Avatar – Frontiers of Pandora + From the Ashes

Posted in audio integration, music integration, sound design
Avatar – Frontiers of Pandora + From the Ashes

I joined the Ubisoft Shanghai team in 2023, towards the end of production on Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Developed in collaboration with Massive Entertainment, the game brought James Cameron’s alien world to life with an immersive open-world soundscape praised for its reactive flora, fauna, and dynamic score.

Wildlife Audio

My first task was assisting with wildlife audio. I designed and polished particle-based creatures like insects and bird-like life, ensuring they felt believable within the soundscape of Pandora’s diverse biomes. I also worked on large creature foley, making footsteps more organic by tying playback to gameplay variables (speed, terrain, creature state…) so every step felt grounded in the environment.

Music Integration

I also took on some music integration for the Shanghai team’s side quests on the main game, and that was a warm-up for the next episode, two years later, after Star Wars Outlaws had shipped.

Ubisoft Shanghai resumed work on an Avatar mandate, this time for the Fire and Ash expansion and following a very aggressive deadline. The Shanghai team was given an extensive side quests mandate spanning 3 story arcs, and it was decided all of them would be supported with music.

I integrated the entire side quest music score. We chose appropriate cues in close collaboration with our music designer at Massive and quest designers. I then designed the side quest music hierarchy in Wwise and scripted all state changes in Snowdrop, ensuring each quest had music that matched its narrative tone and gameplay flow, while being extra careful side quests music would not interfere with the main quests score or open world exploration and combat music.

The reyknap chase music in the Windward side quest, with music reacting to gameplay/flying state, flying speed and gameplay progression (1st/2nd/3rd and last chase) as well as transitions from the previous dialog music to the following traversal gameplay music.

Technical Support

Beyond music, I provided technical support across our audio team’s other mandates, including wildlife and boss fights. I made sure our in-house designers and outsourcing help could leverage Snowdrop’s latest audio integration improvements and tools, and helped on exotic audio systems where needed: the explosive dog-like robot Hellhounds, material detection for the massive Mastodon‘s tusks… It was a steady, behind-the-scenes role: keeping the team running while the music side of things sang.