While reading Slavoj Žižek’s more recent works and alongside them taking J. R. R. Tolkien’s books into my hands, the similarity between some of their themes dawned on me. Furthermore, this realization of what progress represents and how it is understood matters for how we read the Middle-earth of The Lord of the Rings, be it the movies or the books. If we count human civilization from the Agricultural Revolution, then civilization is roughly ten thousand years old; if we count recognizably technological modernity, meaning machines that feel like “technology” rather than improved agrarian tools, we are talking about a tiny final sliver of that span. The psychological mistake is to project our own acceleration backward, as if every society should naturally move from iron to industry in a few generations.

Warfare makes the point clearer for our eyes to see. An Egyptian soldier from the First Dynasty would not have understood every detail of a battlefield in the middle of the 16^th century, but he would have recognized the basic grammar: men in formation, ranged and missile weapons, shields, horses, metal blades, and the terrifying intimacy of killing at arm’s length. The transition from bronze to iron to steel mattered enormously, but it did not abolish the basic form of war. For millennia, war still meant moving bodies toward other bodies until somebody was close enough to pierce, cut, crush, or burn.

Gunpowder changes the imaginative structure of warfare. It does not merely make armies more effective; it changes the meaning of distance, walls, courage, and bodily presence. That is why Saruman’s use of black powder at Helm’s Deep feels so alien. In the films, Wormtongue’s reaction implies discovery, not routine familiarity. Théoden’s defence assumes a world where stone, height, valour, and formation still matter. And he has faith in his stronghold that kept even his ancestors safe.

From this perspective, it can be hypothesised that Middle-earth therefore appears to sit near a late medieval or early modern threshold. If its peoples followed a broadly European developmental path after the War of the Ring, then Eldarion’s lifetime would not plausibly produce tanks, airplanes, or telegraphs. It might produce cannons, muskets, better roads, fiscal states, and centralized logistics. The point is not that Middle-earth could not change. The point is that old worlds change slowly until a system appears that makes change itself self-accelerating.

This is where the Singularity becomes the dark mirror of fantasy. The Singularity is the idea that technological change eventually becomes so fast that ordinary human adaptation cannot keep up. In that sense, it is not merely a prediction about artificial intelligence; it is a myth about acceleration itself. Žižek’s discussion of accelerationism is useful here to understand this process, because he treats it as a fantasy in which capitalism becomes permanent intensification, pushes through every stable form of life, and culminates in a post-human collective intelligence through AI and the Singularity (2025, 23). Žižek reads this fantasy not as liberation but as a desire for an endpoint, because accelerationism imagines history rushing toward a final overcoming of ordinary human finitude (2025, 23–25).

Tolkien’s world is powerful because it mostly refuses this structure. Middle-earth is not a laboratory of endless innovation. It is a memory-world, a ruin-world, a world where much of what is greatest lies behind rather than ahead. The elves do not innovate their way into salvation. The dwarves do not industrialize their way into moral clarity. Gondor does not become good by becoming more efficient. The Shire is not admirable because it is productive, but because it preserves a human scale of life.

Yet Tolkien is not simply saying “technology bad.” The deeper point is that technology becomes monstrous when it is subordinated to domination. Sauron and Saruman represent industry as command: extraction, regimentation, surveillance, breeding, furnaces, engines, and the conversion of living landscapes into instruments. Žižek’s argumentation helps sharpen this point because he rejects simple, linear ideas of progress and argues that every apparent higher stage leaves some hidden casualty behind (2025, 1). Saruman’s industry is precisely that kind of progress: it produces power, but the cost is visible in felled forests, mutilated bodies, ruined soil, and creatures reduced to tools.

This is why the good societies of Middle-earth develop differently. Their alternative is not infinite technical acceleration, but a more harmonic and balanced evolution. Rohan, Gondor, Lothlórien, Rivendell, and the Shire are not anti-change in the same way. They are anti-Sarumanic change: a type of change that treats the world as raw material and treats people as instruments. Similarly, Žižek’s point is not that we should abandon progress, but that progress has to be redefined by looking directly at the damage it produces rather than hiding the damage behind triumphant narratives (2025, 3).

