Avatar: The Way of Water is utter garbage and the product of James Cameron’s Pandora-sized ego, but ever since I dragged my aching body out of the movie theater, I’ve found myself thinking about it a lot, and how I could actually be incredibly excited to play another game set in this ridiculous universe.
Look, I know there’s a good chance Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (opens in new tab) is going to be another prescribed Ubisoft open world, but there’s something so wonderfully silly about the property that inspired it that it just might turn out brilliant. Or at least better than 2009’s Avatar: The Game, the mediocre tie-in set before the first film. Licensed spin-offs have come a long way! I probably don’t sound very convincing, but bear with me.
I’m less and less interested in where games fall on the spectrum of exceptional and total shit, and more concerned with whether they’re boring or not. A bad game can still be interesting, even a fun time, but a game can’t go back from being boring even if it’s otherwise not a disaster. The Way of the Water is certainly not boring. Accidentally hilarious? Absolute. Too damn long? Yes, oh god, yes. But it had my attention for the whole three hours because I just had to keep watching to see what ridiculous nonsense Cameron would clumsily put in there next. Every scene was a treat, even as my brain slowly leaked out of my ears. And that’s a quality I’d really appreciate in a game.
We’re about to enter spoiler territory here, of course. And with the disclaimer out of the way, let’s get into the nonsense.
The Way of Water is a cinematic clusterfuck bursting with ideas, even if few are particularly original. But they are thrown against the wall with such conviction and childlike sincerity that I kind of respect Cameron’s self-confidence. Pandora’s whales really typify this. These whales are special. Magical even. Encountering a dead whale, one of the mostly interchangeable na’vi (this one played by a very well disguised Kate Winslet) complains that this huge carcass was once a famous composer, and her best friend.
Since then I have had visions of a whale orchestra. Imagine the Frontiers of Pandora sidequest where you flit around in search of the best water musicians the world has to offer. Forget the war against humanity, just let me start a goddamn band. And this feels like a very Ubisoft thing to do. How many times have we seen Assassins take a break from stabbing people to go on a lark? Eivor even played some baseball, which I’m not sure is historically accurate.
In typical Avatar fashion, we just get odd tidbits about the whales – like how they’re mostly strict pacifists, forcing any orca to go rogue – so there’s a huge hole that Ubisoft could fill with all sorts of unexpected distractions. I really want to know what kind of music these creatures like. Do they enjoy Enya?
Or why not join a gang of cool teenage whales who love murder? Just patrol the high seas, use your whale friends as boats and commit crimes. Hell yes. There’s just so much potential here, and Ubisoft would be a fool not to mine this for all its worth.
I really want to know what kind of music these creatures like. Do they enjoy Enya?
The reveal about the dead whale’s past and its relationship to na’vi Kate Winslet is an obvious attempt at heart-pulling, made laughable because we’re talking about a wacky-looking CGI critter we’ve never seen before. before she became a giant slab of rotting flesh. But these whales have more to offer than just their hobbies, as these large, wet mammals also hold the secret to immortality. Yes, they swim around, compose songs, while a magic elixir sloshes in their brains that stops the aging process.
Amrita, as the elixir is known, is why the cartoonishly evil humans hunt the whales, effectively replacing the first film’s MacGuffin, unobtanium – which, I should add, seems to have been largely forgotten. That forgetfulness, and the film’s careless dissemination of information, seems to be a theme of the series, as the magical brain juice is introduced quite far into the film, after which it’s pretty much ignored. It’s ostensibly the whole reason humanity kills everything it encounters in The Way of Water, but not really important enough to get more than a teeny bit of exposure.
It’s reassuring that Avatar already seems to be working on video game logic, though it’s a type of logic that’s common in many sci-fi and fantasy properties outside of gaming. You have the forest na’vi, with their bows and arrows and their tendency to jump from branch to branch. Now there are the water na’vi, who talk to fish and have weird Popeye-like forearms. Cameron recently confirmed that next we will meet the fire na’vi, who I assume lives in the desert and chatters with the sand. Apparently they’re assholes. This neatly divides the world into different biomes with their own special alien tribes with unique connections to Pandora and its creatures. Granted, it’s a big cliché, but it’s also a solid foundation on which to build a game, with these clearly defined regions set up to offer tailored challenges and vibes.
