When it was released in 2023, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora succeeded in the daunting task of bringing its own kind of life to the world of James Cameron’s Avatar movies. Developer Massive Entertainment wisely chose not to retell the story of the films, instead weaving a tale on the other side of the moon of Pandora where the films take place.
But while Frontiers excelled at turning the dense, visually fascinating world of Pandora into a cogent, interactive space and exploring the culture of the Na’vi peoples who populate it, the game also felt somewhat disconnected from the movies. With the release of the third Avatar movie, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Massive is taking the opportunity to adjust that situation a bit.
Alongside the movie hitting theaters comes From the Ashes, an expansion for the game that tells a new story that incorporates major elements from the film, while also shaking up Frontiers’ take on Pandora in some very big ways. Massive worked closely with Cameron’s production company, Lightstorm Entertainment, to bring the stories of the movie and the game a little closer together.
“With From the Ashes, we were very closely aligned with Lightstorm on where they’re taking the tone of the franchise–it’s becoming very dark,” Aoife O’Friel, From the Ashes’ narrative director, told me in an interview. “And so we wanted to mirror that and link with that as much as possible. And so From the Ashes also has that darkness and a kind of vengeful edge to it.”
Central to both Fire and Ash and From the Ashes are the Mongkwan, or Ash people, a warlike Na’vi clan that attacks and raids the others. In the movie, the Ash people side with the antagonistic human military forces of the RDA and Miles Quarritch, the series’ primary villain. The story of the expansion takes place soon after the events of the movie, with the RDA making a new push across Pandora–but this time, they’re doing it with a powerful and aggressive band of Na’vi among their ranks.
What that means in practice is that, when you leap into the new story told in From the Ashes, you’ll face Na’vi enemies for the first time, in addition to the human soldiers, VTOLs, and mechs that make up the forces of the RDA. I played about three hours of From the Ashes at a recent preview event in Los Angeles, and saw how the addition of Na’vi enemies can introduce a pretty significant bump in challenge. For the first time in Frontiers of Pandora, you’re facing foes who largely have the same capabilities that you do.
A new protagonist
From the start of Frontiers of Pandora, you’ve played as the Sarentu, a Na’vi who was abducted from their tribe as a child and raised among humans, but who takes the fight to the RDA throughout the story of the game. From the Ashes flips the script, putting you in control of So’lek, a side character with a dark past who players have worked with and grown close to throughout Frontiers’ story.
The expansion begins with a fresh invasion by the RDA and Mongkwan forces, attacking the hometree where your closest allies live, and setting fire to the surrounding Kinglor Forest. The Sarentu and many of the other resistance members from Frontiers are scattered and left for dead, and as So’lek, it becomes your goal to reunite with and protect them.
So’lek’s clan was wiped out by the RDA before the events of Frontiers, and he’s been on a quest of revenge ever since. Throughout the course of the story and its previous DLC expansions, So’lek became part of the Sarentu’s found family of survivors and resistance members. That makes this new attack deeply personal for him, dredging up a lot of personal pain and playing into the darker feel that From the Ashes brings to the game.
“[So’lek] is older, he is battle-hardened. He’s already grown up as a Na’vi, so he’s not learning about the world, and so there isn’t that kind of curiosity that maybe we focused on in the main game here,” O’Friel explained. “So he’s very driven and very focused on his goal and on protecting his family. And so it’s much darker in that sense, that it’s about the trauma that he’s endured and that he never wants to go through again.”
The devastation visited upon the game world only amplifies those feelings. After having spent tens of hours exploring the Kinglor Forest region, seeing it ravaged by flame highlights the brutality of the RDA and changes the game world significantly. The destroyed regions are bereft of the resources you need to craft ammunition or healing items, which can significantly change the dynamic of exploring or getting into battles with RDA patrols, forcing you to be more on-guard and cautious as you make your attacks.
The preview included two story missions from early in the expansion, totaling about an hour. The first sees So’lek invading a new RDA base set up in the Aranahe clan’s hometree. You’re free to enter the base however you want to, but I chose to sneak in, hoping to learn the whereabouts of the missing resistance members. In addition to the quieter Na’vi weapons like bows that players had in the base game to take down RDA forces without alerting the whole base, So’lek can also sneak up on many enemies and take them down with his knife, providing a quiet option for eliminating foes in your path.
