Avatar 3 might be years away, but Ubisoft's new Avatar game should make the wait more tolerable.
We are on the cusp of an incredibly exciting week in gaming. Not only is Ubisoft’s open-world Avatar game coming out this week, but the very first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 is dropping within the next 48 hours! On top of that, Geoff Keighley’s The Game Awards returns at the end of the week to crown the year’s best games and creators, with a bevy of new game announcements and reveals to be unleashed during the show.
I’m very excited. Can you tell?
What we’re playing this week
There are three big releases to keep an eye on this week, but one of them is not like the others. The first two are Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Disney Dreamlight Valley. Frontiers of Pandora (December 7) sees Ubisoft take on the world of James Cameron’s Avatar with a slightly different perspective. You play as a Na’vi orphan who was raised by the humans over at the RDA (Resources Development Administration), before being placed in suspended animation. When the Na’vi wakes up 15 years later in an abandoned facility, they must journey out into Pandora’s Western Frontier.
Frontiers of Pandora tells a canonical story that features locations and characters unseen in the Avatar films, so it’s bound to be a treat for fans of the franchise. Gameplay-wise, it looks almost exactly like an alien take on the Far Cry formula with up to two-player co-op multiplayer. Disney Dreamlight Valle, on the other hand, is a more Animal Crossing-like laidback life simulation game with characters from various Disney franchises. The game has been in early access for more than a year, but it officially launches with a full release and a paid expansion on December 5 this week.
The third game is, as the kids say, a little sus. The zombie survival game The Day Before is currently Steam’s second-most wishlisted title owing to a very impressive reveal trailer, but the game and its development team have been wrought in controversy for some time now. Between calling for unpaid ‘volunteers’ to work on the game and getting hit with accusations of plagiarism, the game seems a little too good to be true. After three delays, it’s finally launching in early access on December 7. It’ll be interesting to see how that goes.
What we’re watching this week
Gaming events as big as The Game Awards are few and far between, but this week we’re getting one of those and a GTA 6 reveal to top it off. That’s pretty wild! The Game Awards 2023 is said to run for as long as three and a half hours this year, cramming in multiple game reveals and announcements in a show meant to bestow awards to the year’s best in the industry. Which game will win the highly-coveted Game of the Year award? Which tournament will win 2023’s Best Esports Event award? We’ll find out on December 7, 2023.
Rockstar’s first trailer for Grand Theft Auto 6 will be released on December 5 at 9 am ET, giving us a first look at the reportedly Vice City-set sequel to GTA 5. This might be the most anticipated trailer in gaming of all time at this point, but don’t expect too much - Rockstar’s reveal trailers typically show off locations and a few characters but rarely run longer than a minute and a half. According to various leaks, the game will follow a Bonnie and Clyde-like pair of protagonists in Vice City.
