While the new Prince of Persia’s really stunning reveals will have to wait until tomorrow morning’s live broadcast from Ubidays 2008, it appears that IGN got an advance look at the title this last Friday — and though we’re insanely jealous, we wouldn’t dream of depriving our readers of the glorious details. Read on for some highlights.
In a move sure to thrill and delight hypemeisters across the world, IGN editor Hilary Goldstein (who you might remember from the first-ever GTA IV review) posits the new Prince of Persia as not merely a cross between The Sands of Time and Assassin’s Creed, but so much more:
If you had a fondness for The Sands of Time, don’t worry. Ubisoft isn’t soiling the franchise in any way. In fact, the Montreal team is setting the Prince free of the shackles of the previous three titles. Though the Prince loses his time powers, he is gaining more acrobatic skills, a completely new combat system, and an open world free of the linear constraints of the previous game. Though Prince of Persia has an open world and is using the Assassin’s Creed engine, don’t think of it as a clone. This is POP for the new generation and it looks and feels like the perfect transition.
Since the same gentleman called GTA IV “the best game since Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time” in a formal review, we might take these words with a grain of salt. But the more we read about the story, the gameplay and the battle system, the more fantastic it all sounds.
The black ooze that pervaded the game’s teaser website? Dubbed “the corruption,” the goo is apparently the reincarnation of an evil god, spreading across the land like pestilence unless you can keep it in check. It’s also a fundamental, defining element in gameplay:
The corruption is everything dangerous and evil in this world. It takes the form of your enemies and molds into the traps that attempt to end the Prince. There are no saw blades, no spiked floors this time around. There is only the corruption, a black ooze which dynamically changes as you play through Prince of Persia. It may form a puddle of ooze below you so that if you fall it consumes and kills the Prince. Or it may try to grab you as you pass by. Or it might infect you. Or explode out of a wall. The variations in the Corruption are something Ubisoft is keeping under wraps for now, but its ability to change as you progress through POP is going to make a huge difference in how you play.
Perhaps the most interesting difference the ooze makes — at least, of those mentioned in Goldstein’s preview — is to dynamically change the environment, such that no two playthroughs will be the same:
Because you decide where to go, the order in which you save the world is going to drastically change your game experience. You and a friend could both beat POP going in completely opposite directions and therefore having completely unique experiences with every single land. For example, one of the bosses you face releases a corruption trap across the unhealed areas of the world when he dies. This trap remains for the rest of the game, only disappearing when an area is healed. So if you fight this boss first, it means you will ratchet up the acrobatic difficulty for the remainder of gameplay. Take him out last and the trap becomes somewhat negligible.
Given the recent trends in Prince of Persia towards more and greater weaponry, complex combat systems and loads of on-screen baddies, you might expect more of the same here — but in a move that sets my heart aflutter, Goldstein indicates that instead, combat will be a return to form. And not Sands of Time’s vaulting, backflipping and sand-retrieving form, but that of the original Prince of Persia:
You will never face more than one enemy at a time. Never. It is always a one-on-one battle. But this time around your enemies are smarter. Often they are equally skilled in combat as the Prince — and sometimes more so. The cinematic battles take inspiration from fighting games. These are intense, sometimes epic battles that will test the Prince’s skills with a sword.
There are several reasons Ubisoft chose to go for a mano-y-mano combat system. It gives the team far more freedom with the camera. The camera can pull in closer and give cinematic views and there’s no need for a lock-on system. And because your attention is focused on just one guy, the AI can be stronger, that single enemy more capable. This also harkens back to the original PC Prince of Persia, which had you fighting a single enemy at a time.
There’s much, much more, so please stop reading and visit IGN for the full preview.
We also suggest visiting GameSpot UK: they’ve got a large collection of brand-new screens, and a video interview with creative director JC Guyot, visible directly below.
Still haven’t had enough of the Prince? Come back tomorrow morning for impressions of the Ubidays 2008 reveal.
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