Surprises Await - The Story of Prince of Persia

Earlier, I talked about the game play and level design of Prince of Persia. I’d like to now focus my attention on its story, which, while it could have been implemented better throughout, totally threw me for a loop with the way it ended. It’s a pretty simple story: evil is corrupting the world, and only the Prince (who remains nameless if I remember correctly) and his female companion can put an end to it. Certainly, this scenario has been done before, but what sets Prince of Persia apart from the countless other games to feature good versus evil is the emotional weight the proceedings take on once the credits roll.

At the beginning of the game, the Prince is going along, minding his own business, when he comes upon a girl being chased by a group of men. Naturally, he decides to help her out in eluding her pursuers. But in doing so, he also enlists himself in the aid of a dying kingdom in need of a savior. I really wasn’t too invested in the story for the first few hours, but after a while, I started to realize that the interactions between the Prince and Elika went beyond the standard action fare. They slowly became more and more attached to each other, and as the game went on, I found myself feeling the same way. However, I think the one glaring fault with the storytelling was the way Ubisoft went about telling it. Whenever new conversations became available, I had to stop what I was doing and talk to Elika. The game would then grind to an abrupt halt as the two characters would talk about themselves and what was going on around them. The conversations eventually became deeper in meaning, and it was at times touching to watch as they gradually laid more of their souls bare to each other. But I can’t excuse the fact that I had to sit there and watch them just standing there talking while the fate of the world was in their hands. A much better approach, in my opinion, would have been to allow the same conversations to unfold naturally through the game play. Instead of standing around shooting the shit, the Prince and Elika should have been learning about each other while navigating the treacheries laid before them. Still, the things they talked about - how a person’s destiny figures in to free will, for one – were genuinely interesting and kept me invested in them as characters.


The most impressive part of the story was, by far, the ending. After learning of the sacrifice Elika’s father made to bring her back to life, I instantly understood the selfishness he displayed by choosing his daughter over his kingdom and the lives of everyone residing in it. All the corruption and death could have been avoided if he simply let things unfold the way they were supposed to. But he chose to condemn the land to destruction for the sake of a loved one, and while it’s only human, it shows that every sacrifice isn’t necessarily the right one to make. But knowing the consequences of such a sacrifice doesn’t mean it won’t be repeated. At the end of the game, Elika gives her life to restore all the goodness back to the world, and the Prince isn’t prepared to accept that fact. There’s an amazing sequence where the Prince is carrying her body through the temple back to the place of sacrifice. There’s a palpable sense of loss, and it’s evidenced in the way the scene plays out. Instead of running around like he does during the rest of the game, his gait is slow and methodical. It’s a long walk out of the temple, and it’s one that the Prince dreads embarking on. Another great touch was the inclusion of a small bit of credits scrolling across the screen as he’s walking through the hallway. It’s one of those moments that will stay with me for a long time. Once the Prince gets to the stone slab where Elika will be revived, it’s up to the player to finish the deed. I knew it was wrong, but the game didn’t give me a choice in the matter. If I wanted to see the game’s real conclusion, I had to undo everything I had spent hours upon hours doing.

During all of this, I got a strong sense that the people at Ubisoft played, and really loved, Shadow of the Colossus. Prince of Persia’s story could be described as the problem to Shadow’s solution. Instead of starting the game after the character’s mind is made up, it shows exactly how a decision like that could be rightfully (or wrongfully) made from an emotional standpoint. While it wasn't told quite so eloquently, the story in Prince of Persia deals with the same issues as Sony's last generation masterpiece. Even the final boss sequence reminded me of the end of Shadow, where the main character was transformed into a demon for his decision to sacrifice, basically, the entire world to bring someone back from the dead. The perspective of the boss fight in Prince of Persia mimics that of Shadow, but instead of becoming the demon, the task at hand is to imprison him forever. It's an interesting role reversal, and I really think that having played both games greatly impacted the way I felt about both of them. Ubisoft really outdid themselves with Prince of Persia, and hopefully the next game in the series will build upon an already amazing start.