Consequently, this line of thinking also gives us a better way to understand Tolkien’s anti-industrial imagination. Tolkien is not rejecting craft, skill, invention, or order. He is rejecting the industrial logic in which the machine becomes a moral alibi. Saruman can always say that he is modernizing. Sauron can always argue that he is organizing. Isengard and Mordor are, in that sense, presenting a perverse image of progress: they have coordination, production, logistics, and scale, but all of them are bent toward domination; while they also try to compete against one another and sink the world in the process. Or in other words, try to sacrifice the natural world on the altar of progress in different manners to see who can become more dominant as a result.

Žižek’s phrase “progress in general” in the context of Middle-earth is shown why no such thing exists (2025, 7). A mill in the Shire, a forge in Erebor, a palantír in Orthanc, and the fires of Mordor are all “technology,” but they do not belong to the same moral world. Žižek argues that progress must be judged from within a system and according to the potentials that system actualizes, which means that the same invention can mean different things under different social relations (2025, 7). The question is therefore not whether Middle-earth advances, but what kind of world its advances serve.

Additionally, this also explains why the speed of progress matters. Slow development allows institutions, customs, and moral expectations to metabolize change. Rapid development breaks that metabolism. Flight took humanity thousands of years to achieve, and roughly sixty years after it we reached the Moon. Mechanical computation, early programming, ENIAC, and pocket supercomputers did not unfold across geological cultural time; they arrived inside a few human lifetimes. The shock is not merely that we invented powerful things. The shock is that we invented powerful things faster than our ethical and political worlds could absorb them. Specifically, these last points are felt today when it comes to the digital space, we lack regulations, ethics and morals are dubious and we cannot preserve cultural items that were born in the virtual environment, dooming them to slow oblivion.

Žižek’s critique of accelerationism helps name this danger. He argues that the accelerationist fantasy is too optimistic (and naïve), because it imagines the post-human Singularity while skipping over the nearer dangers of ecological catastrophe, war, and social chaos (Žižek 2025, 24–25). In other words, the problem is not simply that technology might outrun us, rather the problem is that our political imagination might collapse before technology does.

This is also why a purely pastoral answer is insufficient. It would be easy to argue that Tolkien’s “good guys” are right or honourable because they are closer to nature. Nevertheless, Žižek complicates that move, as he argues that nature is not a stable, harmonious background ruined only by human hubris, because nature itself contains excess, disruption, and instability too (2025, 20). Furthermore, he also argues that traditional wisdom can prevent us from perceiving modern threats, because ecological catastrophe is not fully visible to common sense and has to be grasped scientifically (Žižek 2025, 20–21).

Exactly that point matters for Tolkien. Thus, the answer to Saruman cannot simply be “go back” as there is no pure pre-industrial innocence to recover. Even the Shire after the Scouring is not the same Shire as before. It has learned that history reaches even the places that imagine themselves outside of history. Žižek’s account of progress as constant redefinition fits here: after a real break, one cannot simply return to the old state as if nothing happened (2025, 8–10).

Therefore, the best postwar future for Middle-earth would not be technological stagnation. Instead, it would be selective development under moral limits, which would allow craft, medicine, infrastructure, learning, and defence to improve without allowing Mordor’s logic to define improvement. Žižek’s critique of Kohei Saito sharpens this distinction, because he shares the impulse to reject growth for growth’s sake, but insists that planetary-scale crises cannot be met through slowing down and decentralization alone (2025, 14–17, 98). Applied to Middle-earth, the lesson is that harmony cannot mean passivity; a good society still needs planning, coordination, and the capacity to act.