This first mission mostly serves to introduce a few of the villains of From the Ashes, including one of three Na’vi warlords, who you’ll hunt down and face throughout the course of the campaign. There’s also Major Bukowski, who you’ll hear over the loudspeaker as you make your way through the hometree base. Massive describes Bukowski as being akin to movie protagonist Jake Sully, if Sully had never left the RDA. Bukowski speaks Na’vi, understands their culture, and is even somewhat sympathetic to their plight, but he’s still loyal to humanity.
Battling the Mongkwan
After gathering some intel, but unable to save any survivors, the mission culminates in So’lek emerging from the hometree and taking on a Mongkwan raider in close combat in an attempt to save another Na’vi member of the resistance. Na’vi enemies are much quicker and more resilient than even the toughest RDA mechs, making them feel more like mini-bosses (or full-on bosses) and more dangerous than any other enemy we’ve seen in Frontiers so far. The raider uses human weapons, like an assault rifle and grenades, so you need to keep moving and pick your moments to attack, as well.
Taking down the raider kicks off a cinematic in which the Na’vi survivor is killed before So’lek emerges victorious. The loss unlocks one of the new abilities that makes So’lek stand apart from the Sarentu: Warrior Vision. It’s basically an ultimate power that So’lek can charge up by dealing damage or taking hits from enemies. When you activate it, enemies are highlighted on your screen, and you deal additional damage while losing less health to enemy attacks, allowing you to storm through with overwhelming, rampaging force.
So’lek’s rage soon has him fighting basically the entire RDA base at once, using Warrior Vision to identify and quickly clean up targets. The fight brings a few new enemies to bear against So’lek, including RDA mechs with new weapons like flamethrowers, and eventually, another Mongkwan raider. This all adds a new degree of chaos and challenge to Frontiers of Pandora’s already fast, flowing combat, and it can be harrowing taking on a quick Na’vi fighter while the RDA are streaming in from the fringes of the battlefield. But between So’lek’s Warrior Vision, agility, and weapons, the mission soon ends with all the RDA forces defeated.
Frontiers of Pandora adds a lot to the Avatar franchise by giving players a chance to meet and interact with different Na’vi and their clans. From the Ashes goes a step in a different direction, creating Na’vi enemies, which required a shift in mindset, O’Friel explained.
“With the Mongkwan, they are such different Na’vi–we’ve never seen any Na’vi like them before. We’ve always thought of Na’vi as being so peaceful and so attuned with nature, and these Na’vi are so destructive and so chaotic and so brutal. It was really kind of shocking to realize how far they will go,” O’Friel said. “And then, of course, in From the Ashes, you will get to engage in combat against Na’vi for the first time, which we never had before, right? It was about really seeing what are the motivations of the Ash Clan, and what kind of motivations from the movie that we can carry through–like wanting to spread their fire, wanting to kind of subvert the will of Eywa.”
The Mongkwan also offer a fascinating contrast to So’lek. For the Na’vi, using human technology goes against the will of Eywa, the deity or force that connects all life on Pandora. The Mongkwan are willing to use human technology because the clan has been cut off from Eywa and actively resents the deity. So’lek’s use of those weapons is more pragmatic, but no less scorned by his fellow Na’vi.
“With So’lek, as well, we explore a little bit of his clan, the Trr’ong–he lost most of them in the Battle of the Hallelujah Mountains [which took place in the first Avatar movie],” O’Friel continued. “And we see him trying to hold on to remnants of who he was. But he also uses human weapons, which is also against the will of Eywa, but he does it for a different reason. He doesn’t want to defy Eywa, but he believes that the best way to fight these kinds of people and the RDA is with their own weapons. So exploring those different views on Na’vi culture, and also that internal conflict that So’lek is having, like choosing to use weapons like this because he thinks is the best way forward, versus the Ash, who enjoy it because they know it’s wrong–that was really fun to compare and contrast.”
Saving the mastodon
The second mission in the preview sets So’lek on the trail of the Beast, one of the three Mongkwan warlords now operating in the region. One of the best things about Frontiers of Pandora is that it generally eschews quest markers in favor of forcing you to explore areas, using your detective vision-like Na’vi Vision to search for clues and find your own way.
