Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora - From the Ashes

Avatarmania has returned to our lives, although James Cameron's third film, Avatar: Fire and Ash, may not have had the same emotional impact as The Way of Water, as only three years have passed between the release of that sequel and this one. Nor has it received the most enthusiastic reception from critics, but in the end, box office figures are what count, and Avatar 3 broke the $1 billion worldwide box office barrier before the turn of the year.

And with an event like this, it's only natural that Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment wanted to give Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora players a very special expansion. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora - From the Ashes does not take us to a new area of the famous alien moon where the Na'vi live, but rather gives a twist to its environment and characters to immerse us in the dark narrative that has come to the franchise. And, for better or worse, it has succeeded.

From the Ashes is a content expansion with very specific and clear objectives: Pandora has become a fiery battlefield, and the Na'vi are once again facing off against the humans of the RDA, this time supported by members of their own species, the Mangkwan Clan (also known as the Ash Clan), the new antagonists also introduced in the film. From the Ashes does not break the canon of Avatar: Fire and Ash, but rather expands on it and shows us the Na'vi's struggle in another part of Pandora, without losing sight of what is happening on the cinema screen.

What prevails here is combat, above any other style of play found in the base game or previous expansions. In fact, here we no longer control the energetic but still emotional protagonist Sarentu (From the Ashes, incidentally, reveals the canonical name of this protagonist from the base game), but rather the sullen and more hardened warrior So'lek, a Na'vi tormented by conflict and loss who seeks his place among the Arahane and what remains of the Sarentu Clan and the human Resistance on the Western Frontier. So'lek considers himself an outcast among his own kind, committed to war with humans using their weapons and methods, and he has a few tricks up his sleeve that offer many more ways to take on the RDA and their Mangkwan allies in Kinglor Forest, the only area we will be exploring in the DLC. I'm a little sad to lose that immersive touch of exploring every corner with curiosity, but it's true that there's not much room for that here anymore. This change also includes a much darker narrative, even in the spirit of the purest Na'vi, who see how their way of life since time immemorial has not only changed, but may never fully recover. It's a message that hits hard and comes across in every dialogue and cinematic scene in the missions and interludes.

So'lek is a warrior, and little-by-little, after recovering from a defeat at the beginning of the story, he will expand his arsenal of weapons, both Na'vi and human, while acquiring some new modifications from the Ash Clan, who act here as bosses and mini-bosses of the area, generally tied to one of the mission chains. There aren't many new weapons, although there are new types of ammunition and grenades. What is new is his fighting style. Aggressive and direct, he has a lot of different animations for taking down humans, AMP armour, and Cerberus robots. He also has the Warrior's Sense, an ability that allows him to enter a kind of rage state in which he becomes even more lethal for a short period of time. He also has his trusty ikran, Iley, from the start, which immediately opens up movement across most of the expansion's territory.

So'lek is a fighter and a survivor, but the scorched earth is not the best place to find moss, fibre, or any other organic material to upgrade equipment, so that part of the Na'vi experience has been left out. It's still important to upgrade your equipment, but at almost no point will you have to stray from the path between combat to search for materials. You'll always have ammunition and arrows available in the shelter, and food is still a welcome temporary bonus, but not essential.

Fight, and fight a lot. The RDA has installed a new network of outposts, command centres, and facilities to exploit Pandora's natural resources, and it's up to us once again to go and destroy them all, one-by-one, following the same "Far Cry formula" as in the original. Now you can make it a little more entertaining, with the other important addition that came to Frontiers of Pandora with the release of From the Ashes: the third-person view. It's a minor change if you've already played the base game (which you need, by the way, to start this DLC), but it's sure to open the game up to many players who prefer a view from behind, which reminds me quite a bit of Space Marine II.

Once again, the least impressive aspect of a game that has simply excellent visual and audio ingredients (the music is breath-taking at any moment, and Pandora, even in flames, has a wild beauty) is the overwhelming number of bugs, annoying and sometimes exasperating, that are present here. Massive (or Ubisoft) should have taken the time to iron out the bugs before releasing it, but even now, almost three weeks after its release, it still has errors that kick you out of the game on PS5, which is quite serious and makes me rate this content less enthusiastically than I should.

Even so, From the Ashes expands the Frontiers of Pandora experience with enough content to justify its purchase, as well as extending the narrative of the third film. Let's hope this isn't the end of the Sarentu and their story in video games, and that Cameron makes enough at the box office to commission a fourth film that justifies a new journey through Frontiers of Pandora.