The deepest question, then, is not whether Middle-earth should industrialize. The question is whether it can develop without becoming Sarumanic. Can Gondor build without becoming Mordor? Can the Shire modernize without turning every field into a unit of production? Can dwarven craft remain craft rather than extraction or mass-production? Can human kingdoms adopt gunpowder without reorganizing their whole (political) life around permanent militarization?

Žižek gives us a severe but useful test for this. Authentic progress is not proved by novelty, speed, power, or scale. Authentic progress is partly negative: things once treated as normal, such as slavery, torture, or direct oppression, become impossible to justify without appearing monstrous (Žižek 2025, 9). By that standard, Middle-earth progresses only if it becomes harder for any ruler, wizard, or kingdom to treat living beings as material, which is one of our modern-day challenges as people are generally viewed as resources only.

That is also the real difference between Tolkien and the Singularity myth. The Singularity imagines a point where change becomes too fast for human beings. Tolkien imagines worlds in which beings are always in danger of being absorbed into systems too large for them: the Ring, Mordor, Orthanc, empire, machinery, command. Žižek’s warning against accelerationism clarifies why this absorption is not automatically progress; a future that erases politics, finitude, and conflict may be only domination in a more advanced form (2025, 24).

People underestimate how slow development used to be because we live after the explosion. We are born on the steep part of the curve and assume the whole curve was steep. Tolkien’s Middle-earth restores our sense of scale. For most of history, a sword was not obsolete after ten years. A fortress was not made meaningless overnight. A way of life could persist for centuries. On the one hand, slowness is not automatically good, and acceleration is not automatically evil. On the other hand, acceleration without moral form is Saruman’s path to a dark industrial world. This path promises efficiency, but delivers wasteland and loss, it promises mastery and delivers servitude. But above all, Saruman promises the future and burns the world that would have had to live there.

The lesson is not “against progress” in the crude sense, rejecting growth for growth’s sake is necessary, but planetary-scale crises demand more than localism, restraint, and a simple slowing of the machine (Žižek 2025, 14–17, 98). Instead, the goal is to go against progress as an idol. Thus, the main idea is that we must deconstruct the fantasy that every increase in power is an increase in civilization. Žižek’s strongest contribution is to force the question that Saruman never asks: where is the hidden casualty of this advance, and what would progress mean if we refused to hide it (2025, 1, 3, 8)? Middle-earth’s answer is that the good future is not the fastest future, instead it is the one in which invention remains answerable to the living world.

Reference

Žižek, Slavoj. 2025. Against Progress. Bloomsbury Academic.

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This thus makes them deeply postmodern.

In the postmodern condition, certainty collapses. There are no stable foundations, no fixed meanings, no universal truths from which people can build a coherent identity. Everything becomes contextual, relative, and unstable. Meaning does not come from the thing itself, but from how it is used, who uses it, where it appears, and how others respond to it.

Skibidi toilet represents this very well. It has no true definition. Depending on the context, it can be positive, negative, neutral, ironic, absurd, or completely empty. It can be a joke, an insult, a compliment, a sound, a vibe, or simply a way of participating in the moment. Therefore, its meaning behaves like a spectrum rather than a fixed concept.

This mirrors the broader instability of contemporary identity. If everything is relative, then the old building blocks of the self become unreliable. Gender, personality, taste, politics, aesthetics, and even humor increasingly appear as fluid categories rather than fixed truths. As a result, people are left to assemble themselves out of fragments, trends, images, sounds, and temporary meanings.

Moreover, the posthuman element enters here as well. These phenomena are not fully human in the traditional sense. They are not authored by one person, nor do they develop through clear intention. They are produced by platforms, algorithms, repetition, remix culture, and collective online behaviour. Thus, no one truly controls them. So, they mutate, circulate, and reproduce almost like digital organisms.

There is also no future in them, at least not in the traditional sense. Skibidi and 6-7 are not trying to build toward something. They do not offer stability, ideology, or resolution. Nor do they exist in the endless present of the feed, where every moment is consumed, repeated, remixed, and replaced.