You first find evidence of the Beast when you discover a huge dirt path cut through the jungle, where the RDA moved heavy machinery. Following it, So’lek discovers evidence that the RDA have been capturing various animals–but it’s unclear just what for.
The answers aren’t far away, however. The path eventually leads you to a huge RDA facility, a Laser Ore Processor. Once again, you need to find your way in, and you have a couple of options. You can blast straight through the front door, taking on mechs and turrets, or you can go a sneakier route. I always prefer the careful planning required with stealth, as well as the chaos when it goes wrong, so I find an out-of-the-way side door, carefully dispatching a few mechs with stealthy takedowns to clear my path.
Where the Sarentu can hack different RDA devices in Frontiers of Pandora, So’lek has no such skill. Finding a hidden way into the base instead requires using the knife he previously took off a Mongkwan raider, which can short out machinery just like it can RDA mechs. But with water spraying from a broken pipe right over the door control mechanism, you first have to track down a nearby shutdown valve before you can break into the facility.
Finally sneaking in, it starts to become clear what’s going on as you move past animal pens and scientific experiments: The RDA are trying to create weaponized and robotic versions of some of Pandora’s dangerous animals, and the Mongkwan are helping them. As you head deeper into the facility, the RDA ambush you with a big group of Hell Hounds, doglike robots that are new to the expansion and love to attack you from behind with their electrically charged jaws.
Before much longer, you reach the major threat hidden within the Laser Ore Processor: a towering Fireback Mastodon the RDA has attached machinery to in order to drive it into a violent frenzy. Mechanical attachments on the mastodon’s feet and back allow the RDA to remotely sting the creature, driving it to attack. Seeing the huge mastodon trampling toward you gives the sense of fighting a huge, fast, angry construction crane.
But the battle is also something of a keepaway game–So’lek’s goal is to free the animal, not to harm it–which means you’ll need to dodge its monstrous tusks and bait it into crashing through support pillars so you can stun it long enough to destroy the machinery attached to it. Every so often, RDA enemies stream in to stop you, but the mastodon can be as dangerous to them as it is to you, if you’re quick enough to avoid its huge, sweeping tusks. As the fight continues, So’lek removes more and more of the mechanical pieces from the mastodon, before it bursts through a wall and you have to chase it into another room.
The second half of the fight is a bit more of an environmental puzzle, since you need to get onto the mastodon’s back to free it from the last few pieces of machinery. That means waiting for the creature to smash through walls and pipes that create a climbable path through the huge room you find yourself in, while you also fight RDA soldiers as they try to stop you with rockets and assault rifles.
The climb is a good highlight of the new third-person viewpoint mode, another major change coming to Frontiers with From the Ashes. Frontiers launched as a first-person game, but with the update that comes with the expansion, you can play it all in third-person if you so choose, which provides more awareness of your environment that can be useful in combat and in platforming. You also get a better sense of scale as you control So’lek, with the ability to see how he towers over humans and barely fits through RDA doorways, and the viewpoint makes a degree of narrative sense as you follow the story of So’lek, a fully formed character, at a bit more distance than you did with the Sarentu’s.
In practice, though, third-person felt a little loose and floaty to me. The Na’vi are almost too agile; you can quickly cut sideways or back at a run as you’re moving around the battlefield, and the animations supporting third-person mode end up looking unnatural as a result. Frontiers was originally designed as a first-person game, where that agility feels more natural and the ability to quickly change direction or scamper up a vertical wall to a new position elevates the game, giving you a lot of freedom. What you gain with third-person in situational awareness and easier, clearer platforming, you lose in feeling like a more natural part of the world.
Principally, though, From the Ashes is just more Frontiers, and Frontiers is already a solidly fun open-world experience. I spent the rest of the preview wandering the open world, attacking different RDA facilities, some of which even had a Mongkwan mini-boss waiting in the wings to stop me as I sabotaged their machinery. The things that work about Frontiers, like its huge open world and the fun of playing as a fast, resilient, 10-foot-tall alien leaping over buildings made for six-foot humans, are still great in the expansion.
From the Ashes builds on Frontiers of Pandora with a new story, a new protagonist, new abilities, new enemies, and a changed world, and all those things are welcome additions to an already strong foundation. Though I only got a short taste of the 25-hour addition, From the Ashes reminded me of what I liked about the game in the first place, while doing just enough to make the experience feel fresh all over again.