Ubi Soft released an interview with Yannis Mallat, the game's producer, and
Jordan Merchner, the designer of the original Prince of Persia games, that gives
some insight into the design of the title character.
1) The Prince is quite familiar to gamers, as the main hero of the series
that carries his name. Is there any link between your Prince and the one
featured in previous games of the series?
The new Prince of Persia has a very different look from the previous games.
For this game we needed a strong hero who would project the Prince’s key
attributes: agility, courage and determination. To achieve this, we gave our
character designers complete freedom to break from previous visual conceptions
of the Prince, and start over from scratch. They did a fantastic job and gave us
exactly what we hoped for.
2) And what is the personality of this new Prince?
He starts out as a young Prince seeking adventure and glory. He is eager to
embark on a journey which will demand all his courage and determination, and
soon gets more than he bargained for, as his adventure transforms into a sheer
struggle for survival. He realizes that not just his own life is at stake, but
also the fate of everyone he loves and his entire world.
It was important for the Prince to evolve and change as a character
throughout the game. As the stakes rise and the odds against him increase, he
gets more and more beat up, and also more determined. This gradual
transformation is reflected in the character’s appearance, as he becomes a
tougher, stripped-down kind of action hero.
Players will get to control a very agile and acrobatic character. He has
quick, fluid movements that are quite spectacular. The Prince was designed so
that his skills in combat, from swordplay to martial arts, are unmatched, since
he has been trained all his life by the best instructors of Persia. Of course,
in the beginning, he has a certain innocence, even over-confidence, since he has
not yet tested his abilities in a life-or-death situation.
In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the Prince’s ideals and illusions
will be challenged by the hard choices he must make. In the course of the story
he matures, and learns what is really important.
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