Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora almost came out of nowhere to become one of the best-looking games of the year, with the movie series’ iconic setting meshing beautifully with almost Crysis-style gameplay and a newly upgraded Snowdrop engine – which was itself first announced at E3 ten years ago with The Division. Best of all, Avatar is a technical triumph not only on PC, where it pushes the boundaries of graphics technology, but also on consoles – where it holds up surprisingly well on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and even Series S.
The studio behind the title is Ubisoft Massive, and recently Digital Foundry’s Alex Battaglia had a chance to interview two key figures in its technical development: Nikolay Stefanov, the game’s technical director, and Oleksandr Koshlo, the render architect of the Snowdrop engine.
The interview that follows is a fascinating look behind the scenes at how Massive were able to develop the Snowdrop engine, realise the world of Pandora in video game form and deliver a game of a type and quality that isn’t as common as it once was.
