Image: Ubisoft
Ubisoft showed off a huge slate of games today, including Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Star Wars Outlaws and Assassin’s Creed Mirage.
Ubisoft took to this year’s Summer Game Fest to hold its own Ubisoft Forward presentation, showing off trailers and announcements from its massive slate of upcoming games. The company presented new gameplay trailers for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Star Wars Outlaws and XDefiant, but we also saw announcements for new games like Assassin’s Creed Nexus and The Crew Motorfest.
Here are the most exciting trailers and announcements we saw from this week’s Ubisoft Forward:
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
Ubisoft's open-world Avatar game has finally released a gameplay trailer. Set between the first and second Avatar movies, the game follows Na'vi abandoned by the human military and left to their own devices in the wilderness of Pandora's alien surroundings. When the humans return for a second go of claiming Pandora's resources, the protagonist decides to fight to protect their new home.
James Cameron himself showed up to sing the game's praises in a short behind-the-scenes segment, announcing that the movies' visual effects team at Lightstorm shared resources with Massive Entertainment to create the game. The game launches on December 7, 2023. Check out more details on Frontiers of Pandora here.
XDefiant
Ubisoft showed off its plans for the upcoming multiplayer Pvp game XDefiant, which will host an open beta from June 21 to 23 this month. The game will be supported with plenty of content for the rest of the year post-launch, but it will also launch with 14 maps, 24 weapons, five playable factions, five game modes and more content themed after various Tom Clancy franchises.
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
We got an animated trailer for the new 2.5D Prince of Persia platformer, which takes the long-dormant franchise in a new direction. In this game, you'll play as a new character named Sargon who has to protect their kingdom from utter destruction by rescuing Prince Ghassan. The kingdom is being possessed by a shadowy supernatural force that has brought undead zombies and mythical monsters into its doors, but Sargon has plenty of abilities on his side to beat them back.
The Lost Crown almost looks like Metroid and Ori and the Blind Forest gameplay-wise, with Sargon having access to plenty of combat and movement abilities to navigate obstacles and enemies in the kingdom. The game even takes inspiration from The Sands of Time with time-based gameplay abilities.
Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix
Adi Shankar took the stage in Ubisoft Forward to present his new series based on Far Cry: Blood Dragon, which doubles down on the game's satirical pulpy tone. The show launches on Netflix later this year and judging by the teaser trailer, it's going to be a bombastic mashup of not just Blood Dragon, but Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs and more Ubisoft franchises with lots of cyberpunk mayhem in the mix.
The Division: Resurgence
A new gameplay trailer for The Division: Resurgence previews the franchise’s turn to mobile devices, which doesn't seem to lose any of the looter-shooter gameplay Division players love.
The Crew Motorfest
Ubisoft revealed the new game in The Crew franchise of driving games, which aims to double down on the vehicle-collecting fantasy while expanding on the environments and multiplayer gameplay the franchise is known for.
Assassin’s Creed Nexus
Ubisoft has finally revealed its long-rumoured VR game Assassin's Creed Nexus, which allows players to inhabit various protagonists from previous games in the franchise on the Meta Quest 2.
Assassin's Creed Jade
One of the next few Assassin's Creed games is going to be set in China, but it's only playable on mobile devices. The game looks no less impressive, however - a short snippet of gameplay teases one of the best-looking mobile games we've seen in a while featuring gorgeous environments across ancient China.
Assassin's Creed Mirage
This year's Assassin's Creed game follows Basim, a returning character from Assassin's Creed Valhalla who gets his origin story expanded upon via a prequel set in ancient Baghdad. Mirage aims to be a throwback to the first few Assassin's Creed games, with a more intimate gameplay loop and setting compared to the blown-out scope of Valhalla.
Mirage sees Basim discover what it means to become an agent of the Hidden Ones, after growing from a rugged street thief to a silent assassin striking from the shadows in a city poised for revolution. All the time, Basim is tortured by monstrous visions no one else can help him with - but will eventually lay the path for his actions in Valhalla.
Early gameplay footage previews parkour and stealth gameplay ripped right out of the original Assassin's Creed, with Basim attempting to disappear after being spotted by city guards.
Star Wars Outlaws
We got a deeper look at Ubisoft's upcoming open-world Star Wars game, which aims to be a more grounded take on the galaxy far, far away that swaps lightsabers for blasters. Its story follows Kay Vess and Nix, a duo struggling to survive day to day after the former gets a massive Bounty placed on her head. To free herself, she'll have to commit a dangerous heist in the Outer Rim under the watchful eye of Imperial rule. She'll also have to compete against rogue criminal factions across the seedy criminal underbelly in the Outer Rim the entire time, so the odds really aren't in her favour here.
The gameplay preview featured Kay and Nix - an axolotl-like animal companion - stealthily sneaking across an enemy base filled with criminals from the Hutt family. Nix helps out by interacting with the environment to distract enemies while Kay gets around, but the latter is forced to shoot first after getting spotted. The third-person shooter looks almost like Uncharted with open-world sensibilities, with vehicles, stealth and various weapons available to Kay in the alien environments she explores. The game launches in 2024, and you can find more details on it here.