Interested parties who live near Malmö, Denmark can sign up here. Announced last year, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is a first-person title set in James Cameron’s sci-fi universe. It will tell an original story with new characters and explore the Western Frontier of Pandora. Insider Tom Henderson reported back in March that external QA testing had already started so it seems that development is on track.

Ubisoft is currently aiming to launch the title before April 2023. It will be available for Xbox Series X/S, Google Stadia, PS5 and PC, and reportedly makes ray tracing mandatory. A software-based ray tracing solution is being prepared for those who don’t have compatible graphics cards on PC so stay tuned.

https://twitter.com/UbiMassive/status/1516757137103503372

Speaking to VentureBeat, Priore said, “[T]here was a time 15 or 20 years ago where playing the movie was something. You bought the game and played the movie. Things like the classic Aladdin game on Sega Genesis. You played the film. That was popular at the time, but gamers expect more now. They want to interact with their favorite characters and worlds, but they want to play new stories and do new things with those characters and worlds.”

Frontiers of Pandora is looking to explore the original movie’s “amazing science fiction world” which Priore feels is “a great playground to play in.” “The whole idea is to have it be part of the storyline of that giant franchise on Pandora, but it’s not a ‘play the movie’ game. It’s an all new open world, new characters. That’s why it’s called Frontiers of Pandora. It takes place on another frontier, another area of the moon of Pandora.”

The title will also be a first-person experience, which is somewhat new for Massive (though it did some work on Far Cry 3 in the past). Beyond that, the development team has spoken about why it’s a current-gen release like utilizing SSDs for quick streaming as players fly from one location to the next. There will also be more intricate interactions with the wildlife and NPCs that wouldn’t have been possible on previous-gen hardware. And of course, ray tracing will be supported as well.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is out in 2022 for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, PC and Google Stadia. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

Touted as a new standalone story, players control a Na’vi who ventures through the Western Frontier. It’s a never-before-seen space which has new characters and creatures along with being a “reactive” world. The Resources Development Administration or RDA are still kicking though, and looking to be a big nuisance. Nothing that some arrows and flying mounts can’t fix though.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is an open world experience and releases in 2022. How the game works and whether it will have loot elements like The Division remains to be seen. Stay tuned for more details because it may be a long ways off from release.