Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora already looks like it will be trying to do a lot. While the first Avatar movie continues to be a major success, the new video game is coming after over a decade without any major installment in the franchise. Its open world will likely be packed with eye-popping content and lore to play through, but it is important that it gives fans more personal feel for who the Na’vi are. The Pandoran natives lead interesting lives with complex social circles like any person, and exploring these in-game could offer more to fans than relying on the movies.
What has been shown off from Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora makes it seem likely that players will be able to experience the alien culture in almost every way. Science-fiction often has thoroughly thought-out alien species, and Avatar looks to be no different. The Na’vi are intelligent, unique, and based on their depiction in the first Avatar movie, motivated by a life that is the antithesis of what humanity has become.
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With clans stretching across much of Pandora, the Na’vi can be found in every biome. Though they seem to favor the tropical forests that are shown off in the series' first installment, they have been present in subarctic, coastal, and swampland regions of the fertile moon. Each of these communities, while unique, have been known to trade with one another and maintain a deep spiritual connection to the place they live. While this spirituality and the nativism of Pandora fit into the Avatar series' core conceit, is has a much larger role than just being on a spiritual level.
Many might argue that the deism and religious beliefs of humanity are reliant on one’s spirituality, but the Na’vi also maintain a noticeable physical connection to their home and beliefs. Their species, as well as other native species of Pandora, have evolved a neural queue. These neural queues not only allow them to share memories and emotions with one another, but with other flora and fauna of Pandora, as well as with Eywa. This level of connectedness and collective consciousness looks like it will feature heavily in the Ubisoft game and its NPCs. While this might not be a deity in the way the many human beliefs have personified them, the reverence that the Na’vi have for Eywa is real.
The connections established with each Pandoran species have been shown to be rich as well. This might help to explain the magnitude of the Na’vi’s appreciation for life on the moon. This deep connection goes beyond the other inhabitants of Pandora, as the neural queues are also a part of the way Na’vi mate and bond, with the former being a life-long activity. Being able to share and experience another being’s memories and emotions has informed their culture greatly. Exploring this aspect of their culture deeper could help bridge the gap in the Avatar series.
With the ability to directly feel and experience another’s memories and emotions, armed conflict seems to be an incredibly rare action amongst the Na’vi – the conflict against the Research Development Administration being the first substantial one that fans know of. As interesting and deep as the Na’vi are, there is still plenty that Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora could inform fans about. The franchise looks to be growing immensely, and 2022 will only be the first step in an anthology of movies, and maybe even games.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is slated for release in 2022 on Luna, PC, PlayStation 5, Stadia, and Xbox Series X/S.
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