Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora action-advneture game by Ubisoft.
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00:00So Jasmine has been playing Avatar Frontiers of Pandora for us, the much delayed game.
00:05The main word that comes to mind when reading your preview and chatting to you about it
00:08is bewildering, both from the mechanics, the UI, the gameplay, the navigation, the story,
00:13the sound, the crafting, the world in general.
00:16This seems like a very bewildering game.
00:19Yes, that is the word.
00:23And the thing is, it just doesn't feel finished yet, like what happened to me, I didn't write
00:27about it in the article, but like, I don't know if I can, I can say it, whatever, but
00:31basically what happened was I tried to do another quest first, and I got to the area,
00:36it was like, oh, find a fire in the forest biome in the nether region of this map, and
00:41I got there, and there's a fire, there's something on fire, and nothing happens, I'm just watching
00:46it burn, I can run through flames, nothing happens, and then I called over one of the
00:51guys and I was like, hey, so I'm at a quest location, like I found it in the quest log,
00:56why is nothing happening, and they're like, oh, you shouldn't have done that one first,
01:00and I was like, then why is it in my quest log, so it's not even working properly.
01:04They set us up in the middle of nowhere, halfway through, like 25% of the way through the game,
01:09so it expects that you know what to do, how to move around, all the different items, there's
01:13nothing to help you, like, okay, this is my quest, it's like, oh, there are three quests,
01:18but apparently, oh, no, no, no, you have to pick that one, you can't do the other ones,
01:22I was like, but what if I wanted to do that, what if I wanted to, like, go out of order.
01:26Well, I'm sorry, our game is that buggy that you can't.
01:29You literally can't, I was like, is something meant to happen, and they're like, oh, yeah,
01:32I mean, there's meant to be someone here, anyway, and then they literally just moved
01:35on and didn't say anything else, I got to this, like, location, you have to find these
01:39specific fruit, which doesn't tell you how to find things, by the way, it's just like,
01:44find this fruit and bring it back to the HQ, so I find random fruit, I return, and I speak
01:50to everyone, and I can't find who I'm meant to talk to, I'm like, why doesn't it say on
01:54the map marker, oh, speak to this, like, there should be something saying, like, something
01:58over their head, like, anything, nothing, he's like, oh, if you go all the way upstairs,
02:03put it on that table, it'll trigger a conversation, how am I meant to know how to do that?
02:07And it's not like there's a fruit merchant.
02:09Yes!
02:10Or there's like, no, no, no, it's that table, specifically, and that table's not, like,
02:13got a, like, yellow highlight thing.
02:15Nothing, there's nothing to guide you, and I'm not sure if they're going to add this
02:18in later, but, like, you're not going to invite everyone around, this compass is blank, nothing
02:23on it, at all, I'm running around the jungle, trying to make sense of my guns, like, won't
02:28something attack me, nothing attacked me, so I had to attack other things to get them
02:32to react to me, because otherwise, it's just like you're passing through this beautiful
02:37kind of empty world that doesn't react unless you've gone in order in these quests, these
02:42quest thingies, and I was trying to be nice, because I spoke with the developer a little
02:46bit later, and I was just like, I've got no idea what this game is about, literally
02:50no, I couldn't pay you to, like, tell you, but then I spoke with the developer, he was
02:54really nice, and, like, he explained that it's basically what they want you to feel,
02:58they want you to feel out of your depth, they want you to be on the same footing as this
03:02character that you play, who has no idea what's going on, so in their mind, it's literally,
03:08as he said, that's a sign of success, for us, is if you don't know what's happening,
03:12you have to grapple with this strange new world.
03:15And I get where they're coming from, I get that there's been, like, there is definitely
03:19something about the Souls-like genre making people feel out of depth, I understand that
03:25that's a thing that people like a lot at the moment, there's the exploration side of, like,
03:30the Zelda games, which is just go out and explore things, but things do have to happen
03:34to you when you go out there, the game can't force you to interact with it or be that buggy
03:39that it doesn't interact properly, but the other part that they're bringing to it, which
03:43again wasn't signposted, is basically, like, to a certain extent, a survival horror, it
03:47turned into Resident Evil for you, because when you did come across somebody who was
03:50shooting back, you didn't have enough ammo left.