And so, perhaps the only thing left is laughter.

However, not laughter because something is clearly funny, but laughter because meaning itself has become unstable. The joke is not that Skibidi means something. The joke is that it does not need to. It survives precisely because it resists definition.

In that sense, Skibidi and 6-7 are not merely nonsense. They are symptoms of a culture where meaning has become temporary, identity has become fragmented, and the future has become uncertain. They are meaningless, but their meaninglessness means something.

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Nature is black and white. Not because it is artistic, but because all life and colour have frozen out of it. The trees are bare, the bushes are dead, the grass is muddy and brown, and the air is so cold that it does not only strike your face — it somehow goes deeper. Down to the bones. Down to the thoughts.

There is no panorama. Only apartment blocks, empty bus stops, cracked pavements, soaked coats, rusty fences. Everything feels as if someone abandoned the world halfway through making it, then forgot to come back and finish it.

And yet there is something strangely familiar in its beauty.

It is not pleasant. It is not comforting. It is the kind of beauty you do not want to look at, but survive.

This is the aesthetic of Eastern Europe: when the landscape is not scenery, but a state of mind.

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Aragorn, for example, is not simply a royal heir walking confidently toward the throne. For many long years, he carries the weight of his lineage, the shadows of the past, and the uncertainty of the future. What makes him great is not invulnerability, but the fact that he accepts his calling despite his doubts. His courage is not loud or boastful. It is quiet, enduring, and often lonely. This aspect of his character is especially emphasized in the films, but even in the books, it is clear that his path to kingship was a long and difficult one.

Faramir’s character also shows us that the deepest struggles do not always take place on the battlefield. All his life, he longs for his father’s approval, while still trying to remain a man who does not abandon his own moral compass. His strength lies not in being immune to pain, but in refusing to let lovelessness and rejection turn into bitterness.

His brother, Boromir, may be the most human of them all. He falls because he is human — because most of us fall in our own lives too, not once, but many times. And yet he is able to rise again, and in the end, to redeem himself. In the moment of his death, we do not see a fallen man, nor a greedy, evil traitor. We see a hero.

Frodo’s journey may be one of the most painful examples of this. He does not return as the same person who first set out. The burden of the Ring, the fear, the temptation, and the wounds he suffers along the way change him forever. Through Frodo, Tolkien expresses something profoundly human: there are journeys after which we cannot simply return to life as it once was. Some experiences leave their mark on us even when, from the outside, the battle appears to be over.

And then there is Samwise, whose loyalty is perhaps one of the purest forms of love in Tolkien’s world. Sam cannot take Frodo’s burden from him. He cannot walk the road in his place. But he can stay beside him. He can support him, lift him up, and encourage him when everything seems hopeless. This realization is especially powerful: we cannot solve every pain on behalf of another person, but we can be present with them, so they do not have to carry it alone.

In Tolkien’s world, true strength does not mean perfect self-sufficiency. It does not mean enduring everything alone, without help. The Fellowship does not reach its goal because each member is unbeatable on their own. They have a chance precisely because they stand beside one another. Because they are different, yet still able to share a common purpose. Because when one of them weakens, another carries the hope forward.

This message may matter today more than ever. Our hardest battles are often not visible. There is not always a clearly named enemy before us, no sword, no armor, no battlefield. Many struggles take place within us: in grief, anxiety, loneliness, burnout, disappointment, or in that quiet exhaustion others may never see.

Not every wound leaves a mark on the body. Not every battle can be seen from the outside. And not every victory looks the way stories have taught us to expect. Sometimes it is a victory simply to get out of bed in the morning. Sometimes it is an act of courage to say, “This is too heavy for me to carry alone.” Sometimes the greatest strength is not found in gritting our teeth and pushing forward, but in allowing someone to step beside us.

