The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time A Look at the Prince
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.