03:52Yes, and again, like, I found out about crafting completely by accident, just by exploring,
03:58and you can't craft any ammo for anything, all you can do is, there's, like, endless
04:02supplies of ammo for some reason in these abandoned bases, which are assumed to be from
04:08the enemy, because the game takes place at the same time as the Avatar movies, but in
04:12a complete different area, so the idea is, like, you're fighting to hold down the fort
04:17on your end, whereas on the other side of the world, the movies are happening, yeah,
04:22but, well, the first movie, sorry, but yeah, like, in this, it was, like, I found myself
04:26just sort of being, like, oh, I can just return back to this random base and loot it for more
04:32ammo, I guess, if I can't loot it, not realising that suddenly, oh, I'm in this combat-heavy
04:37scenario, I've spent all of my bullets, I thought I was, like, out flying around in
04:42the sky on my lovely little Ikran called Carol, suddenly, oh, you need to go and shoot
04:46down these bases, with what weapons?
04:49My bows sucked, my bullets in the gun, they were just gone, it was just, like, I only
04:54had one gun as well, it was just this semi-automatic rifle just spraying and praying, and when
04:59that was empty, I had to leg it and fly off and try and find another base to raid for
05:04endless ammo.
05:05Again, maybe the designers have made it like that, maybe that is part of the game, and
05:10you talked about it being a bit of, like, a mix between Far Cry and Fallout, and there
05:14is elements within Fallout where sometimes you do get to a place and you're going, oh,
05:18I didn't prep for this, I haven't got enough ammo, I stumbled across this, I need to come
05:21back.
05:22So maybe there is that side where there are those inspirations, but I think that the way
05:26that the game looks, it looks like this beautiful cinematic action that is a bit more Far Cry
05:31with it's just fun, and I just think that, I understand you shouldn't judge a book by
05:35its cover, but people are going to maybe be coming to this thinking it is a more fun jump
05:40in, have a bit of a laugh, jump out thing, and it turns out, no, this is a hard game
05:44that doesn't tell you stuff, doesn't tell you where to go, doesn't tell you how to craft,
05:47doesn't tell you the mechanics, and it is, like, punishing, and like the developers said
05:52to you, their design is for you to be lost and confused.
05:56Because to it's credit, at first I thought, okay, I'm aware that I'm starting 24% of the
06:01way in, maybe they explained these things earlier on, but it was just the fact that
06:05if you were to just step into it, you would not have any idea what to do, where to go,
06:11and even, like, things that are interactable, like they have these little dots on the screen,
06:15I didn't realise that they were even important, I was like, oh, it's just part of the, because
06:20there's so much happening, that these little purple dots, these, like, pale purple dots
06:24just look like part of a flower, and, like, you do-
06:26Oh, so it's like particle physics, just going on, oh, because you're just like, oh, it's-
06:29And you look around, and only when you look at a specific thing does it actually be like,
06:33you can pick this for fruit if you want, there's nothing to sort of let you know-
06:38Okay, so they've gone with, instead of it being a UI kind of HUD thing, where it, like,
06:42circles and it says a little bit of text, it's just a colour sprite instead, but bearing in
06:48mind that this is a completely new world, so they've developed new fauna and new animals
06:53that nobody's ever seen, which is amazing, it's great they've done that, but part of it,
06:56understandably, if this is like, this is a flower I've never seen, you go, well,
06:59that purple thing could just be part of the flower.
07:01Yes, precisely, like, it's that thing where, like, for me, I'm just concerned that
07:06the world is so beautiful and there's so much to do that it just takes away from this story
07:11that's supposed to be, you know, this well-written, really complex sort of story about, like,
07:16patriotism and learning about your roots and your family, and there's this wonderful story that I,
07:22for me, just didn't come through at all because I spent half the time being like, how do I run?
07:26Like, how do I build stuff? How do I become one with this world that wants to keep me at
07:32such an arm's length? It felt like I was fighting against the game to just know what to do with my
07:37time. If you're trying to work out how to just make it from point A to point B, if somebody's
07:43giving you an amazing lore dump on your headphones, you're like, I am not listening to you because I
07:48just ran through a cloud that made me faster, but nobody ever told you that, so all of a sudden,
07:53you're pinging around like, what happened? I don't know why that, oh, I went through a blue cloud,
07:55and then there's also climbing elements that, again, isn't how you have to shoot a certain
08:01thing to let the vines come down, but again, because you were dumped 25% into the game,
08:05you're like, I'm sure there was a tutorial that told me this, but I didn't know it.
