IGN journalists talked to the developers of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and asked about the logic behind the choice of camera angles in the action game
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is less than a month away from release, and the developers from Massive Entertainment (a division of Ubisoft) are increasingly sharing important information about the game.
IGN portal journalists talked to the game designers about what they were guided by when choosing the camera angle.
Here's What We Know
The developer uses two camera angles in the game: first-person and third-person.
Game designers of Massive Entertainment explained that the main gameplay of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora takes place from the first-person perspective. The player moves around Pandora on foot, explores the flora and fauna of the planet, meets with representatives of his people and with invaders-landers, sometimes engages in battle with enemies - and all these actions the player sees through the eyes of the character. Thus, Massive Entertainment increases the atmospheric and realistic nature of what is happening.
Here is how Magnus Jansen, the game's creative director, comments on this nuance:
We are in complete agreement with Lightstorm (James Cameron's studio) on this point. To be as close to Pandora as possible, to delve as deeply into this world as possible, which is achieved with the first-person camera... For me the choice was obvious.
Game director Ditte Deenfeldt adds:
We want you to get close to nature, which in some ways acts as the protagonist of the game, and the best way to achieve this is to use the first-person mode.
Plus, the first-person view allows you to feel like you're in the role of a three-metre tall Na'vi:
You walk up to a foot soldier (and he's pretty short), punch or kick him, and he flies off. It's a fun sight and a clear demonstration of strength, but we try to convey scale in other ways as well. Almost all human buildings are designed for human height. So often when you need to enter the control room, you crouch down, squeeze through the tiny opening and get a sense of your size.
Players can see their character and Pandora from the outside while flying the tame Ikran and riding animals. At these moments, a larger view appears, allowing you to see the vast area in detail and enjoy the beauty of Pandora.
Massive Entertainment could have given gamers the ability to choose their own camera angles, but to do so they would have had to create twice as many animations and carefully craft them, which would have required much more time and funding.
When We Can Expect It
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will release on 7 December on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series.
Source: IGN
