This article contains minor spoilers for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
There isn’t an Avatar movie out this year, but we may have the next best thing in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. This new game from Ubisoft puts players on Pandora and allows them to explore it as a Na’vi. You can wield a mighty bow as you take down armored amp suits, bond with an Ikran, and commune with your tribe’s ancestral memories via Ewya.
Frontiers of Pandora is set a year before the events of Avatar: The Way of Water, meaning Jake Sully, Ney’tiri and other familiar characters are out there in the world. But does this game’s story ever feature any of them?
Do you meet the movie characters?
Sadly, as far as I can tell, the answer appears to be no. I’ve played the game extensively and scoured the credits for mention of them in the voice-acting section and it seems no characters from James Cameron’s movies appear in the game. This makes sense given that the game takes place in the “Western Frontier” a region of Pandora not yet shown in the movies.
As the game takes place once the RDA have returned to Pandora (as seen in the opening scenes of The Way of Water) we know that Jake is currently leading a guerilla war against their forces. This means he wouldn’t have time to make a trip away from the Omaticaya clan to participate in this story, so he and Ney’tiri have bigger fish to fry right now.
That said, Jake Sully is at least mentioned during the game as a brief scene in the introduction is set during the climactic events of Avatar.
There may be some hope yet. Frontiers of Pandora will get DLC in 2024 that may well be set after The Way of Water, so perhaps there’s time for Jake, Ney’tiri and the gang to swing by and hang out.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is released on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC on Dec. 7, 2023.