New Prince of Persia Announced for May '10, Returns to Sands of Time Storyline

toxk_02

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands announced for May 2010 launch
http://www.vg247.com/2009/11/30/prince-of-persia-the-forgotten-sands-announced-for-may-2010-launch/#more-69622

VG247 wrote:

UBISOFT® ANNOUNCES
PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE FORGOTTEN SANDS™

New Adventure in the Prince of Persia® Sands of Time Series Debuts May 2010

LONDON, UK – November 30, 2009 – Today Ubisoft announced that Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands™ video game is in development and is scheduled to be released May 2010 for consoles and handhelds. This new installment in the critically-acclaimed franchise marks the return to the Prince of Persia® Sands of Time storyline. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands™ will feature many of the fan-favorite elements from the original series as well as new gameplay innovations that gamers have come to expect from the Prince of Persia brand.

Official Site: http://prince-of-persia.us.ubi.com/

Gamefly lists the release date as May 11th (probably a placeholder) for Wii, PS3, 360, PSP, and DS.

Nothing else outside of the presser from Ubisoft. The latest PoP looked great and had its moments but just didn't live up on the difficulty/platforming for me. Hopefully the latter can be improved in this case (a man can dream!), though it depends on which portion of the Sands of Time they plan on going back to. I assume the cliffhanger in the last game will have to wait for another game to be resolved.

Oh god it better not be Prince of Persia: Sands of Time: The Movie: The Game.

DeMoN

This will be the fourth time they will try to make a game as good as the first one.

let's see if they can do it.

Fiaryn

Wait what

We're going back to the Sands of Time series? I loved it and all, but I'd have just as well left it done. It had closure, that was nice, lets leave it at that. I'd rather expand upon the framework laid down by the new series. :?

DeMoN

And bring back the poofy pants you bastards!

Rakai

Fiaryn wrote: »

Wait what

We're going back to the Sands of Time series? I loved it and all, but I'd have just as well left it done. It had closure, that was nice, lets leave it at that. I'd rather expand upon the framework laid down by the new series. :?

This. The Sands of Time trilogy had a perfect ending with the Two Thrones. PoP(2008) ended on a goddamn "to be continued" achievement. I still hold out hope however as this is supposed to be released in May of 2010 which is nowhere near long enough for the PoP team to create a new game (only 18 months) so they could still be working on the sequel and this is nothing more than a movie tie-in.

LewieP

It will be tough to convince me to care after POP2008

My complete thoughts on POP2008 so I can now shut up about it:

To truly grasp why POP2008 is one of the biggest disappointments I’ve ever had with Ubisoft on the box, let’s go back to 2003.

Well, OK, I only got around to playing it a few years later, but Sands of Time was made in 2003.

Now, I wasn’t too young to have played the original Prince of Persia, but I was too young to be able to play them properly. I just died all the time, so when I think of Prince of Persia, Sands of time is my first proper memory.

Sands of time was a wonderful platformer. It was as hard as it was fair. The rewind mechanic genuinely removed a lot of the needless frustration that a lot of games with “jumping puzzles” have. Far from making the game easier, it simply encouraged the player to experiment more, which is exactly how it should be in games like this. The ramps, poles and other level geometry felt very naturally occurring, as if it was a real place with stuff placed in a way that just happened to create a subtle assault course.

The combat was fairly mindless, although it looked quite cool. Added little, but certainly didn’t take away too much either.

The puzzles were more often than not designed so you would have to actually think about how to get from A to B. You would look at the room, examine it, and come up with a solution through experimentation.

In a similar vein to ICO, there was no real upgrade system for solving puzzles, you didn’t need to find a certain weapon or tool to let you do something, everything you need to solve any of the puzzles you have with you from the start of the game. No blue keycard for the blue door.

However you look at it, Warrior Within was a misstep, the degree to which it offends you is probably largely determined by your tolerance of the bad metal soundtrack. The less said the better.

However, when it came time for The Two Thrones, they had actually learnt their lesson. Fun new things like the Dark Prince was a nice touch, the “stealth take down” thingies that let you do platforming instead of combat were a good idea well implemented, and definitely made you feel like a badass. Some good bosses and some bad bosses, and level design that wasn’t quite as tight as Sands of Time are the only major let downs.

