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.

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Level Design 101 - Prince of Persia

Sometimes, a game doesn’t sound so hot on paper. Take, for instance, the latest Prince of Persia. If you were to read the design doc, it would have words like “backtrack” and “re-navigate” all over the place. A lot of developers run into that problem; designing levels is hard, and budget constraints and time are both factors that heavily weigh on how much content they’re able to put into the product you see on store shelves. It’s with this in mind that, upon finally finishing Prince of Persia, I can only applaud what Ubisoft Montreal has accomplished with the world they created.

There are two central reasons Ubisoft succeeded at the level they did. For starters, each area of the world is unique, and you’ll never find yourself cursing at having to go back to a place you’ve already been. The world is big enough that you might go hours without revisiting an area you’ve already cleared, but when you do, it’s just so damn fun to navigate that it’s anything but a chore. The platforming has some of the most fluid and intuitive controls I’ve seen in quite some time - but great controls in the context of crappy level design wouldn’t impress me much. Fortunately, Ubisoft felt the same way, and went about crafting supremely satisfying, easily navigable environments to compliment the silky smooth controls. Some would call the game easy, and I wouldn’t argue against that. There’s not much challenge – you essentially can’t die, after all – but for me, the fun wasn’t in how hard the jumps and shimmies were to execute. In place of traditional platforming, where your character has to be positioned just right to accomplish anything, Prince of Persia opted for a more streamlined approach. One press of a button sends your character flying towards a wall, and you don’t have to press anything to continue momentum. It’s almost like a rhythm game, and once you’re in harmony with its beat, tunnel vision sets in and everything else just melts away. All this is made possible by the truly inventive spaces you find yourself in. While a game like Tomb Raider gives you the same basics to repeat in same-y looking areas, Prince of Persia’s landscape is as different as it is easy to progress in. Throughout the game, you’ll find yourself propelled against hot air balloons, flying through the air, Rez style, plummeting hundreds of feet down the side of a wall, swinging from poles and grappling onto vines. All of those activities blend seamlessly, and it honestly never gets old. It’s a game I could see myself going back to for a second, third, and even fourth time before it’s all said and done.


The second reason the game turned out as well as it did also has to do with the level design. I mentioned backtracking before, and it comes into play for the entire length of the game. The idea behind the game is that the world is becoming corrupted by an evil force, and as such, it’s polluting the environment with a black sludge over almost every surface. Your goal is to navigate through this shitty, dreary land and make your way to “fertile ground,” where you can then cleanse the surrounding area of all evil and shittiness. Once you do that, the environment instantly turns from dark and foreboding to bright, colorful and happy. Your goal is to then collect as many “light seeds” as you can, which are white orbs scattered throughout the world. They only become visible once an area is cleansed, so here is where the backtracking starts. But what makes this particular brand of backtracking enjoyable is the drastic visual change made to everything around you. Gone are the black pits of death waiting for you on almost all solid ground, and in its place are blades of green grass, flowers, and butterflies hovering just below eyesight. The darkness that once plagued the land has given way to illuminating sunlight, and you almost forget you’ve been there before. Previously barred areas are sometimes found, since the sludge covering a particular ledge or crevice is no longer there to bring down the décor. This aspect literally doubles the play time, and definitely not in a cheap way. Some of the most fun I had was in collecting the “light seeds” and seeing the places I had just come from in the new light of day. It also helps that the art style is such that Prince of Persia will still look good ten years from now.

If you couldn’t already tell, I loved this game. There was one particular boss that I found to be downright annoying to fight, but other than that, I enjoyed the combat a lot. It wasn’t my favorite part of the game – it got boring here and there – but it didn’t detract nearly enough from the otherwise fantastically designed game play to bring down my overall enjoyment. I’m pretty sure the next Prince of Persia game will be a direct sequel to this one, and I, for one, will be marking the days off my calendar until it jumps, shimmies and falls into my hands. Read more...