How Massive created the world of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora | interview

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Ubisoft published Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora as an original extension of James Cameron’s Avatar films on December 7.

The average review score on Metacritic for the first-person action-adventure game is 72 out of 100, which isn’t spectacular. The game reminded people, including our own Mike Minotti, a bit too much of Ubisoft’s Far Cry games. But the title from Massive Entertainment is pretty universally applauded for its amazing visuals.

I spoke with Cedric Decelle, vice president of technology and Snowdrop Director at Ubisoft; and Nikolay Stefanov, technical director at Ubisoft’s Massive Entertainment about the graphics for the game.

Decelle spent most of his career on the Far Cry franchise and he became vice president of tech for Ubisoft Motreal in 2021, and he took over Snowdrop technology in 2022. Stefanov is a career graphics expert who also worked on Far Cry 3 and Tom Clancy’s The Division.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

GamesBeat: When it comes to how this game got made, what’s the interesting technology story here for you?

Nikolay Stefanov: We wanted to transport players to the world of Avatar. Immersion was one of the highest priorities. We wanted to make sure that the level of fidelity, the level of detail was there, so that you can sometimes forget that you’re playing a game. You can feel like you’re in that world. Pandora is the star of the show.

In terms of tech, we had to move from the urban environments that were the focus of The Division to something that’s much more organic. Much more foliage. We also had to fulfill the fantasy of flying on a Banshee. We had to