08:08And again, like, even with that, there's no purple dot on the vine fruit saying,
08:13vine fruit, shoot me. It's just like, oh, you should know how to do this by now.
08:16Climbing, getting around isn't like a smooth kind of parkour, Assassin's Creed kind of feel.
08:21There's no sort of, like, obvious thing to do, and you can't jump as high as you might think,
08:26and I was grappling with that, but once you get to the top of this beautiful, like, animal rookery,
08:31you're on the back of this beautiful bird called an Ikran, and you're swooping,
08:35and that feels really nice, but then it's like, oh, find a sky island with purple trees to continue
08:40the mission. There are about a thousand of these sky islands, and I literally was like, where?
08:47There's nothing on my mini-map telling me to go anywhere. It's not being specific.
08:51It's like, find a sky island with purple trees on it.
08:52And it didn't even say, like, south-southwest.
08:54No, no.
08:55So you're looking, you're up there, flying around, looking at thousands of islands, going,
09:00am I literally going to have to check every single one of these?
09:02Yes. I was, am I going to, like, my heart sunk. I was like, am I going to have to fly around the map?
09:07I can see on the map there are a bunch across the map on the other end of it, and my heart sank.
09:12I was like, am I going to have to fly, like, 100 kilometers across the map to find this place?
09:18Luckily, it wasn't too far, but I did spend a good, like, 20 minutes circling, making sure.
09:24To fair play to them, they are trying something very hard,
09:28and it is very tricky to have that amazing exploration that you only get in a few games.
09:33But clearly, I think that they've missed the mark, and it's very unfortunate.
09:38Yes, I definitely think that the Boo Ultimate comes from, again,
09:41this feeling of not knowing what the game, what it wants to be.
09:45Like, is it an FPS? Like, am I meant to be going around shooting everything?
09:48Is it, like, an open-world adventure exploration game?
09:51Is it a survival game?
09:52Precisely. Is it a survival horror game? Like, what does it want to do?
09:56I feel like it's trying to do a lot of things, and it does most of them competently.
10:01But the problem arises when I have no idea what the actual purpose of me exploring is.
10:06What will I gain from doing this?
10:08It's that the question for me was, what are the stakes involved here?
10:11Will I even get anything if I go off the beaten path?
10:14Will it just be another few thousand yards of just jungle?
10:19Which has been partly Starfield's problem.
10:21But this seems like on another level.
10:24Starfield, like, at least told you where to go.
10:26Like, it was boring getting there, but, like, you need to do what you're doing.
10:30Yeah, like, it's definitely something that, like,
10:33there will be people that want to just run around and have a good time and experience.
10:37People that are massive fans of the movies will love it,
10:40because to me, it feels more like a walking sim of Pandora.
10:44So there's that benefit to it, where there is that it's very artistically driven.
10:49It's very lore driven.
10:51But if you're not as interested in that,
10:54then you're literally just fighting through, like,
10:56legions and leagues and leagues of jungle just to get from A to B.
11:00And you don't know why you need to be there.
11:03And it comes out in a couple of months.
11:04Yeah, in December, I'm quite sure.
11:07So, like, it's not far away.
11:10And, I mean, I don't know.
11:11Let's hope that maybe they add a little bit more in terms of pathfinding.
11:14I'm not asking for...
11:14Let's hope that the first 25% that you didn't play has some more tutorials.
11:18Yes.
11:18Maybe there's something else to this.
11:19And maybe, yeah, some more pathfinding.
11:23I must say, 25% of the way into the game,
11:25and that's when you get the flying bird for the first time,
11:28that's 25% of the game that you're going to spend walking around on foot.
11:31Oh, no!
11:32I didn't even think about that until now.
11:34This bird makes map mobility so much easier.
11:37You can fly places, like, 20 times faster.
11:39I mean, you don't know where you're going.
11:40But you can get to somewhere where you don't know where to go quicker.
11:43Yeah, you can fly.
11:44Whereas 25% of the game in, you've been wandering.
11:47Just wandering around.
11:48Oh, my God.
11:48On foot.
11:49Okay, well, fingers crossed that they completely change the game in the next two months.
11:53Yeah, I mean, you know, there's hope.
11:55There's hope.
11:56I mean, Ubisoft are technically very good when it comes to open world games.
12:01I'm just hoping that that comes through in the final version for this.
12:04I really do.
12:10Wow.