Expanding the Avatar franchise with Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

blog.playstation.com:

Hi PlayStation Blog readers! Avatar: Frontiers of Pandorawill be out tomorrow on PS5, letting you to play as a Na’vi and explore a brand-new continent of Pandora: the Western Frontier. The team at Massive Entertainment – an Ubisoft Studio, in collaboration with James Cameron’s production company Lightstorm Entertainment and Disney expanded the world of Avatar, offering players the opportunity to discover new regions, clans, fauna and more.

The goal for the teams at Massive and Ubisoft has always been to build upon the existing Avatar lore, allowing players to experience never-before-seen parts of Pandora firsthand. In order to do that the dev team worked closely with Lightstorm to comply to the logic of the Avatar universe. There were cultural Na’vi guidelines to abide by such as no written language nor monetary system. In addition to this, Na’vi follow Eywa’s three laws: You shall not set stone upon stone, neither use the turning wheel, nor use the metals from the ground. There were also broader guidelines for world building: Pandora being a metaphor for Earth must feel alien, yet familiar. Everything should be grounded in science, that is why the team refers to “science-fact” rather than ” science-fiction”. Finally, the world must feel epic in scale, and always combine elements of wonder and danger.  

The Aranahe Hometree is found in the Kinglor Forest.

With these guidelines in mind, as well as a close collaboration with the Avatar filmmakers, the dev team was able to create never-before-seen regions of Pandora. The Kinglor Forest is a lush rainforest brimming with life and dense vegetation, the closer in looks to the environments seen in the first Avatar film.

The Kinglor Forest, a lush rainforest full of wonders