More about the engine, combat system and the Prince...all on Page 2

How has using the Assassin’s Creed engine helped to develop the game?

TD: Well, it’s a lot of very impressive technology. We had to make a lot of modifications to the engine to be able to make the game we wanted to make. Also, one of our mandates was not to remake Assassin’s Creed. So we looked at the engine and took all of the elements that served us well - a lot of the animation stuff and so on – but what we really wanted to do was make it our own. Because of our artistic diction, we’ve had to make a lot of changes to the way the engine works.

Were you tempted to create an open-world setting, like in Assassin’s Creed?

TD: We experimented with an open world structure for Prince of Persia but we discovered a fundamental issue with that, which was that we couldn’t get the choreographed acrobatic sequences that we needed. We were losing that PoP flavour. Granted, there are a lot of things that are different about this Prince of Persia – the prince is completely different, the atmosphere is completely different – but we wanted to keep all the core elements that make it Prince of Persia. We lost most of that trying to incorporate an open world structure. So we went back to the drawing board and created more of a network thing, which allowed us to get more of those step-by-step sequences. It was a lot more interesting and ended up giving us the game we have now.

How big is the game?

TD: We were aiming for around 12 to 18 hours. Along the development process, we had to cut down on some of our ambitions so certain elements of the game were dwarfed a little and at that point we were thinking more between 12 and 14 hours.

Why did you have to cut out some elements?

TD: Creative decisions. We had gameplay elements that just weren’t working, necessarily, with the art direction and the pieces weren’t falling perfectly into place with the game that we ultimately wanted to make.  So a lot of decisions were made to simplify certain elements and not dilute the final game. We decided to focus on the key things that worked to make a game that’s more solid than if we spread ourselves thin on everything.

The combat system seems much more fluid this time around. Was that easy to achieve?

TD: Oh no [laughs]. The combat system was actually very hard to work with. One of the issues that we had with the previous trilogy was that a lot of people loved the combat while a lot of people hated it. So how do you make both groups like it? Another thing we noticed was that people who liked the acrobatics generally didn’t like the combat. The people who didn’t like the acrobatics as much, generally liked the combat. We gave people combat options in Two Thrones but we really wanted to try something different. Again, our mandate was “reinvent combat in an action-adventure game.” We took a new approach; we inspired ourselves with certain games, movies and so on but we didn’t want to make a system that was a SoulCalibur, for example, or a God of War. We really wanted to have our own.

We took a big gamble and we focused on enemies, we focused on one-on-one fights with characters that grow and evolve as you fight them. The Prince is not going to have an upgradeable sword, for example, and will have the same move skills at the very start of the game that he has at the end of the game. But it’s the enemies that are going to evolve according to what you do. Before, you asked if you would experience the same story as a buddy and fighting is like that. Ultimately you’ll get the same experience, but you’ll discover it in different ways. For example, it might not be the same boss character that will give you the same challenges.

Finally, what would you say is the standout feature in Prince of Persia?

TD: The thing that stands out to me, is how we’re basically trying to get rid of the standard death screen. This was very controversial and it started a lot of discussions. But I kept saying “there are no lives anymore. You never collect lives in games, so why do you need to be reminded that it’s game over?” We wanted to get rid of that and keep the player in the experience. A lot of the creative decisions made in the game were made to keep the player in the adventure. The Prince has one quest and he’ll go step by step, his weapons will wear down or maybe he’ll break them but he has his equipment, he knows what to do. Bruce Willis doesn’t suck at the start of a movie then kick ass at the end (usually he sucks throughout - Ed).