THE STOR OF PRINCE OF PERSIA THE SANDS OF TIME
Canadian game designer Patrice Désilets is open and honest. “I wasn’t a fan,” he says of the original Prince Of Persia – the cinematic platformer designed by Jordan Mechner in 1989. “I played it when I was 26 or 27 years old and I was like, ‘Holy cow, people say that game is great?’”
In Patrice’s mind, time had lessened the game’s impact. He’d played it some ten years after release, when the appreciation of its groundbreaking rotoscoping, engaging sword fights and mix of puzzles had perhaps waned with the dawn of 3D console classics such as Tomb Raider.
“Nostalgia,” he offers, by way of explanation. “It’s not because it’s a good game now, right? It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, the character moves really well but, damn, it’s frustrating.’”
Such an admission is perhaps surprising. After all, Prince Of Persia not only spawned a franchise published by Brøderbund, it also happened to be bought by Ubisoft and rebooted – at the hands of Patrice himself. In fact, the equally innovative action adventure Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, released in 2003 for all of the major platforms at the time, also ended up being his first hit. If Patrice – creative director on Sands Of Time – doesn’t appreciate the original game itself, then he is certainly thankful of its legacy.
“I took the fundamentals of Prince Of Persia,” he recalls, later taking it further by helming another huge hit, Assassin’s Creed. But how did the game come about and where did the innovative ideas it incorporated spring from? For those answers it’s wise to rewind time to the beginning of 2001, when Ubisoft called Jordan Mechner with its intriguing yet troublesome proposal: to resurrect the Prince in a new 3D game.
Jordan had been here before. The Prince’s last outing in 1999 was an ill-fated 3D version for Windows (and later the Dreamcast) which Jordan disliked (and continues to swerve). Ubisoft, however, had big plans for the game’s continuation and it needed to get the original creator on board. It owned the rights to the Prince Of Persia name, it transpired, but Jordan Mechner held the IP.
Ordinarily, such things would be quickly resolved. Yet if the while at Yale University and whose previous videogame project was the $5 million flop in 1997 was to give the proposed reboot the nod, then he had to be convinced that any new team and direction would do his baby justice. And there was no indication that he was in any way desperate to get back into videogames.