I spent about 100 hours in Horizon: Forbidden West last year – a game that shares many striking similarities with Avatar, though perhaps not quite as much as FernGully – and it really makes the most of its biome reveals. Reaching the desert or hitting the breathtaking coastline for the first time feels like an impressive, significant moment, which is then enhanced by the grand, overarching quests you begin to find yourself in, whether it’s bringing it back to life bringing the ruins of Las Vegas or finally reaching the monolithic paradise of San Francisco. It’s less overt than the main progression systems, but effective nonetheless, and this familiar structure still has a lot going for it.
This may just be evidence of the Stockholm Syndrome, but I’m even excited to find out if Frontiers of Pandora replicates The Way of Water’s wild casting decisions.
This may just be evidence of Stockholm Syndrome, but I’m even excited to find out if Frontiers of Pandora replicates The Way of Water’s wild casting decisions, the climax of which must be the return of Sigourney Weaver. Grace’s death in the first film is conveniently circumvented by having Weaver play her teenage daughter Kiri, who is a na’vi. Like all na’vi, she puts on an accent that makes you wonder “Is this a little racist?”, but it’s unmistakably Weaver, a 70-year-old woman. It’s completely bizarre, but after some initial confusion where I had no idea whose mouth her voice was coming from, I was all in. She sounds so wrong for the character that it works all over again. You just need to put your brain to sleep.
Ubisoft should take the idea to the logical next step. Cast Danny DeVito as the lead. Enlist Judi Dench to play a real baby and find a baby to play a wise old woman. The world may not be ready for this yet, but beyond my objectively good suggestions, there’s something strangely compelling about making decisions. Novelty factor aside, it’s just fun to hear a familiar name push himself in an unexpected direction, like Vin Diesel as Groot (his best performance since his Oscar-worthy role as Xander Cage in XXX), Mark Hamill as the Joker and , in games specifically, Nolan North hammers it out as the Penguin in Arkham City.
However, Kiri isn’t just remarkable because she’s a teenager with the voice of a 70-year-old. She is also the product of an Immaculate Conception, with all the messiah baggage that goes along with it. We never find out explicitly how she was conceived – aside from the disturbing fact that it is Grace’s now comatose na’vi clone who gives birth to her – but it is heavily hinted that Pandora herself was responsible. Yeah, just a horny planet hooking up with na’vi clones of Earth women. Typical. Yet another thread I hope Ubisoft gets totally caught up in. Has Pandora done this before? How many women has this planet-over-city impregnated?
Since we’re two movies in and we’ve already had two messiahs, Ubisoft might as well introduce a third. Sure, video game Chosen Ones are a dime a dozen, but I don’t think we’ve had many who get to call an entire planet “daddy.” Perhaps that’s what sets off Frontiers of Pandora’s main quest: the hunt for alimony. Interesting origin stories are hard to come by (at least I assume that’s why so many video game heroes are blank slates and amnesiac), but Avatar has set a precedent here that has some unusual potential – okay, maybe not the alimony part.
Sure, video game Chosen Ones are a dime a dozen, but I don’t think we’ve had many who get to call an entire planet “daddy.”
With Avatar: The Game, Ubisoft was given a lot of freedom, and we ended up with a prequel and a bunch of new characters instead of a beat-for-beat recreation of the first movie. We don’t know if it’s a similar deal this time around, but hopefully Ubisoft can treat Pandora like a playground, drawing from the first two films while introducing even more novelties.
Ultimately, I just want Frontiers of Pandora to lean into the weird shit, and even after only two movies, Avatar is a property that has this in abundance. After all, we’re talking about a series where the na’vi use their hair to both reproduce and bond with animals. But as much as The Way of Water doesn’t have a filter, there’s still the sense that Cameron was a bit reluctant, because even he understands that human bones can’t withstand your average movie theater seat for more than three hours. This isn’t a consideration for Ubisoft to make, and even if it were, I suspect it wouldn’t give a damn. Frontiers of Pandora is 100 hours long, I guarantee it. That’s a lot of time begging to be filled with unhinged oddities.
Or maybe it’s just Assassin’s Creed, but you’re blue.