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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.'"
If you don't recognize the franchise, it is the franchise formerly known as *insert freakish hand symbol here*.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Whoever tagged this as "rpg" doesn't know what an "rpg" is.
That said, an actual Prince of Persia CRPG might pique my interest. This 19th billion incarnation of the same thing does not.
"It's based on an old Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, and the battle between light and darkness."
Let's hope it leaves out the ritualistic testicle shaving referenced in Austin Powers.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
At least they haven't made it "Hollywoody":
Opens to 1st screen in Prince of Persia. You are in a chariot and you racing across the desert to the palace. The 3D graphics are gorgeous. Along the way masked riders appear. They fire at you to stop you. But not with arrows or knives. Being Hollywood, it's got to be plasma blasters. Of course, you don't have any blasters or projectile weapons. You can only ram with your chariot. As you knock them off their horses, of course, the horses tumble and then explode. To regain your health, you have to obviously run over the health packets along the way.
When you get to the palace a cut scene starts. Your beloved princess is being carried off by a huge ape while a bald man stroking a cat laughs at you. She's yelling: "Prince, save me!" You respond "ADRIAN! ADRIAN!". That is immediately followed by a commercial feature skateboarders urging you to "Do the Dew."
Well at least I'm hoping. :P
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
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.
Oh, you mean a Fresh Prince of Persia. Gotcha.
"Who modded this informative? Whoever it is must've been smokin' some of that martian pot!"
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.
For those of you who actually don't know, adding megahit when running the original game from the command line activated the cheats.
This didn't work with the Amiga version which I played as a kid, plus there was this weird potion room that wasn't on the PC version.
The game was rock hard without the cheats (or possibly bad skills), mostly because there was a tight time limit of 1 hour in which to beat the game.
I think I have your answer, but hold on, I've got to issue another series of behests to my adventures in Final Fantasy - Crystal Chronicles - My Life as a King.
I've been playing it inbewteen sessions of Mario Galaxy, where I, as Mario, rescue Princess Peach and the Great Stars from Bowser, King Koopa.
"It's based on an old Persian religion, Zoroastrianism, and the battle between light and darkness."
the battle between light and darkness IS an old persian religion, but zoroastrianism (another old persian religion) is not the religion in question. they mean manichaeism
the monotheistic religions hold that there is one dominant good power. the manichaeans meanwhile were dualists: they believed the forces of good and evil are evenly matched
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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.
For classic PoP, I'd recommend Prince of Persia Classic on Xbox Live Arcade. It's an excellent port of the original, with a much more modern look. If you are more of a modern 3D gamer, try Sands of Time or The Two Thrones. You can pick up either for a last-gen system at a very reasonable price.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
Well the first two games didn't have any sands of time in them. It's like Final Fantasy in that they all have the same title but you play different princes and different stories in each. So far they have released 3 different series. The first one is Prince of Persia and Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame. The second one is Prince of Persia 3D but I haven't played it so I don't know if it has any relation with the previous ones. The last one is the Sands of Time series which is a trilogy. Now it seems they are starting another series.
Mada mada dane.
A fresh start to the franchise?
So that would be the Fresh Prince of Persia, then?
I agree. I actually did some studying on Zoroastrianism many years ago. The basic duality is the conflict between good (Ahura Mazda) and evil (Angra Mainyu). It is the conflict between creation/destruction, order/chaos. Due to its antiquity and location (Persia) Zoroastrianism has influenced modern Judeo-Christian religions (duality of God/Satan, the halo, etc).
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Now this is the story all about how
My life got flipped, turned upside down
And I'd like to take a minute, just sit right thar
I'll tell you how I became the prince of a land called Persia
In west Philistia born and raised
On the playground where I spent most of my days
Chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool
And all throwin' some discus outside of the school
When a couple of guys that were up to no good
Started making trouble in my neighbourhood
I got in one little fight and my mom cried war
And said "You're moving with your auntie and uncle in Persia"
I begged and pleaded with her the other day
But she packed my suitcase and sent me on my way
She gave me a kissin' and she gave me my ticket
I put my saber on and said "I might as well kick it"
First class, yo this is bad,
Drinking red potions out of a champagne glass
Is this what the people of Persia livin' like,
Hmm this might be alright
I whistled for a chariot and when it came near
The license plate said fresh and it had dice in the mirror
If anything I'd say that this chariot was rare
But I thought "Now forget it, yo home to Persi-air"
I pulled up to a palace 'bout seven or eight
And I yelled to the cabby "Yo, home smell you later"
Looked at my kingdom I was finally thar
To sit on my throne as the prince of Persia
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
I'm just now getting around to playing the trilogy from last gen. I finished Sands of Time last week, and have been working through Warrior Within. Sands of Time was very enjoyable, Warrior Within feels like more of the same while fixing some problems with SoT (like the fixed camera going un-fixed when you move about).
However, while I don't consider them bad, both games seem "almost great". You may think it's the same thing as "good", but I view it in a different light-- Ubisoft had something wonderful going, but eventually decided that release dates were more important than polish.
In SoT, the camera would move about on its own disjointly, the controls moving with it, so you'd often turn yourself around in battle. Fixed cameras were far too distant to be of much help, though they gave you a nice view of the area. The camera would also change to be "dramatic", but more often would change so that you were now pointing the stick in the wrong direction and you die. Each "epic fight" concluded with an annoying "put away the swords" flash, and the forced visions at save points pretty much held your hand the entire game.
So far, in Warrior Within, they've fixed the fixed-camera problem as well as removing the "put away swords" sequence. Instead, they introduced a rather unintuitive combo sequence, where actions take a bit to carry out but your successive button sequences are still counted, making it hard to control the Prince if you decide to change what you're doing mid-fight. A problem that SoT had but is worse in WW is button mapping- buttons tend to be context sensitive (do you have your weapons out? Are you against a wall?) and when you press a button to zag you might zig instead. Furthermore, because it's so GRIMDARK, it's hard to spot any visual cues (where available) to time jumps and other actions. And lip-syncing+voice placement is just horrible.
I've not played Two Thrones yet, but I hear good things, so hopefully that removes some of these problems.
I make note of these things because they aren't just about the PoP series-- Ubisoft, in general, seems to be a company that's "almost great". I've played many of their games, such as XIII, Red Steel, and Farcry. Each of these games are fun (well, once you get over the aggravation of Red Steel's controls), but every game feels as if it could have been great. None of them have "polish", which keeps them at a B (or C+) grade instead of an A grade.
The only Ubisoft game I've played that seemed to have a hefty amount of polish was Rayman Raving Rabbids. Very fun, and I plan to get the sequels, but that's just one great of many sorta-good. If Ubisoft put the same amount of QA and polish into games that Valve seems to do (seriously, if you haven't played their games with commentary on, you're missing a lot of interesting information), they could have games I would call exceptional. Instead, they have the "good enough" mentality and boot it out the door for some extra cash.
This is why I don't have big aspirations for these new PoP games. Will they be good? Probably. Will they be great? Not unless Ubisoft has made great strides recently.