How Prince of Persia Split the Timeline

Prince of Persia celebrates its 35^th anniversary this month, and we're continuing our look back at the series with two entries from the Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 generation: the 2008 re-imagining known simply as Prince of Persia, and 2010's Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands, an interquel that explored the Prince's adventures between Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. 

Prince of Persia (2008)

"We had told the trilogy we envisioned, and closed the story of the Prince," says Jean-Christophe Guyot, creative director for 2008's Prince of Persia (as well as for Prince of Persia: Warrior Within and Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones). "It was bittersweet, but it was done. It was a good moment to start a new Prince of Persia cycle, especially with the transition to next-gen hardware. We embraced that, and one of the starting ideas we used for this game was: Could you betray someone out of love?"

Prince of Persia 2008 was an all-new story, with a new Prince who worked together with a powerful magic-wielding princess named Elika to cleanse corruption from a vast, interconnected world. It was also a top-to-bottom reinvention of Prince of Persia, featuring cel-shaded visuals, a more fantastical setting, and gameplay that emphasized exploring open outdoor areas. It made Elika a key part of parkour - she could fling the Prince across gaps too wide to jump - and combat, with magic attacks that could combo with the Prince's sword strikes. Elika also replaced the rewind feature, automatically (and inexhaustibly) rescuing the Prince from death whenever he slipped up.

In fact, Prince of Persia 2008 was built around Elika in the same way Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was built around its rewind feature. Combat is one example; one-on-one fights replaced battles against groups of enemies. These duels - which often unfolded against recurring, recognizable antagonists - were intended to be more meaningful, and to emphasize detail and depth over quantity. They were also meant to ensure Elika could always stay within view.

"We called it 2D combat, because it was on a straight line," says Kevin Guillemette, lead game designer on Prince of Persia 2008. "It was a lot easier to have Elika in the frame all the time because she was on that line with you, and when she attacked, it was super-easy to do close-ups in those moments. It was really to improve the collaboration between the two characters."

"What we wanted to push further at the time was the relationship between the characters," says Guyot. "It was already [in the Sands of Time games], but we couldn't push it to the level we wanted. We wanted you to enjoy Elika being around, through what she says but also through what she brings to the gameplay. She becomes part of your gameplay experience through function - all of the upgrade systems are linked to her - and then at some point, she has to sacrifice herself in order to save the land. That's her wish, but we would want the player to regret this and want to bring her back, thus betraying her, in a way."

"There was the question of the name, which didn't have a subtitle. I think it was to say, 'hey, we're redoing things; we're not starting from scratch, but it's a new direction,'" says Florence Baccard, who was an international brand manager on the game. That new direction gave the team more liberty to explore different themes and approaches, she says, as demonstrated by the cel-shaded art style and "poetic" tone. One example was an early trailer set to "Sæglópur" by Sigur Rós. "Using that sort of song, which is very mellow, wouldn't have worked on Prince of Persia: Warrior Within, for instance."

Another big reason for the drastic changes was that the developers had moved on to the Anvil engine that also powered Assassin's Creed, says Ubisoft Chief Production Officer Martin Schelling, who was art production manager on Prince of Persia. "Switching engines allowed things that we were not able to do previously."

The Sands of Time trilogy was developed for PlayStation 2-era hardware using the Jade engine, which Schelling describes as "really strict." For example, he says, the Jade engine might only be able to render one large room at a time, so developers would need to add S-shaped corridors between rooms in order to hide loading events. When players reached the middle of the "S," the game would invisibly unload the previous room and load in the new one. The Anvil engine didn't need these tricks, and could take advantage of then-next-gen hardware capabilities to render huge, open environments.

"All other Prince of Persias were linear; you go from A to B through the whole game, but this one was meant to be more open," says Michael McIntyre, who was a level designer on Prince of Persia 2008 (and is now game director on the Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time remake). One of the biggest challenges McIntyre's team faced was creating parkour paths that would work and be clearly readable by players going in either direction. "Achieving that created a whole new feeling, like this is an acrobatic gym world I can travel around in whatever direction I want," McIntyre says.

"When you start Prince of Persia 2008, we try to have some breathing space, and there's a fly-through to see the size of the map," says Schelling. "It was also an opportunity to innovate and to create something new enough to allow the brand to exist, because what Assassin's Creed was offering was almost starting to cannibalize Prince of Persia. We had to revamp and change the formula; let's take the opportunity to express our creativity."

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands (2010)

While the Sands of Time trilogy was complete, that version of the Prince returned for one more outing in Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands. The Forgotten Sands wasn't a sequel, but an interquel set during the years between The Sands of Time and Warrior Within. This version of the Prince still retained some of his old boyish charm, and embarked on a new adventure in the palace of his brother, Malik, who unleashes an army of sand creatures in an attempt to repel invaders.

"We wanted something that was more what we would call the 'classic cycle' of Prince of Persia," says Guyot, also creative director on The Forgotten Sands. "It still didn't feel right to bring the Prince back after everything he did; that ship had sailed, literally, because that was part of the ending [of The Two Thrones]. But we also felt like it was this Prince that should be there, and we felt that the power of time was core to this cycle, so we decided to revisit that.

"Also, and it was a post-rationalization, but the jump between Sands of Time and Warrior Within was a bit jarring," Guyot adds. "And so we wanted to explore this moment of transition, how the Prince could get darker."

"They brought back a number of us, the old guard [who worked on The Sands of Time trilogy]," says McIntyre, who joined the project as its level-design director. "You can see [The Sands of Time's] DNA in the opening castle attack scene, and we brought back the rewind even though there's no Dagger of Time. There are things in it that sort of remake Sands of Time, and then we added in the new stuff."

Where the 2008 game had narrowed combat to one-on-one duels, Forgotten Sands expanded its scope by pitting the Prince against hordes of enemies, and introduced new elemental powers the Prince could use for combat and traversal; water, for example, let him unleash chilling blasts during combat and freeze water (by freezing time) to turn it into a surface for parkour.

"One of the turning point moments was me talking with one of the designers who'd built a Flash prototype of the water power, and was not able to get much traction on it," says McIntyre. "I played it, and it was that whole concept of the water turning on and off, and being able to pass through waterfalls; he built that in 2D, basically. And I was like, 'this is it! This is our game, this is our new hook for level design,' and started building everything based around that."

One of the most unusual things about The Forgotten Sands is that it's technically not one, but four games: the Wii, DS, and PSP versions aren't adaptations of the "main" Xbox 360/PS3/PC version, and instead each feature their own dramatically different stories, supporting characters, and gameplay. That disparity, says Guyot, came from the various teams all starting and working on their versions independently to fit a tight production schedule.

ABOVE: Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands for Wii

"I think that there are connection points visually, and some of the gameplay elements are similar," says Guyot. "The Wii version was done in Quebec, so we discussed it a lot with them to make sure it wasn't completely disjointed, but they were still very much different games, different stories, and different experiences."

Prince of Persia (2008) and Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands are available on PC via the Ubisoft Store and Steam, and are included with a Ubisoft+ Premium subscription. Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is also available on Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S via backwards compatibility.

We'll conclude our retrospective next week with a look behind the scenes of Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown and The Rogue Prince of Persia. For more Prince of Persia, check out the creation of The Sands of Time trilogy, our look back at the original 1989 game and the first details on the remake of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.