2003 Sands of Time was a restart of the series, the first part of which was released in 1989. The player is offered to master parkour, pass locations through incredible jumps, running along the walls and the ability to unwind time. Remake for modern platforms and PCs will be released on March 18. Thus, Ubisoft has aimed at the modern generation, and not just nostalging gamers.
Introduction
“Never has been a fan of the series,” says Patrice Dezile’s gamepa designer about the original Prince of Persia, a platform developed by Jordan Mecker in 1989. – For the first time I launched the game when I was 26 years old, thinking: and why it was considered great?"
According to Patrice, the classic platformer did not go through the test of time. He played it ten years after the release, when the innovative animation (rotoscopy technology), fights on swords and cunning puzzles were no longer impressed against the background of completely three -dimensional games, for example, Tomb Raider.
“Nostalgia enhances the effect of old games, but most of them are not interesting to play now,” Patris explains. – The hero’s animation is great, but, damn it, it is completely impossible for them to manage!". You can understand the game designer: the hero of the first part moves with inertia, which is why the game is considered hardcore.
Classical Prince of Persia from BRXUDERBUND became the starting point of the franchise. After three parts of the right, Ubisoft bought the company and restarted Desila and the command. The game The Sands of Time in the genre of adventure action offered no less innovation than the original. The project was released in 2003 for all the main platforms, and it again became a hit. Patrice acted as a creative director. He recognizes and appreciates the legacy of the classical game, although it is not a fan.
“Having taken the basics of the series, we went even further, and created another hit – Assassin’s Creed,” says Patrice. But how the Sands of Time appeared and where did her innovative ideas come from? Let’s return to the beginning of 2001, when Ubisoft called the creator of the original to Jordan Mekner with a proposal to restart the Prince of Persia.
Thousand and one night
Jordan and used to try to transfer his brainchild to a three -dimensional dimension. In 1999, a failure 3D version for Windows (and later on DreamCast) was released. During the development of the publisher BruDerbund, along with the developer Red Orb Entertainment, was bought by The Learning Company. The new leadership put programmers in harsh time frames and limited the budget. This was reflected on the finished product. Subsequently, Jordan said he did not perceive Prince of Persia 3D as part of the series. But Ubisoft had big plans for the franchise, and the company needed to attract the original creator to work. It turns out that the publisher only owned rights in the name of Prince of Persia, and intellectual property remained with the coecon.
To receive approval for rebooting, the company needed to convince the former game designer that the new team would change the direction and provide gamers with a completely different experience. But Mesner was disappointed in games and left the industry. As a result of the commercial failure of Last Express, he had to close his company Smoking Car Production.
The Last Express is an interactive movie with an elements of a quest, which now looks good thanks to the technology of rotoscoping.
The Last Express is an interactive movie with an elements of a quest, which now looks good thanks to the technology of rotoscoping.
Jordan studied at the film school at the Mrq Casino review University of New York and shot the documentary "In anticipation of darkness". The call from Ubisoft arrived when he worked on the next tape. He admits that he was happy, pulling away from the gaming industry.
The “father” of the series was invited to the head office of the company in Paris (France) to meet with the president and general director of Iv Giimimo. After the presentation at PowerPoint, Jordan wanted to learn about the people who are entrusted with the development. Ubisoft instructed producer Yannis Mallata to assemble a team of three people in Montreal (Canada) and come up with the concept of a future game.
Yannis agreed to meet with Jordan at the E3 exhibition, which was held in Los Angeles. After a conversation, which lasted two and a half hours, it was decided that Jordan would fly to Montreal in a few weeks, where he will get acquainted with the design on his own. This cunning move gave the team extra time. However, Yannis did not believe that a design document with a volume of 300 pages contained something innovative. Therefore, he dismissed the team, collecting a new composition.
“Mesner gave Ubisoft a set of rules,” recalls Patrice Dezile. – The commandments of Prince of Persia included high -quality animation, puzzles and fascinating mechanics of battle. ". The updated team adhered to his recommendations. “And then Jordan came to Montreal and he liked what he saw!". Jordan’s imagination captured a new approach to the team, which decided to make someone like a Persian ninja or tracer from the prince (a Parkur person).
Our "dodger" in action
Our "dodger" in action
“The design has become vertical: the hero climbs along the walls, bouncing from one to another and using acrobatic tricks from the Cirque du Soleil show,” says Jordan. He was shown a simple but impressive set of animations of the artist Alex Druen. The sketches depicted the prince incredibly mobile. “This added extreme sensations, and it was already felt that the gameplay would become innovative”. Soon Jordan himself reached out behind the pen ..
