Exactly two years ago, Ubisoft's Massive Entertainment released Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, an open world action/adventure game set in the fictional world created by James Cameron's movies.
Despite the hype surrounding the combination of the developer behind the successful The Division franchise and such a high-profile intellectual property, which grossed over $5.2 billion in film sales alone, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora didn't receive the warmest welcome from either critics or gamers. In Wccftech's review, Nathan Birch rated it 7.5 out of 10, noting that it was a remarkable technical achievement, but the combat often felt frustrating. The game didn't set any new sales records, either.
That said, it has a second wind to exploit now: the upcoming release of the third movie, Avatar: Fire and Ash, scheduled to be available in theaters from December 19. That's why Massive is going to launch a new expansion called From the Ashes on that same day.
In the meantime, though, they just released the big 2.0 free update. As promised a few months ago, it includes the long-requested third-person view modes and New Game+. Ever since the first leaks, it was clear that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora would be a first-person only game, but that's changed now, potentially opening up the experience to all those players who can't or won't deal with first-person motion, due to sickness or sheer preference.
Following the patch, players can seamlessly switch between first and third-person by pressing the J key on PC, holding the touchpad on PlayStation 5, or holding the View button on Xbox Series S and X. As for New Game+, it allows you you carry over all of your gear and skills from a completed playthrough and even get access to a new skill tree for the Sarentu, as well as higher level gear. As you'd expect in such a mode, you will face more challenging enemies.
But that's not all that the developer has added in Update 2.0. There are several notable additions from a technical standpoint, including NVIDIA DLSS 4 (the latest transformer model, although the previous CNN model can still be selected), DLSS Frame Generation and Multi Frame Generation, DLSS Ray Reconstruction, XeSS 2, XeSS Frame Generation, and AMD FSR 4, though the latter can only be enabled by AMD users at a driver level, not in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
That said, Massive shared a few known issues related to Frame Generation:
- Crash on startup when XeSS Frame generation is enabled.
- Frame Generation cannot be activated while the Steam Overlay is on.
- FSR3 Frame Generation causes stuttering when used in Borderless Fullscreen.
- Switching from Borderless to Fullscreen while Frame Generation is on causes the framerate to drop significantly.
Hopefully, those can be fixed soon.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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