Last year’s Massive Entertainment-developed Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora wasn’t quite the major hit it should have been. Upon its launch last December, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora earned a solid Metacritic score of 72, with individual review scores ranging between 5s and 9s. This critical reception mixed with the game’s unfortunate December release window led to it being a bit of a miss for Ubisoft. But Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora still had its strengths, and Star Wars Outlaws carries many of those strengths forward.
Also developed by Massive, Star Wars Outlaws brings the Ubisoft open-world formula to the Star Wars galaxy, albeit with some pretty significant changes that help to make the game feel a bit more immersive and distinct, such as replacing a traditional skill tree with an Expert system. When playing through Star Wars Outlaws, it’s clear that Massive has put a great deal of time and effort into making the most authentic open-world Star Wars game it can, and that’s a strength it proudly brings forward from Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
Star Wars Outlaws Carries Forward Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s World Design
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s Biggest Strength Was its World Design
Though its gameplay and general structure may have borrowed a bit too heavily from Far Cry, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora still had some distinctive features, and its world design was worth the price of admission alone. The world of Pandora has quickly become one of the most vibrant and unique settings in modern Sci-Fi thanks to its otherworldly natural structures, its abundance of foliage, and its bioluminescent glow at night. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora‘s greatest achievement is that it managed to capture this iconic setting exceptionally well.
From the moment players first step out onto the surface of Pandora, they’re bombarded with an array of beautiful sights and sounds, each one hand-crafted to capture the magic of the movie’s setting as authentically as possible. The game’s environmental design brings the movie’s floating cliffs, impossibly tall trees, and dense jungles to life. The game’s ray-tracing and state-of-the-art lighting effects turn Pandora into a glowing mosaic of light and color. And the game’s sound design makes players feel as though they’re one with the nature that surrounds them.
All of these technical elements combine to make Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora one of the most beautiful games of this console generation, and an incredibly authentic recreation of James Cameron’s Avatar universe.
Star Wars Outlaws’ World Design Is Just As Impressive
Developer Massive Entertainment has managed to achieve the same thing again with Star Wars Outlaws. Just like Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, all of Star Wars Outlaws‘ technical elements come together to create one cohesive universe that feels incredibly authentic to the source material. Star Wars Outlaws‘ sound design ensures that every blaster bolt, every speeder engine rev, and every TIE Fighter screech sounds accurate, while the game’s environmental design manages to translate iconic locations like Mos Eisley to a new medium, and then use those building blocks to create the rest of the galaxy’s environments.
But it’s Star Wars Outlaws‘ smaller details that really sell the experience. From Aurebesh being used on every signpost and poster, to MSE droids being used in Imperial space stations, to Huttese being spoken by a good portion of the game’s NPCs, Star Wars Outlaws is filled with subtle details that have a big impact on the game’s atmosphere.
