Ubisoft is close to unveiling a huge and spectacular gameplay video for the instalment Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s new DLC. The gamers are eager about the confirmed third-person view. The Twitter account of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora said that the new superpowers will come with the expanded fight and that part of the New DLC titled ‘From the Ashes’, where one can uncover the complete skill set of a veteran Na’vi warrior, will also reveal new combat options. This, however, comes at a time when the developers have been constantly receiving pressure from the gaming community to make improvements and get the combat system updated with high-level changes.
The question is what has triggered all the buzz? It seems that the developers are opening up the full third-person play to gamers since it was and still is the most requested feature right from launch. The tweet talks about “expanded combat options” and “entirely new abilities”, which indicates that Ubisoft has finally started to listen to the critics who claimed that the base game’s combat was very dull and lacked real depth. Speaking against the game, one of the detractors, @M0NK3Y_G1RL, stated, “the combat in the base game is so barebones,” but he was praising the DLC for making it look like a “finished game!!!” This may sound harsh but probably this is where the truth lies.
Another interesting thing about the timing is that a knowledgeable player’s response indicates that the DLC will be released on December 5th along with the New Game Plus mode. This is very soon and it also means that the studio is probably trying to generate some buzz and even attract some hesitant players to take the plunge. The main reason for this might be the mixed—let’s just call them—reactions to the base game. One player, @King0fKpop, releasing his pent-up frustration, exclaimed, “People who paid full price on day one for a half-finished game…,” which is a very negative comment on the game but unfortunately this was the case a long time ago. On the other hand, you find players like @jokerdaddy23 who are so fascinated by the game that they even say it is “an incredible game and one of the best looking this genuinely” – comically, he asked “games”?? Autocorrect strikes again! He later corrected to “this generation” but the enthusiasm is still there.
What has gamers really stirred up is the question whether the new powers and the third-person view will be available in the main story or just the DLC. Gamer @Moha_freak was the first one to raise that question and @SarentuWeaver replied that it would even be for the main story arriving on December 5th with NG+. That is indeed very significant as it suggests that the present players will not have to buy the DLC to get the third-person camera which is indeed quite a consumer-friendly move on Ubisoft’s part.
Nevertheless, the response from the community has been mixed. On the one hand, there are super excited gamers, for e.g., @jokerdaddy23, who declared, “For me, this is the realization of a dream! The first avatar game on the 360 was awesome, and so was this one; but the extensive third-person mode is really something new and the quality is truly impressive.” On the contrary, @Dougdougdo36624 has been on a whole procedural complaint journey with the studio saying they “couldn’t even take 2 mins to answer” his query and now he “wouldn’t play it even for $100.” Oh my, someone is furious!
Furthermore, there are some players who are confused and are basically asking for help since they seem to have been totally oblivious to the release of the original game. Two such users are @myannoyingvoice, who quite surprisingly asked “Wait, is there a new avatar game coming?” which is… dude, what planet do you live on? The game was out last year! However, it can be a negative point that this DLC might bring in new players who missed the initial release.
The most challenging questions are from the gamers who want to combine So’lek’s powers with their main characters. @AidanKetch asked about “So’lek’s abilities for our Sarentu? Like the hiss for example?” and @M0NK3Y_G1RL stressed this by saying that the devs should “Please consider making some of So’lek’s abilities available for Sarentu.” Hence, it seems that the expansion will have super cool moves and that players will not want to be restricted in terms of just the expansion content availability.
No doubt the timing of this announcement by Ubisoft is to be interpreted as a strategy—they keep on slowly releasing the information so that by the time the holidays come, many looking for new games to enjoy will be drawn to the game. The fact that they are giving a full gameplay walkthrough on PlayStation and Xbox platforms is a smart move.
