Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, then. Jogging over walls. Slashing sand demons. Reversing time. Not exactly earth-shatteringly original, is it? We bet Ubisoft doesn’t want you to think that. Oh wait, they do.
Speaking to us at a preview extravaganza a week or two back, Animation Director Jan-Erik Sjovall has described The Forgotten Sands as a “meat and potatoes” game, a return to “the normal way of doing things”.
“In this case it was more going back to the old Sands of Time approach,” he explained when asked whether the developer had carried over some of the previous game’s more ambitious elements. “Going back to the normal way of doing things. You have your acrobatics, you have your action sequences, and then you have boss fights where you get tested and where you progress the story.”
“Personally I think that Prince of Persia 2008 was a really good experiment, where we tried to lean ourselves out of that window, tried to approach story in a slightly different way – you really had act one, two and three, and their being triggered by certain kinds of events, one leads to the other – and now we’re going back to what they call in Germany ‘hausmannskost’, the meat and potatoes side of things.”
“This is not anything ground-breaking in terms of trying out new things,” Sjovall concluded. “New things was 2008. It was strangely perceived sometimes, but hopefully this will bring some peace to some of the hardcore fans.”
Would any of the said hardcore fans care to comment? (Give the full interview a spin first.)
The Xbox 360 and PS3 versions of The Forgotten Sands hit in May, with a PC release slated for June. Nintendo DS, PlayStation Portable and Wii versions – effectively different games – are also in development.
Satoru Iwata Video Interview - the late Nintendo president spoke with Kikizo in 2004 as 'Nintendo Revolution' loomed.
Kaz Hirai Video Interview - the first of Kikizo's interviews with the man who went on to become global head of Sony.
Ed Fries Video Interview - one of Xbox's founders discusses an epic journey from Excel to Xbox.
Yu Suzuki, the Kikizo Interview - we spend time with one of gaming's most revered creators.
Tetris - The Making of an Icon: Alexey Pajitnov and Henk Rogers reveal the fascinating story behind Tetris
Rare founders, Chris and Tim Stamper - their only interview? Genuinely 'rare' sit down with founders of the legendary studio.
The History of First-Person Shooters - a retrospective, from Maze War to Modern Warfare
I think they could do away with the bit of innovation that is there, wall jumping, freezing water, swinging on a pole, then freezing the water again looks like an arse ache
I liked the 2008 one, but i also like that they’re going back to a more sands of time feel…fingers crossed it’s decent.
I liked the trilogy, but i hope to Hell they make a sequel for 2008′s games, it was the first of the 4 i actually completed and it was fun as hell to play.
I just think that the forgotten sands might shut up the selfish sands of time fanboys who didn’t like the new one because it wasn’t to there taste.
I was really into 2008′s story a lot more than the trilogy, why, because it actually made sense, darkness vs light is more accurate then sand monsters.
More logical too.
I don’t consider myself a Sands of Time fanboy. I had liked playing Fahrenheit, aka Indigo Prophecy. It was upfront about what the ‘player’ would actually be doing, i.e watch a movie by correct timing of button presses to trigger the most desirable next sequence of video frames.
Prince 2008 wanted to claim to be a descendant of something it didn’t inherit nearly enough from. “Light seeds”. Time sink. Enough said.
“Forgotten Sands” sounds like the loudest possible clue to the fans that this isn’t Ubisoft’s doing but Big Hollywood flexing its muscles, as in “it’s the game we forgot to make for the month that the movie is released. don’t buy it, as we’ve told you before, it’s not what we planned on doing.”