Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora Combat Explained

ign.com:

The moon of Pandora is host to a pair of different worlds; the harmonious, nature-loving Na’vi and the industrial, destructive humans of the RDA. In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora you play as a native Na’vi, but that doesn’t mean you’ll be restricted to using just their traditional tools and weaponry.

“As a child of two worlds, someone that was brought up and trained by the RDA forcefully, you do have the knowledge of human tools,” explains Magnus Jansen, creative director of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. “Not just weapons but their technology and other things as well.”

But if you have access to rocket launchers, assault rifles, and grenades, why would you ever use the Na’vi’s comparatively primitive weapons? We spoke to the developers at Massive Entertainment, who told us all about the gameplay styles and choices offered by human and Pandoran equipment.

“Human technologies are loud and destructive and kind of dirty in a way,” says game director Ditte Deenfeldt. “Whereas the Na'vi tools are usually more powerful, more stealthy, more precise.”

The Na’vi source almost all of their equipment directly from nature and so their arsenal is predominantly based on archery. Each bow is tooled for a particular approach: the shortbow for fast attacks, a heavy bow for high-damage sniping, and a longbow for general purpose shooting. These are, as you’d expect, silent killers.

“So the Na'vi weapons, they're all about precision and they're also stealth tools, so they preserve your stealth loop,” explains associate game director Drew Rechner. “They're all using that idea of precision and planning and quiet takedowns.”

But how can a wooden arrow destroy an armored mechanical exo-skeleton? It’s simple, really: you aim true. “All of our