Then, for the “next gen” Prince of Persia, Ubisoft decided to reinvent things. No doubt they looked at the “Generally favorable reviews”, and massive sales, that Assassin’s Creed got, and thought that they could pull the same trick off twice.

The new direction they took it in was to remove the requirement for the player to have any need to actually pay attention or think. They reduced a cerebral platformer down to “press some buttons when we tell you to, and get to look at some pretty pictures”.

In the Sands of Time trilogy, if you wanted to do a wall run, you had to line it up, and time it right. In this, you can make the decision to do a wall run mid air if you like. Just jump any old way near a wall, then push towards it, and the game will position you correctly on the wall, and you will end up exactly where the game knows you need to be.

In POP2008, the levels are just a bunch of platforming peices thrown together in a chain. You never have to think about how to get anywhere, since the game will tell you what direction to go. The most thinking you have to do is “which button does the game want me to press”. Essentially, the game is a long series of badly hidden quick time events.

The “Elika saves you” mechanic that replaced the sands of time is just worse in every way.

Firstly, because the player was in control. You pressed rewind, go back to where you need to be, and then jump straight back in. POP2008, however, replaces this mechanic with something much more passive. You don’t have to think about anything you do, because the game will save you, whereas in Sands of time, even though you could undo any mistakes, it was a mechanic that the player was in charge of.

Secondly, Elika saving you takes more time that the rewind did, and each time you have to watch that exact same animation, and hear the incredible annoying voice actor say something hilarious like “Gee, I’m never going to get used to that!”. I swear they got the guy from the Legend of Zelda cartoon to do his voice. I am baffled that they managed to make the prince even less likeable.

Thirdly, the only thing that the game could actually call a platforming challenge is collecting lightseeds. These are the collectable do dads that for some reason Ubisoft decided POP needed. Some are in positions where they are ‘hard’ to get. However, since Elika saves you whenever you fall, you can often glitch into getting the harder ones, because unlike the rewind mechanic, Elika saving you doesn’t actually undo anything. “Jump to certain death – Just get the lightseed – Die” is a viable strategy for a lot of lightseeds.

Instead of Sands of Time’s clever difficulty curve without introducing new abilities, POP2008 manages to have basically no difficulty curve despite having new abilities, which all boil down to “press the right button when you are on the right colour pad”. Unlocking new abilities feels unnecessary gamey, and lazy compared to Sands of Time.

The only thing I can say in it’s defence is that it did completely get rid of the bullshit filler combat that all the previous games had, but in their places was badly designed boss fights. The boss fights are all bad the first time round, and get worse with repetition. Oh yeah, the game makes you repeat all of the bosses, I have no idea how many times you have to repeat them all, but it is certainly too many.

It also looks pretty good, but whenever it goes to a cut scene, the character models all look weird, and facial animation is pretty bad.

It really just feels like the whole game is just the player pressing forwards, then some buttons when the game tells you to press buttons, then putting the controller down and looking at the pretty pictures when the game tells you too.

The worst part is, it’s a game series that didn’t really need reinvention, it just needed development. A few new ideas, and the same basic design philosophy of the previous games would have been glorious.

If you want a new game like the Sands of Time, you’ll be wanting Mirror’s Edge. But seriously, they best include a rewind in the sequel, since frustrating deaths was one of the biggest complaints I have heard about it.

End Rant.

randombattle

Yeah what the fuck I want to know what happens to the new prince! You can't just start something and then go back to something else!

So lame...


Also I've never heard of this site.

joshgotro

Thanks for reminding me I still need to play PoP(2008).

noir_blood

DeMoN wrote: »

This will be the fourth time they will try to make a game as good as the first one.

let's see if they can do it.

Really? See, I thought Two Thrones was just about perfect, and overall better than the first one, mainly just because it was more refined.

Still, looking at Assasin's Creed 1 and the 2nd one gives me hope that the POP team has taken some of the last game's criticism to heart and are expanding on it.

Also, didn't the new POP game have some DLC that kinda answered the 'to be continued" question? I never beat it, as I'm one of the ones that got tired of the same old thing, but that's what I heard.

