release dates, it feels out of step with modern video games. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Ubisoft's open world design has struggled under the trend of larger and larger maps. Ubisoft was once a trend-setter, laying 𒉰down a blueprint of marker checklists that fired off serotonin at exactly the🐽 right rate. But as maps grew larger, Ubisoft stuck to its guns while other games found new ways to explore. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Elden Ring and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:modern Zelda games did away with map markers entirely, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars Jedi: Survivor adopted a Metroidvania style that saw the map open up further with each mission, and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Spider-Man 2 weaves them into the main narrative.
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But all need not be lost. Fashion moves in circles. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Assassin's Creed, another Ubisoft title, has just released Mirage, which aimed to go back to the basics of the series. As I wrote at the time, I wasn't sure Assassin's Creed could go back to basics - it always tried to make the biggest game possible, but as its budget and development time increased, the idea of a 'biggest game' passed the threshold of where a Ubisoft game can work. Far Cry, though, is a different story.
Moving to Far Cry might seem like a non sequitur, linked only by falling under the Ubisoft umbrella, but there's more to it. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Avatar has always jꦍust looked like Blue Far Cry - it has the same engine and animations, while even the gunplay in the gameplay reveal trailer looks incredibly similar. But that doesn't need to be a bad thing. 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Starfield was sold on the idea that it was Skyrim in space. Plenty of solid, enjoyable games are just 'this other game, but with X'. Avatar can be Far Cry with Na'vi and be very successful, so long as it understands that fashion moves in circles.
Ever since Far Cry 3, Far Cry has gotten bigger and bigger, and the experience of playing it has gotten worse and worse. It's always passable, but Far Cry 3 was the formula perfected. Sequels took that formula and made it bigger, but that was like adding sawdust to stretch it out. The same amount of meat, now chewier, less flavoursome. So fears around Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora being like Far Cry aren't necessarily fears about it being Far Cry at all. They're fears of it being Far Cry 6. There were no moments or events in Far Cry 6 that made it a particularly bad experience, but the whole thing took so long and was so full of filler that the good parts were lost. The fear around an 'Avatar Cry' game is that this will be repeated. But the answer is right there.
Mirage attempted to go back to Assassin's Creed's basics, and perhaps fell short because there wasn't really a blueprint for the Altair or Ezio games, they were forced into refinement by technological and time frame limitations. In some ways, the same could be true of Far Cry 3. But the series never started out as a mega map game and has continued to explore smaller spin-offs. There is a small but mighty heart at the centre of Far Cry, and when it is forced to pump blood around too big a map it becomes weak and ineffective. We know the perfect size for a Far Cry game, and if Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora sticks to that size, it will be perfect.
Worrying about Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora being like Far Cry is a misplaced fear. I might have liked something different from the outset, but if that is what's happening, there are worse things an Avatar game could be. The worry now is not whether it's like Far Cry or not, it's how much it's like Far Cry 3. Stray too far from that, and the game may lose its charm.