Next Prince of Persia Game Promises Fresh Start
Next Gen recently had a chance to sit down with Ubisoft and discuss the next addition to the Prince of Persia franchise. The team is excited that this isn't just another tired rehash of the same characters and setting, however, promising a new prince and open world adventuring on top of the already rich world of the previous games. "'We had a whole story with the previous trilogy, and Prince of Persia is a general universe where several different stories can unfold,' [creative director Jean-Christophe] explains. 'We're starting afresh, in the same universe, and we wanted to bring something new while keeping what worked before. We introduce a new Prince, who won't start as a prince, more a drifter and adventurer, lost in the desert. He'll be confronted by a lot of fantasy settings, as opposed to Assassin's Creed, which was more realistic. Here he will come to a land and be engulfed in the conflict between two ancient gods, in this very specific region of Persia. It's based on an old Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, and the battle between light and darkness.'"
Religions only become mythology when their number of adherents drop to 0 and that is not the case with Zoroastrianism in Iran or Parsis (the ones that migrated to India (and again to America; I had a Parsi friend in Miami)), despite its ancient origins surprisingly. It doesn't seem like a very bright idea to use an existing religion - in the middle east no less - and fantasize a conflict with it and another religion.
;)
Or maybe that's the idea, stir up a slight bit of controversy to attract attention to their product.
The first of the series (SoT) was excellent and the time mechanic was almost revolutionary. Sure the sequels weren't outstanding, but they still were decent. I don't get the hating going on here, if they're doing something really different with this one.
I was really impressed with the first, and I'd love to see what they can do if they start fresh again.
It's "only" 7th in the series and probably beginning of a new trilogy. Sands of Time was a well crafted and self-confined story that you could treat as something that can stand on it's own. Prince of Persia is growing to be something like The Legend of Zelda universe with different Links in different times.
They tried to pawn off Assassin's Creed as an "open world" game, which was complete BS. The open world was really just five ridiculously huge maps that they made you run across for every mission. They were all filled with the same repeated garbage, and all-in-all made for one of the most boring games I have ever played. It sounds like this is just going to be a clone of that. Not interested.
// I actually enjoyed the first PoP remake.