-SPI-

Goddamnit. The first game ended brilliantly, then they tear up that fantastic ending and make two more games, one not so great and one pretty awesome that once again restores a nice ending to the series. And now they're going to go back again and tear that ending up while they have a perfectly good PoP game sitting there with a to be continued? Ugh.

Only thing that could get me interested in this would be if they said Jordan Mechner himself was on board and leading the project.

Rakai

noir_blood wrote: »

DeMoN wrote: »

This will be the fourth time they will try to make a game as good as the first one.

let's see if they can do it.

Really? See, I thought Two Thrones was just about perfect, and overall better than the first one, mainly just because it was more refined.

Still, looking at Assasin's Creed 1 and the 2nd one gives me hope that the POP team has taken some of the last game's criticism to heart and are expanding on it.

Also, didn't the new POP game have some DLC that kinda answered the 'to be continued" question? I never beat it, as I'm one of the ones that got tired of the same old thing, but that's what I heard.

It's just what it's name implies, an epilogue. It doesn't wrap up anything but gives a view into the characters' reactions post ending.

Cherrn

I like the idea of keeping the universe Zelda-esque. It suits the concept, and allows them to diverge. I do hope they at least try to be as visually creative as they were in PoP 2008.

toxk_02

Evidence suggests Ubisoft Montreal is at the helm, the group behind POP2008.

From Oct. 7th

Destructoid wrote:

Superannuation has uncovered a LinkedIn profile of a Ubisoft character modeler who makes a direct reference to "working on a new Prince of Persia." The site also noticed that Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner recently filed for a trademark of Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. Whether the two are related (or if they have anything to do with the upcoming movie) is unknown.

From a LinkedIn profile of a Ubi-Mon. modeler:

Character modeler
Ubisoft
August 2009 — Present (4 months)

Working on the best game ever.


character modeler
Ubisoft
December 2008 — August 2009 (9 months)

worked on james cameron avatar game.


Character modeler
Ubisoft
September 2006 — November 2008 (2 years 3 months)

-worked on the prince of persia game, as a character modeler. and establishing the pipeline for the production process of the characters .

"the best game ever" use to say "new PoP"

Thirith

I wouldn't mind them continuing the storyline of the recent Prince of Persia, but with the gameplay (at least the parkour gameplay) moving more towards Sands of Time. Going back to that storyline, though? I doubt that they can add anything worthwhile to a story that's already been complete once, then mucked up, then sort of finished again.

agoaj

Would we be playing as the king of persia formerly known as prince of persia?

DeMoN

noir_blood wrote: »

DeMoN wrote: »

This will be the fourth time they will try to make a game as good as the first one.

let's see if they can do it.

Really? See, I thought Two Thrones was just about perfect, and overall better than the first one, mainly just because it was more refined.

Still, looking at Assasin's Creed 1 and the 2nd one gives me hope that the POP team has taken some of the last game's criticism to heart and are expanding on it.

Also, didn't the new POP game have some DLC that kinda answered the 'to be continued" question? I never beat it, as I'm one of the ones that got tired of the same old thing, but that's what I heard.

I don't know, Two Thrones came pretty close, but still wasn't quite as good as the first one. For me, anyway.

The atmosphere still felt very "brown" like warrior within. And the dark prince sections just angered me. And while they tried to make combat more interesting, I was more than content with Sand of Time's "use one move for every enemy". Because the combat sections would last for like, a minute each, and then I'd get back to climbing that beautiful palace.

jclast

DeMoN wrote: »

This will be the fourth time they will try to make a game as good as the first one.

let's see if they can do it.

tTT was a better game than SoT because the combat didn't suck balls.

LewieP wrote: »

It will be tough to convince me to care after POP2008In a similar vein to ICO, there was no real upgrade system for solving puzzles, you didn’t need to find a certain weapon or tool to let you do something, everything you need to solve any of the puzzles you have with you from the start of the game. No blue keycard for the blue door.

Except for the sword that lets you knock down walls of course.

LewieP wrote:

The “Elika saves you” mechanic that replaced the sands of time is just worse in every way.