Tolkien’s heroes remind us of this. Courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to stand up and act despite it. Hope is not always certainty; often, it is a choice — one more step, even when we cannot see the end of the road. True heroism does not always reveal itself in grand gestures, but in refusing to turn away from one another, even in the dark.

Perhaps this is exactly why these stories stay with us. They do not tell us that being strong means never breaking. Instead, they offer a more complex and honest picture: that even a broken person can be brave, and that pain does not take away our worth. They remind us that there are burdens we cannot remove from each other’s shoulders — but together, we can make them easier to carry.

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With that said, the lack of posts does not mean that I have not written anything this year. To put it briefly, my work and the responsibilities that come with my PhD have taken up most of my time. At the same time, this also means that some of my publications, which are significant on an academic level and important for the progress of my scholarly career, are slowly beginning to appear. Over the past semester, I have attended several conferences, and two of my studies are due to be published this summer. After that, more will follow. With the great support of my supervisors, we are steadily moving towards the writing of the dissertation chapters.

Of course, I also wanted to devote time to my “blog-style” entries this year. There is one piece I have been sitting on since Christmas, simply because I have not had the time to properly return to it. My literary translations have not been forgotten either. Soon, I will begin posting those texts that I have managed to shape from notes into full-fledged pieces of writing. To start with, I will publish the one that first took shape in my mind around Christmas, when I picked up Tolkien’s works again.

For me, J. R. R. Tolkien is one of my role models, and his writings are deeply motivating. In fact, he was one of the reasons I set out on an academic path in the first place. His characters also gave me guidance in finding a direction, the strength in myself, and they showed me how to work hard. In the second place stands Attila Márton Farkas, whose writings nourish the soul just as much as they nourish the mind. Buddhism has also interested me for a long time, and I have been trying to incorporate its teachings into my life step by step. Hopefully, some fruits will appear based on those too in the future… maybe in the form of writings as well.

I can consider myself fortunate, because I have met many good people throughout my life. Some have influenced me as friends, others as mentors. Through my hard work, I try to repay all the support I have received from them. So, there is no shortage of motivation and inspiration. The difficult part, of course, is transforming that energy into productivity.

But it is not a problem if that does not always work out. It does not always work out for me either. I have often slipped behind schedule, and in the end, after finishing an academic study, I simply did not have the energy to turn to creative writing on the very same day. Exhaustion is just as human as anything else, and sometimes we have to accept that. After all, what writer does not have a stack of unfinished or unpublished texts lying in a drawer?

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Then I suddenly woke up, quickly as if strong arms had grabbed me and now held me to chase away every dream from my eyes. This was physically a rather staggering and mentally a rather shocking experience. My focus cannot vain, not like this and I cannot turn off my senses, I must be on the lookout. But I once again managed to lose track of space and time as the steaming black gold under my nose had awoken me from the embrace of the sweetening music that surrounded me. The air was filled with the mix of the sound of violin and piano. Reasonably, I must have dosed off for mere seconds, although, I could not manage to figure out whether I was dragged out of this world for seconds, minutes or hours even.

My colleague has just returned amidst these train of thoughts and sat down on the chair, in which my thoughts got lost a few seconds ago. And he did not just casually sit down, he sat down with a civilised manner, almost ritually. A westerner not just falls into the chair or onto the cushions like a man of my manners. No, here in Europe everything has culture. For instance, coffee has almost a religion set up around it, with the infrastructure and the rituals that are concentrated in the café houses. Or take eating a simple meal for example – people are not starving or fighting for the last bit of food in order to stay alive, eating in a fast and messy manner, using their hands and teeth… no no no! Here there are rules to eating! You have to do it accordingly with some grace, while showing your respect to the food. The seasoning is always measured, the topping or the garnish of the dish is decided by ancient and unbreakable traditions. Not to mention that you also have to keep in mind the exact time and the cutlery that you aim to use, for these may prevent you from eating altogether if you err.

