Thoughts On Prince of Persia: What It Is and What It Could’ve Been

Prince of Persia was a unique gaming experience for me. It has some amazing aspects to it, the graphics, the animation, and the environments were all great. However, it’s not without its flaws, some glaring and some that would only affect certain people. One thing that I absolutely despise in games is back tracking for the sake of making the game longer (I’m looking at you Devil May Cry 4). Prince of Persia demands that you do at least a little backtracking but for some reason, I didn’t mind. As a matter of fact, I enjoyed it so much that I got all 1,001 light seeds. Why is that? I hate collecting things in games. Crackdown’s orbs angered me to no end and the death cards in Call of Duty: World at War mean less than nothing to me, so why would I spend hours collecting small spheres of light?

Because the game is beautiful. Most of the games that have come out for this generation of systems look good. Some games, like Resistance 2 and Gears 2, have moments that actually made me just sit and stare at what’s on screen. While both of those games have some amazing moments, Prince of Persia is a whole different experience.

Any videophile will tell you that he has “demo material” for friends that come to his house wanting to know how good a Blu-Ray movie can actually look. I’ve never looked at a game in that light before until I was playing this game and something happened. During one of my light seed collecting sprees after the entire game world had been cleansed, someone came into the room to ask me a question and was so enamored with how beautiful the game was that a few minutes later when I asked him what he wanted, he had forgotten. This is demo material for what 360 games can look like. This game is beautiful from beginning to end, and it only gets better as you complete more of it.

A lot of games have done the light world/dark world thing and some have done it better than others. I would say that Prince of Persia beats them all. Before you cleanse them, the environments are more than just dark and moody, they are oppressive. Corruption that has taken over large sections of wall and floor stretches towards you with intent to kill whenever you are near it. This causes you to be more anxious when running along walls or sliding down canopies. The knowledge that a substance will kill you if you’d just veer an inch in one direction adds to the atmosphere. The environments make you feel like the problem with these lands is something far bigger than you and your lady friend could ever fix. The level of detail in the corrupted lands only serves to make the lands look that much more beautiful when you cleanse them. Each area has four “levels”, and while it’s certainly nice to see one level be cleansed, you only get the full effect of this game after you have cleansed one whole area. Standing on one of the many conveniently located planks or overhangs and looking out over this huge landscape that you’ve just cleansed is really amazing. The fact that far off in the distance you can see a bit of a corrupted area that you haven’t been too yet just makes you want to get to it quicker to see what it looks like when its cleansed as well.

While the gameplay does consist mostly of doing the same things repeatedly, the different powers that Elika has do help to add some variety and I never felt like the game was playing itself. Elika is a gift and a curse to this game. I can see what Ubisoft was trying to accomplish with her, unfortunately it just didn’t work. Prince of Persia is a very cinematic game. There is no radar and the only time you’ll need to go into a menu is if you want to select a new destination or teleport to a previously cleansed area. Ubisoft accomplished this by putting all of your abilities and special moves into Elika. I think it was a great idea and that they succeeded in making the game more cinematic by using her in this way but she still doesn’t accomplish everything that Ubisoft intended.

What hath Ubisoft wrought?

While it is nice that she is always with you and she has many different interactions with the Prince, a lot of time she really slows you down. While you would like to jump from the platform that you’re on over to that ledge and then run to the ring, fling yourself off it into some vines, scurry up them then fly off and grab onto that cliff and pull yourself up….she’s not having any of it. When you jump to that ledge, she’s going to grab your hand and demand that you pull her up, when you grab onto the vines she’s going to stop you and then jump onto your back, when you try and jump off of the vines she’s going to take her time climbing off of your back and then demand that you help her up onto the cliff. It destroys the flow of the game in situations like this. It wouldn’t be so bad if she was anyone else but we are talking about a girl who can leap great distances to save your life and can fly. Why the hell does she need me to fling her up onto the ledge when she can leap fifty feet to fling me across a chasm?

Where she really fails though, and where the entire game is disappointing, is the story. The story is pretty thin to begin with but it’s obvious that she plays an integral role. Most of the dialogue between the characters is alright but it really seems like Ubisoft couldn’t decide whether or not they wanted her to serve her purpose as the prince’s tool or his love interest. Throughout the game there are a few hints that Elika is falling for the prince and that the prince is falling for her as well. This is fine and while the in game characters may be taking a liking to one another, the player just isn’t motivated to care in the least. Obviously this kind of in game relationship is going to bring comparisons to Gordon Freeman and Alyx Vance. Anyone who has played Half Life 2 and is coming into this game hoping for even a fraction of that kind of character relationship will be monstrously disappointed. The necessities of such a relationship are there and Ubisoft could’ve done something great with these characters but for whatever reason, they just didn’t.

SPOILERS AHEAD. Prince of Persia isn’t a short game. I did everything there was to be done in it and I know it took more than twelve hours because I didn’t get that achievement. Imagine putting twelve hours into upgrading and fixing your car only to have it EXPLODE as you walk back into your garage. That is what Ubisoft has done.

Let me explain: The story begins with Elika being brought back to life by her father agreeing to release an evil god from his prison in return for reviving her. Her father slices a tree in half which releases the evil of this god. This causes you to spend twelve hours healing the lands and fixing her fathers screw up which obviously leads to her giving her life to re-imprison the beast. The prince is not happy with this and decides he wants her back. Doesn’t sound too bad does it? He’s in love with her so it makes sense. Well apparently the only way to bring her back is to go and destroy the tree and let that bastard back out into the world. What? That’s right. To hell with all of the effort that you put in to fixing this situation. Never mind the fact that she died willingly and happily and does not want to be brought back.

MORE SPOILERS. I spent a good fifteen minutes scouring the land for any hint of another option. An option for a bittersweet ending where the prince leaves Elika’s body there on the alter, knowing she died honorably, and walking off into the sunset of a beautiful land that he helped heal. Nope, Ubisoft wants sequels. Sequels mean money. So, with no other choice, I slice the tree down. This gives me one more light seed which I promptly shove into Elika’s chest. This causes her to sit up like Frankenstein and ask “Why?’ Well the prince picks her up in his arms, walks down the stairs, and heads toward the nothingness of the desert. In the background the temple falls apart, the lands all get covered in corruption again and a huge black sandstorm flies toward the prince and Elika with the beast form of the god roaring inside of it. Elika says something like “What is one grain of sand to the entire desert?” ‘œWhat is one grain of sand in the storm?’ and the screen cuts to black. I’m not kidding, that’s the end. I can’t put in to words how frustrating that is. To put in all that work only to have the game force you into undoing it just to show a setup for a sequel is unbelievable. That’s assuming that there is a sequel. It ends with the beasts mouth open behind them so maybe they get eaten. I hope they did. END SPOILERS.

If you’re interested in the gameplay or just want to see how beautiful a game can be, then look no further. The gameplay is satisfying and this game proves that this generation of systems are capable of more than a very sophisticated gray-scale. However, if you want a game that will leave you feeling fulfilled and satisfied as far as the story is concerned then you need to look elsewhere.