I like both systems for what they are. Elika is just a checkpoint who follows you around the level. Not a big deal.

LewieP wrote:

Secondly, Elika saving you takes more time that the rewind did, and each time you have to watch that exact same animation, and hear the incredible annoying voice actor say something hilarious like “Gee, I’m never going to get used to that!”. I swear they got the guy from the Legend of Zelda cartoon to do his voice. I am baffled that they managed to make the prince even less likeable.

I'm not saying it's his best work or anything, but Nolan North did a wonderful job voicing the Prince in PoP2K8. If you're going to poke at him for something, poke at him for Shadow Complex.

LewieP wrote:

Thirdly, the only thing that the game could actually call a platforming challenge is collecting lightseeds. These are the collectable do dads that for some reason Ubisoft decided POP needed. Some are in positions where they are ‘hard’ to get. However, since Elika saves you whenever you fall, you can often glitch into getting the harder ones, because unlike the rewind mechanic, Elika saving you doesn’t actually undo anything. “Jump to certain death – Just get the lightseed – Die” is a viable strategy for a lot of lightseeds.

Instead of Sands of Time’s clever difficulty curve without introducing new abilities, POP2008 manages to have basically no difficulty curve despite having new abilities, which all boil down to “press the right button when you are on the right colour pad”. Unlocking new abilities feels unnecessary gamey, and lazy compared to Sands of Time.

I liked the light seeds collection. It was cool to have some platforming challenge and goals that Elika wouldn't direct you to with the push of a button. You're right though - run, grab seed, die was my strategy for a couple of them, and I'm convinced it was the dev team's, too. Still enjoyable though.

As to games feeling like games - I don't know what to tell you. You were using power plates left by a god to temporarily do god-like things to get places you needed to be. Cliche? Sure. But I thought it was fun. I got to run on the walls for extended periods of time and fly through the air.

LewieP wrote:

If you want a new game like the Sands of Time, you’ll be wanting Mirror’s Edge. But seriously, they best include a rewind in the sequel, since frustrating deaths was one of the biggest complaints I have heard about it.

God no. Mirror's Edge was fucking horrible. And it didn't get any better when they introduced guys with guns. First person platforming is an experiment I would very much like to never see repeated.

LewieP

I think the Two Thrones was a decent sequel to SOT. It played pretty damn well for the most part.

SOT is still my favourite though.

Thirith

jclast wrote: »

God no. Mirror's Edge was fucking horrible. And it didn't get any better when they introduced guys with guns. First person platforming is an experiment I would very much like to never see repeated.

Out of interest, did you play on a console or on PC? I've only played the PS3 demo of Mirror's Edge, so I can't fully judge, but I found the first-person platforming thrilling on PC but hated the controls on gamepad. It's probably mostly due to me being used to mouse-look over right-stick look.

King Riptor

So this is because of the Gyllenhal trainwreck?


More reason to hate that movie I guess.

Unco-ordinated

jclast wrote: »

God no. Mirror's Edge was fucking horrible. And it didn't get any better when they introduced guys with guns. First person platforming is an experiment I would very much like to never see repeated.

This is where you lost me. I thought both PoP 08 and Mirror's Edge were great, for entirely different reasons (which I'm not going to get into).

Anyway, this sucks. They've already finished the SoT trilogy, they need to continue the bloody PoP '08 story.

Htown

Man the trailer for that movie actually looks decent, unlike most other video game movies ever. I'm not sure what all you expected from a PoP movie, but the trailer looks pretty much like I expected.

Also, how did the new Prince of Persia sell compared to the Sands of Time games?

The_Scarab

On par, if I remember rightly. Though not immediately. Mainly because it launched right in the middle of the holiday season and was swallowed up by everything else.

PoP 2008 was a lot better than the community seems to acknowledge.

And the new movie, going just off the trailer, looks pretty darn slick. I see no problems here at all.

joshgotro

sketchy website says 840,000

Olivaw

Didn't Jordan Mechner write the screenplay to the Prince of Persia movie

That's about as close to the horse's mouth as you can get, I'd say

slash000

LewieP, you could have just linked this article:

Why the new Prince of Persia Sucks

:P

Incidentally, I agree with everything you said, which is basically everything the article says, which is basically everything I said after I played POP08 a few months ago. It's mindless and repetitive and shallow and ultimately rewarding.