Similarly, tradition and culture are there with train rides. Fine seats, gorgeous scenery, wagons with cabins where you can sleep if you wish so. Or there can be a nice wagon where they even have a bar! You can have good coffee and enjoy the scenery, combining two rituals at the same time. But if you fancy something stronger the spirits of the counter are always inviting with their steaming aroma that fills the whole enclosure. However, your taste in this does not matter, just choose something and enjoy the ride.

Although, from where I come, these are not the matter of mere enjoyment. All of these are ordinary actions that happen in the shadow of our mortality. In other words, all is gray. There is no attachment, so unnecessary that it takes away precious time or energy that you need elsewhere. No rituals or culture – and especially no values and noble feelings are attached to the mundane actions of ordinary folks. On the contrary, here everything is dressed up with some illusion or enchantment of a sacred ritual. But where I am from, it is paradoxically both machine like and human at the same time. And it is human – human in the sense of escaping death on this steel and fire powered cage in an unending cycle of flight.

And thus, this is the most important difference between the man of the West and the man of the East. A human being moulded by trauma. And I consider myself as an Eastern European, the same as I consider myself as European. Even if the eastern edge of Europe—so close to the Russian steppes—may look just as European from Paris or Munich. But it only looks that way, because this too is nothing more than a performance.

In the West, there is beauty in everything that counts as luxury, because people have been granted the privilege of not having to fear death at every single step they take in life. But in the East, where I come from, there are no eternal moments. There is only the daily, endlessly repeated struggle for survival. And when this becomes normalized, suffering and human misery sink into the emotionless grayness of everyday life. No one is moved when someone starves to death, falls out of line at the factory, or collapses somewhere on the street, be it during broad daylight or the cold darkness of the night. Tiny specks of dust in the machinery, which may sometimes even run better because a grain has finally been ground and no longer obstructs the operation—no longer a burden on the mechanism—or because the entrails spilling from it provide just enough lubricant for the tasks at hand.

That is the Eastern European perspective put against the Western. And that is why it is hard for me to get used to not flinching at every small noise behind my back, or to not be constantly aware that this is not eternal and that my miserable little life—one that has only ever meant anything just to me—could end at any moment. We were raised differently back home, and things here work very differently in contrast. Where I come from a strong hand shapes the human being, and where strength is sovereign rather than providence, anyone can be sacrificed from even the very top of the chain to the bottomless depths of societal wastes. This can be deceptive to Westerners, because they are unfamiliar with such ways of functioning, which I purposefully do not want to call “ways of life”—and some people that travel to the west know exactly how to exploit this unfamiliarity. The principle of authority has become meaningless in the West, and they are astonished that the democracy forced upon us… upon us, the barbarians… does not work in the same way, or with the same purity, as it does for them.

And no, my colleague—my friend—cannot understand this, because he does not live this way, he did not grow up in it. He does not live in fear and does not know this deep, elemental terror. For him, the coffee he sips according to his distinctly German or rather Bavarian ritual—each drop of its flavour locked away in human memory like a diamond kept in a vault—is an eternal moment, filled with pleasure and the feeling that life is beautiful. In the East we used to have this too, once, during the noble times of the Coffee House culture that made Budapest, Prague or Lwów great—enlightened even—and beacons of Western Civilisation. At that time, these cities did not seem so different from Vienna, Munich or Paris, shining on the horizon of an aspiring East.

Life is beautiful—a feeling I cannot live, I, the Eastern man, the slave whom the system graciously calls a working man, the labourer or the “proletariat” in the tongue of the Easterners. Because for me this is all just role-playing. I can act it the way that is expected of me, I can restrain myself from downing my espresso in a single gulp, in order to survive… because for me this too is about survival. So that I do not have to return to that hellhole. Even if here—in the West—I truly have no place. That sip of coffee does not mean joy to me. No. To me it is the symbol of that death which breathes down the neck of every Easterner, closely and without cease.

