Now I’m not a big fan of James Cameron’s Avatar. My apologies to my friends back in New Zealand who’ve been working tirelessly on it for the last decade.

Regardless of my indifference to the franchise, Avatar does seem like a world that is ripe for a solid video game adaptation. 

It is a world filled with video-gamey ass stuff, vines to swing on, floating rocks to jump between, some awfully bouncy-looking glowing mushrooms, and the protagonist is an alien, with a giant oddly proportioned body, that could genuinely allow for some interesting gameplay mechanics.

On top of that, it’s been handed over to the studio that brought us Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed. Two franchises that legitimately pushed the needle forward in terms of free-roam exploration and parkour. 

Putting this team in charge of designing a world that’s not limited by the lame restrictions of reality, and the reach of our feeble human bodies, seems like a match made in video game heaven.

All of this, and Ubisoft are hurting for a refreshed image and some renewed hope in their ability to produce new and interesting games.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a near-guaranteed financial hit along the lines of Hogwarts Legacy that was released early this year and resulted in a big ole bag full of cash for Warner Bros. It’s a new IP in terms of video games. The last Avatar game was released into the ether in 2009, now long since forgotten.

Ubisoft has the opportunity here to take some risks and truly shake up its formula, without upsetting a long-time pre-existing fanbase. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, could be a third pillar alongside their other successful franchises, that and their future titles could build on and refine these ideas improving their formula, something that is much needed for the now-stale Assassin’s Creed series.

But…

Why do all that when you can reskin Far Cry 3 for what feels like the 11th time? After all, all these idiots care about is the visuals right? 

This is a huge disappointment to me. The potential here for Ubisoft to invest in some changes to their core gameplay mechanics, to truly make something fresh and exciting is huge. For Ubisoft to seem not to have any interest in harnessing that potential, out of a sheer lack of care or any real reason to do so is upsetting.

Could this game still be good? Of course, because Far Cry 3 was good. Far Cry is still fun. It’s a bit mind-numbing if it’s your 11th time in the Ubisoft FPS meat grinder, but it’ll tide you over and be fun for a few hours, at least until you eventually come to your senses and realize there are better things you could be doing with your time. 

It could surprise me, and reinvent Ubisoft’s first-person formula. But, at this point, I’ve truly given up hope. Let’s just hope that they have enough care factor still left in them somewhere, to make something of the next billion-dollar franchise that they’ve been handed the reigns to, Star Wars.