At Ubisoft’s recent Ubidays event, we were given some titbits of information, but not enough to suggest that the game is actually going to come out in time for the holiday season. This is possibly eluding to an E3 appearance. Since the last trilogy finished three years ago, Ubi have gone back to the drawing board with a 'restart' of the franchise. However, we were assured that numerous precedents established in the last trilogy will remain in the game.
New emphasis: One-on-one combat.
The new prince is not actually a prince. He’s more of a punk wanderer and/or adventurer, who typically goes out, gets some cash from a mercenary mission and then comes back to hedonistically spend it. However, as a prophecy alludes, this new ‘prince’ eventually takes up a noble cause in needing to save the world. We think that we’ve been down this path before, but we’ll let it slide until we get more details.
The game will still have an emphasis on combat, solving puzzles and acrobatics. As has been previously mentioned, combat will have a slightly different focus this time around, where there will be more one-on-one battles. However, the ‘sands of time’ mechanic will no longer be here. If players care to remember, the previous trilogy built almost its entire game around the fact that players could manipulate time. It was an innovative and enjoyable mechanic that defined the trilogy.
However, this mechanic has been replaced by an AI partner named Elika. The game’s producer went to great lengths explaining how Elika would not be a ‘ball-and-chain’ and a lot of his emphasis was quite relevant with the event's theme. All of the activities that the ‘prince’ will perform in the game will relate to how well he partners Elika. Apparently there will be a heavy focus on the successful interaction between Elika and himself, as well as what the developers hope to be a emotional connection with the players and the game.
Useful ally or ball-and-chain? Only time will tell.
Unfortunately, we didn’t actually get to see the game in action, only a CG trailer that was meant to shed some light on the collaboration between the Prince and Elika. As you may have seen by now, it is apparent that Elika has some magical abilities and will be helping the Prince do acrobatic manoeuvres. We’ve seen in screenshots that the game sports a wonderful new style, so it was a shame that we didn’t see it in action.
While we’re a little sceptical of the direction that the new Prince of Persia has taken, particularly as the prince has always been a loner, we’re very willing to wait it out and see. Also, it will be an effort to get it out for the holidays, though it has apparently been in development for a long time. We haven’t got a lot of concrete information to go on, but we’re still excited about the prospect of once again taking the Prince on an epic adventure.
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