I often hear, “Oh! You Hungarians only ever see the bad in everything!” or the well-worn joke: “Do you know what it looks like when a Pole smiles? Exactly the same as when he doesn’t!”—because here it is believed that the Polish face is hard to read, since it looks just as grim when smiling as it does when in grief. Yes. We Easterners are like this. We are like this because our existence is constantly accompanied by death. And we know that this happiness cannot last forever.

Nevertheless, the West remains a lighthouse of hope… a fragile hope for the likes of me.

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Children gather under the Crimson Tree as it cracks open its wounds and the great Green Slime, the Harbinger of the LORDS, crawls out to bestow upon the gathered cattle its presents. Fear has no room in the madness from which love arises.

And on the Day of the Longest Dark — the Eternal Void — the Lord thus cometh through the cracks under the streams of blood from the Unknown Valley…

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Alright, let us jump right into it. The writing of the expansion’s narrative is more serious by miles and thus provides a more realistic take on war and guerilla warfare as the consequences arrive to the Western Frontier. The fight against the RDA feels more tense and the state of the world constantly reminds the player of the weight that So’lek carries. The inclusion of a pre-made character with an already set background as the main character adds to the narrative rather than taking from it. So’lek is a perfect protagonist, who can provide a deeper psychological journey as well, which presents a great character progression and inner struggle that comes with war and its costs. As a result of a writing that better represents these aspects, and the compelling story arc of So’lek already provides a more immersive experience. One with which the player can identify.

Furthermore, gameplay-wise the compact size and the well-paced narrative packed into an optimal story length that is not dragged out creates a balanced and compelling experience. From this perspective the expansion feels content complete, and even I could claim that it could work as a standalone game. The mechanics of the game have been simplified a bit to fit the journey of So’lek, but also improved upon, regarding combat, gear and crafting. These systems are not unnecessarily complex while their diversity is also preserved. In comparison, the base game featured a number of different crafting materials that restricted the player in crafting higher level gear, but also made it a tiny bit frustrating as it was senseless in some cases. In contrast, the way you can unlock gear and weapons in From the Ashes is tied to the narrative, and at the same time, the players are allowed and encouraged to do some exploring to get additional powers, weapons and skills. Crafting and upgrading weapons require an amount of hunting and gathering for resources, but these are done well and only come as an additional and not toilsome activity, which is important, because these activities do not ruin the pacing and the sense of urgency within the narrative.

Which leads us to my next point that is the impending doom is done so well that this urgency is well balanced by both pushing the player forward and allowing the story to have its moments through character arcs, development and crisis that we witness surfacing because of the context. As a result, the elements of urgency and weight within the narrative serves the plot well and creates unique and dramatic moments. Additionally, the destruction and the visualization of war are achieved through gameplay and narrative as well, and thus immersion triumphs. Consequently, the narrative no longer feels to be a light-hearted stroll in the tranquil forest amidst war, which made the base narrative break immersion and logic, instead world that is visualized in front of our eyes is presented both brutally and beautifully. This duality creates a sense of sadness, and also shows us why we need to carry on the fight while we are in So’lek’s boots, resulting in a better character and player connection as well.

Pandora is a beautiful, dangerous and complex world that is ravaged by war and human greed. This expansion, similarly to the main game, presents the players with a criticism of capitalism and human nature by showcasing the brutality and destruction, which the humans have brought to the planet. However, the expansion with its more compact and impactful story could present the aspect of complexity in a better way by showing that not everything is so simple as RDA bad and Resistance good. The original game also tried to present that while not all humans are bad, they are the cause for pollution and destruction. In contrast, the noble native image is deconstructed in the narratives of Fire and Ash and From the Ashes by showing the cruel side of the Na’vi, and their capabilities of destruction. This side is also exemplified in the actions of Nor, who abandons the resistance, denying help, which can be considered an act of outright betrayal. However, the case of Nor is also a complex psychological journey into the depths of PTSD and the fight for agency.

