The Ubisoft Forward E3 2021 showcase ended with a first look at a new open-world first-person action-adventure game, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. However, that reportedly almost wasn't the case, as the job nearly went to another AAA studio according to Ubisoft Massive's creative director David Polfeldt.
Many have known that an Avatar game has been in development since 2017, although details were few and far between. Notably, Ubisoft made it clear that Avatar wouldn't arrive before 2020. Still, it appears that the team working on James Cameron's behalf had high standards long before that, and had chosen a completely different studio based in Europe before meeting with Massive Entertainment.
Last year, Polfeldt released an autobiography titled The Dream Architects: Adventures in the Video Game Industry. It mostly goes over the history of the industry dating back to the 1990s and gives some insight into how it became the billion-dollar artform it is today. With the announcement of Avatar, a moment in Polfeldt's autobiography seemingly gives more insight into how Ubisoft Massive landed the gig. According to Polfeldt, another studio was mere hours away from signing a deal to work on Avatar, with it being implied that the process spanned three or four years.
Another major EU AAA studio was meant to do Avatar but messed it up right at the end from GamingLeaksAndRumours
Despite all of the hard work done by this unnamed studio, talks quickly fell apart once Cameron's team arrived in person. Instead of meeting a team ready to handle the task of creating a great Avatar game, Polfeldt said the team came to find "broken and desperate people looking over their shoulders, as if in paranoia." Allegedly, things took a turn for the worse when the studio head offered the team cocaine, immediately dissolving any prior agreements.
Shortly after the bizarre encounter, Cameron's team changed direction and took a train to Massive's office in Sweden. There, the team spent time investigating the operating procedures of the studio, as well as time with the developers. At this point, Cameron's team was focused solely on salvaging their trip to Europe, and as evidenced by Ubisoft's E3 2021 announcement, they were successful.
It's anyone's guess as to which AAA studio was responsible for the original build of Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. By now it hardly matters, as Ubisoft Massive seems to be proving it was the right choice given the studio is also overseeing the development of a Star Wars project.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora will release in 2022 on Amazon Luna, Google Stadia, PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S.