Once again the Prince of Persia series has received a makeover, Starting from scratch for a third time. This incarnation of the franchise seems to be the antithesis of the much celebrated original. Forget everything you know about any Prince of Persia game you’ve played in the past before delving in to this one.The Ubisoft Montreal team with Senior Producer Bertrand Heias has set us up with a new protagonist in a new fiction. The first Prince of Persia game has been an all time favorite game since we first played it in 1989. It was highly influential and broke new ground with it’s frustrating and addictive gameplay as well as it’s superb rotoscoped animations.
Years later we saw the Prince of Persia franchise get a full makeover with the Sands of Time series. This revisit was hugely successful across multiple platforms, with a new prince, new story, and exciting new gameplay. It was a very different experience than the original yet a welcome transition. After a few sequels to that it started getting a little stale though. As a result, we’ve once again wiped the slate clean with a new Prince of Persia, though this time without subtitle or any real indications to the casual observer that this is something new. Perhaps it’s time for a new title too. Lets look beyond marketing semantics though.
Introduction
When we start out our protagonist is transported to a mythical land Wizard of Oz style via sandstorm. He immediately runs in to an age appropriate and attractive heroine called Elika with whom he gets catapulted into what is to obviously be a grand adventure. It’s somewhat predictable except you aren’t trying to save the princess as you might otherwise guess. The prince is really a smart-mouthed rogue but of course he’s only starting out this way and will of course mature through his adventures and his bond will grow with his comrades revealing that despite his smarmy and selfish behavior, he really has a heart of gold and the spirit of a true hero.
Writing
Okay, so the writing here isn’t going to win any awards but there is comfort in the predictability and it actually serves it with this title since it seems somewhat self-referential and intentionally familiar. There doesn’t even seem to be any writing credit for this game (though Andrew Walsh gets credited as the Narrative Director.) You get used to the style of the dialogue with its over the top writing lending itself to adjectives based on delicious foods like corn and cheese. The result is a sort of George-Lucas-esque action adventure serial inspired casual romp through a fantasy fairy tale.
Gameplay
Prince of Persia gameplay is mostly made up of three essential elements: traveling, fighting, and solving. Fighting is streamlined away from being a stressful affair of button mashing and instead consists of artfully timing rhythmically chained combinations against single opponents at a time allowing you to enjoy the cinematics of fluid combat, drinking in the scenery as you do it. There is adaptive AI to curate the level of challenge but fighting here is not about stressing over potential failure but instead about enjoying the journey towards victory. Similarly when you encounter a puzzle to solve there is little to worry about as you shouldn’t have to go to great lengths to find the solution. These now serve as more of a break from traveling and fighting allowing you to pause and interact with the world a bit more.
Traveling has seen a marked difference from the previous Prince of Persia incarnations. This time it’s frustration free. Similar to how solving is eventual and fighting is casual, traveling is whimsical. You no longer have to concern yourself with having to re-navigate portions or the consequences of failure but instead can just have fun with it and enjoy the experience. Your companion automatically will prevent you from failing too disastrously and help you recover from any misstep. This means that you can really take your time to look around and explore this world care free without finding yourself having to monotonously repeat portions because of failure at a particular challenge.
Pacing
This Prince of Persia , while paying obvious homage, manages to in many ways be the antithesis of the original. The first Prince of Persia game was so very frustrating. You could die from what seemed like the smallest failures and this would often have devastating consequences. Even if you didn’t die, you had the constant pressure of the race against time to complete your ultimate quest. This was fun and addictive but could be punishing to exploration and left you little opportunity to enjoy the scenery.
This latest incarnation does the opposite, eliminating failure and replacing it with gorgeous picturesque scenery in a vast, open world – a big change from the dungeons the fist prince had to navigate. Since they let you enjoy the scenery in this one they have made sure to make the scenery something worth spending the time to behold. They really want players to progress through this charming game and enjoy all there is to see rather than have to fight the game and capitulate to their failures, resigning to frustration and never witnessing the full spectacle within.
Aesthetic
The Creative Direction by Jean-Christophe Guyot here is top notch and they have tried some interesting moves. It is a colorful game with plenty of contrast. Each area has it’s own personality corresponding with it’s back-story and the character design is distinctive. The game uses a kind of painterly art style which really complements the fairytale universe the fiction is set in and look quite distinctive.
Conclusions
It seems like in so many ways Prince of Persia has now done a complete reversal since the original graced our screens. This iteration is completely void of frustration and any obstacle is inevtably a temporary one, only slowing you down enough to get you to take a closer look somewhere while through the rest of the game you are allowed to observe the spectacle. Argument can be made that you only half play this game; the other half is spectating. It almost plays itself, just engaging the player enough to keep them attentive. Is this a bad thing? It could be but surprisingly it doesn’t seem like it. We miss the masochistic addictiveness of the original gameplay, sure, but this cinematic style of interactive guided tour also has some value – particularly in a fiction with such pretty art direction as this one. This one, for better of worse, will not frustrate even the most novice player, but will deliver a fun, carefree experience with plenty to entertain players throughout. If you can handle having no risk of failure and resign yourself to enjoying the ride, this might be the title for you.
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