We are presented with complex characters that are not one-sided anymore, neither Nor, Ri’nela or So’lek are one dimensional, they have their doubts, their scars and regrets, they are also angry and very human in this manner, and this provides a great character progression that presents forgiveness and mercy in a different light that also comes with their own respective costs and consequences. Additionally, this also shows how the humans can be victims as well in this manner, while it goes without saying that not all humans are bad actors – which we are shown through the main antagonists of the game. Namely, Wukula and Bukowski are complex in their nature as well as the opposite sides of the same coin. Bukowski is disciplined and in his audio files his motives of creating a chance for humanity in finding a new home is also revealed. While Wukula is the testament of what the Na’vi oppose, a detachment from Eyva and the manifestation of vengeance that drives many to madness as he loses everyone, who he cares for around himself.

Regarding the deeper psychological aspects, such as PTSD, the fight for agency and self-definition and the search for one’s own place within the world while juggling sanity and fighting against being consumed by rage and revenge, the narrative of the expansion is more successful than that of the base game. From the Ashes provides a deep insight into the personal conflicts of the characters, while also allows them to surpass them and repress them as survival instincts kick in. This dynamic creates that believable context, which is required to provide an immersive experience. As a result, the players are presented with deep and dramatic moments that are taken seriously and we can finally see the real costs of war both in connexion with the world and the characters inhabiting it.

The Ravines was a good addition to the Kinglor Forest, both gameplay and story-wise. It was a fresh breath where you could not use your ikran and had to explore more on foot, which made it feel more intense, dangerous and rich. The inclusion of more focused and straightforward levels in favour of linear maps instead of total open-world design allowed for a better visual and narrative experience as well, as the levels felt more inline with the world and the story as well. Personally, I loved that the game was more compact and that it was not overly packed with locations on the map that I had to clear. This expansion was a fresh breath and may signal a return and re-evaluation of older narrative and game design formulas. I felt a little bit of similarity to the old Avatar: The Game from 2009.

Moreover, I liked the little story nods and easter eggs included and hidden in the narrative. The connection to the main story of the films was stronger and had me lined up with the complexity of the world that was enhanced with this story that ran alongside the main one from Fire and Ash. Mainly, it showed that, while the film also presented it, although more subtly, that there are more things at stake and processes that are ongoing in the background other than the events that transpire around Jake and his family. Additionally, regarding the other nods and easter eggs, I liked that they mentioned the Tipani Clan and I welcomed the return of Unobtanium in the form of the Sky Crystals.

In summary, From the Ashes presents a more immersive and compelling story through a compact and well written narrative and a protagonist that is well founded within the broader world of Avatar. Retrospective, the expansion also solves some of the critical problems of the base game’s plot by tying up loose ends, filling in plot holes and providing the necessary weight and consequences that were missing from it. The more serious tone and the feeling of impending doom created an intense, dramatic and awesome experience that is capable of delivering an enjoyable and deep narrative for the players.

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora was released by Ubisoft Entertainment in 2023; while Avatar: From the Ashes was released in December 2025, prior to the premier of Avatar: Fire and Ash.

The pictures are taken from them official Fan Kit, published by Ubisoft.

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There he stood,
Silent…
In front of his love,
Watching her,

With grief…
In silence…
Lonely, in the cold…
And she looked through him.

There he stood,
Silent…
The Ghost of the Wolf,
Watching his long forgotten love…

He followed,
Her lonely steps,
He swallowed,
His long forgotten words…

She might felt the cold touch,
She might heard the silent words,
But she did not turn around…
Just went on, like flying birds…

A cold and dark figure,
Appeared for the lass…
That was the figure,
Of a long forgotten glass…

A Wolf…
Like no other…
A Wolf…
From her very past…

But there she stood,
Seeing nothing,
Feeling the cold,
And hearing nothing.

Although,
She knew…
She knew…
But she did nothing…

The post The Ghost of The Wolf appeared first on Alexander Wolf Writings.