You can now play Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora in a long-awaited third-person mode — or, as some have said, the way it should’ve been the whole time. While the mode is out just a few weeks ahead of the game’s From the Ashes expansion, the two updates owe their existence to each other, as Frontiers of Pandora narrative director Aoife O’Friel and lead game designer Amandine Lauer recently told gamexplore. It’s a lot to do with the dark quest embarked on by So’lek, the protagonist of From the Ashes.
The volume of community feedback requesting third-person mode initially prompted Massive to start developing it following the base game’s launch. The process took time, of course — a lot of time. Lauer says the design team had to assess and reconfigure literally every aspect of how Frontiers of Pandora plays, from camera angles to the way stealth and traversal challenges worked. That’s in addition to a fresh set of challenges for Pandora‘s motion capture actor, who had to create an entirely new way of interacting with and even looking at the environment and everything in it.
However, creating the mode took place alongside development for From the Ashes, and the expansion made for the perfect opportunity to do something deeper with third-person beyond just letting you swap perspectives. So’lek’s drive for vengeance was at the heart of that opportunity. He’s a completely different kind of character compared to the Sarentu from the base game, and making From the Ashes third-person by default meant the team could show that off in many more ways.
“So’lek has a tragic past and he’s quite a dark character as well,” O’Friel said in a video call. “He really carries that trauma on his sleeve and it impacts all of his actions and all of his conversations. So I love third-person for him. You’re a little bit separated from him. You see how powerful he is and the way that he moves as this vengeful warrior, and you get to watch him do these vicious takedowns and brutal finishers, and can see how he responds to every little thing around him. It was a good opportunity for us to develop So’lek more as a character and expand his personality.”
“It also allowed us to dig into our game systems and explore new techniques, which was one of the most exciting things,” Lauer said.
So’lek, as a more experienced warrior, can handle more and different types of enemies compared to the Sarentu from the base game. His weapons and how he uses them have to match his level of expertise and be rendered in a way that lets you believe he really knows what he’s doing. He moves differently when he’s sneaking up on enemies, when he’s interacting with nature, even when he’s just reacting to a comment someone else makes. Working on these and dozens of other little details helped Lauer and the design team make a stronger third-person experience in the base game and give the Sarentu a distinct physical identity meant to retain the innocence and naivety that first-person mode originally conveyed.
Now, despite first-person suiting Frontiers of Pandora‘s narrative so well, most of the team prefers the third-person mode.
“A lot of people on the team actually switch as they play because it feels very different for different situations,” O’Friel said. “But I love seeing our characters animated and all the work that went into Pandora.”