So here's to hoping they can do something right about this new Sands game. They can keep the awesome graphical presentation of POP08 if they like, which was the best part of that game, though I doubt they will.

Kyougu

For those asking why, it's obviously to coincide with the release of the new movie.

I'm one of those dissapointed too. I enjoyed the new PoP (2008) and thought Two Thrones did a bang up job of tying up the trilogy. Maybe it will be a whole new prince and setting again?

Fiaryn

Playing PoP2008 is like having eyesex.

Fantastic eyesex.

King Riptor

Htown wrote: »

Man the trailer for that movie actually looks decent, unlike most other video game movies ever. I'm not sure what all you expected from a PoP movie, but the trailer looks pretty much like I expected.

I expected you know Persians maybe someone that could pass for a Middle eastern person. Not a guy that looks at best like a Hobo surfer cosplaying as Emo prince from the second one.

darleysam

King Riptor wrote: »

So this is because of the Gyllenhal trainwreck?


More reason to hate that movie I guess.

Oh you've seen it?

The Dude With Herpes

Well this is incredibly lame.

Maybe it's just a tie-in/cash-in for the movie coming out and a team is still making a proper sequel to PoP08...but I don't have high hopes at this point.

Peewi

Guess there won't be a game called Prince of Persia: Sands of Time: The Movie: The Game, then.

HenryVape

I bet its just another rerelease of two thrones, with new coverart and a new name.
I think im alone in having WW as my favourite, yeah it had awful hardcore metal music, a woman in a metal thong and one in a dress that seemed to small, women balancing on lines while spouting "edgy" dialogue and "dark" animations for getting more hp. But it also had some fantastic setpieces like the garden with the canals and the wrecked ships. The combat was better, and it was longer. I also loved the Dahaka chases, and there was still plenty of good platforming. I absolutely hated all the combat parts of sands of time, in addtition for some reason the sound in my game was fucked up and it sounded like everyone where sitting in a closet with the door closed when they spoke. I cant really say what i didnt like about TT, but ive always felt that there was something missing in the game, but i dont know what that would be.

LewieP

Oh hey, imagine if they did SOT trilogy with extra pretties on 360/PS3.

1080p, 60hz, some work on the models and textures, and some nice special effects, and maybe some extra gameplay, and now you're talking.

jclast

Thirith wrote: »

jclast wrote: »

God no. Mirror's Edge was fucking horrible. And it didn't get any better when they introduced guys with guns. First person platforming is an experiment I would very much like to never see repeated.

Out of interest, did you play on a console or on PC? I've only played the PS3 demo of Mirror's Edge, so I can't fully judge, but I found the first-person platforming thrilling on PC but hated the controls on gamepad. It's probably mostly due to me being used to mouse-look over right-stick look.

I played on a console, but that's my preferred way of playing first-person stuff.

Olivaw

They'd need to update the sound, too

That was the single worst thing about Sands of Time, the terrible sound quality

LewieP

Olivaw wrote: »

They'd need to update the sound, too

That was the single worst thing about Sands of Time, the terrible sound quality

Which version did you play? I played it and Two Thrones on the Gamecube, and remember at least one of them having awful audio quality, for the voices expecially.

slash000

I haven't played Sands in a long time, but I don't remember anything particularly bad about the sound quality

jclast

I played SoT on PS2 and WW and tTT on Xbox. I don't remember horrible sound on any of them.

Maybe my glasses are rose-colored?

Cowbomb

Hopefully this will be a replacement second chapter, retconning Warrior Within into oblivion.

Olivaw

LewieP wrote: »

Olivaw wrote: »

They'd need to update the sound, too

That was the single worst thing about Sands of Time, the terrible sound quality

Which version did you play? I played it and Two Thrones on the Gamecube, and remember at least one of them having awful audio quality, for the voices expecially.

It was on the Gamecube, yeah

Sands of Time had terrible, tinny sound quality for it's voices especially. It sounded like they were being played through a twenty year old radio