“The task was to reproduce the smoothness of the 2D game, but in the three-dimensional world-something that failed to achieve in Prince of Persia 3D,” recalls Jordan. The development began in September 2001. Using these prototypes, it was necessary to create a new generation game.
"Sands of time" is not burdened by the load of past parts Prince of Persia. “We did not try to connect the restart with original games,” says Patrice. – The events that occurred there do not matter – this is another world. So we had complete freedom for creativity ".
The young team did not have much hopes. For them, the project was the first game of the AAA category, but the employees were full of enthusiasm, possessed talent and differed in hard work. Patrice has already worked on Donald Duck: Goin ‘Quackers. He was assigned to The Sands of Time because he was freed. “In a sense, it looks like the development of a game about Donald Daka,” Patrice compares two projects. – We also created a game about a famous character ".
Little time was given to planning. Unlike the original group, the new team could not write a big document. “We made a design on paper, but these were sketches. We did not have a presentation in PowerPoint, ”Patrice recalls. – the document considered movements inside the closed room. The team consisted of talented people of different crafts. Some were engaged in 3D while others wrote the plot. There has already been an idea of the structure of the palace, and the general picture of the world. Most of the development was to realize the monitor conceived on the screen as soon as possible ".
Many ideas have accumulated a lot and some were discarded. “For example, I wanted to put a lot of people in the palace, but this was impossible due to PlayStation 2 restrictions,” Patris says. – Therefore, the filling of levels became modest and rotated around the main mechanic: smooth movement, fights and puzzles. ".
Here the studio was faced with problems. “Important is important, that is, the architecture of the palace should be meaningful,” Patris continues. -We added traps, and then wondered: why can anyone live in the palace, being under the threat of death? Or another example is running along the walls to get to the place. But why build a palace in which you need to run along the wall to get into your room?»Later, the team will justify such a design by the development of the plot -" Sands of Time "will destroy the palace.
The developers also wanted the main character to look realistic. “We worked a lot on the quality of animation and the credibility of the prince. He looks like an ordinary guy, although he knows how to run along the walls, says Patrice. – It was already like parkour before the art of moving became popular. One morning, on the “glider”, Jordan offered the idea, they say, it will be cool if the action is tied to one large location. That is, all action, characters and levels will exist in the palace ".
Patrice and Jordan worked perfectly. “I do not experience trepidation in front of the“ legends ”, so we easily communicated and quickly became friends,” Patris explains. Jordan was only a consultant and worked from his home in Los Angeles, but visited Montreal from time to time. Thus, the main decisions were made in Canada, and one of them was the use of the JADE engine. It was developed by Michel Ansel for Beyond Good & Evil. Jade could cope with the key mechanics, which was to raise the game to a new level. Such "features" became the opportunity to unwind time. Innovative mechanics avoids death, encouraging experiments.
Turn the time back
“Mechanics appeared after the working prototype was created,” Patris explains. – Playing, we found that we are often dying – in terms of complexity the project can be compared with the original Prince of Persia. But this made the game boring – enthusiasm and fun disappeared with every death. “Sands of time” were about how to get from point A to point B in the three -dimensional world. Players will quickly abandon the game if you have to go through the entire route again after death ". Rewinding function solved the problem, in addition it changed the direction of the game.
Thanks to the possibility of uniting time after an error, the player can create control points himself. It was difficult, but the lead programmer Clang Langle realized an ambitious mechanic on the JADE engine.
“Manipulations over time became a challenge and serious test,” Patris emphasizes. – There are only 32 megabytes of RAM for PlayStation 2, and the operating system already uses five of them. Five more were required to record a segment that can be rewind. There was not so much memory for everything else!"
Claude reached the goal, and Jordan impressed the new function. “Holding the button, you will unwind the time back, and this is amazing!", He recalls.
Ubisoft managers also liked what they saw, but the team was in no hurry to start direct production, but spent another three months on preparatory work. Now the priorities were finalizing rough graphics and giving the game your own style.
Rafael Lacost joined the team as an art director, leaving the previous work of the artist surrounded by Kalisto Entertainment. This happened in April 2002 and so he describes the past work: “In general, no art, only monochrome textures and blocks! Here we tried to come up with our own style and design for the game ".